Struggling to find struggles: developing a research on social movements of Florence

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Cristiano Bartolini

I began my MSc research thesis in June 2021, at the end of the second pandemic wave, which forced the world (back) inside, into our homes. I was frustrated and upset that I would probably not be able to conduct research beyond Europe’s borders – or outside my own room, even. At the start of my master’s, I was looking forward to the thesis, quite naively romanticising, in fact, picturing myself as a young researcher in the middle of rural fields, maybe in Latin America, living near native communities that struggle for social and human rights. After the pandemic hit, I had to surrender this idea and recalibrate my research expectations. I refocused my research aims and decided to start a study on social movements in Florence, my hometown.

I had never really thought of researching in a city: during my studies, I had unconsciously neglected its potential to enact a real change in society. The urban context, to me, was a negative environment from which good changes could not emerge. As various authors argue, the city is the centre of capitalistic life, it is the producer of huge economic surpluses, always looking for new outlets to absorb this endless profit that it constantly generates, and this, eventually, brings a lot of socio-economic problems to residents. Let me explain this with an example that ultimately becomes the background of my research.

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New publication by Francis O’Connor on rebel governance and urban-rural ties

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Insurgent movements have commonly re-located to isolated rural areas with weak state presence where their security was guaranteed by a hostile environment to launch insurgencies. The more recent field of rebel governance also draws on predominantly rural cases. Yet, some groups have chosen to predominantly base their armed mobilisations in cities with much higher security risks where they are obliged to mobilise clandestinely. Clandestinity is often seen as an impediment to insurgent consolidation. This article explores the forms of rebel governance adopted by the M-19 in Colombia to construct networks of social ties needed to embed itself in urban environments. It highlights a case of urban rebel governance without territorial control, thus extending the scope of the rebel governance literature. It addresses the spatial variation of the M-19’s insurgency by analysing its diverging experiences of its clandestine mobilisation in Bogota and Cali, as well as a brief window where it conducted more public urban mobilisation. Based on qualitative interviews conducted with former militants and an extensive qualitative, coding of M-19 primary archival sources, the findings show that M-19 could maintain its urban campaigns because of its parallel rural infrastructures. When the conditions for urban mobilisation deteriorated, its militants could flee to the relative safety of the rural fronts. The article’s findings hint at potential avenues for further research, notably more detailed assessment of the ties between urban and rural units and support networks, and a more explicit comparison between patterns of social tie creation in urban and rural environments.

“Clandestinity and insurgent consolidation: The M-19’s rebel governance in urban Colombia” is a new publication by Francis O’Connor, a Marie Curie Skłodowska Post-Doctoral Fellow in Rural Sociology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102930

Thesis opportunity in Galicia (NW Spain) with the Post-Growth Innovation Lab at the University of Vigo

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Commons, or commonly managed land, seem to be a relic of the past. The enclosure of the commons and concomitant rise of modern agriculture and capitalism have received much attention in academic literature. However, in Galicia, an autonomous region in the Northwest of Spain, a quarter of land is still managed as commons, typically referred to as ‘montes vecinales en mano común’. This way of land management means that land cannot be divided, owned individually, traded, or sold but is rather decided over by the people living in the parroquia or parish. The intricate link of household economies to the common lands, materializing through for example the grazing of animals in the commons or the harvesting of toxo (a nitrogen-rich shrub) to turn into fertilizer, was violently put to an end by the dictatorial state that usurped common lands between 1937 and 1989 to afforest them according to principles of industrial forestry. The rupture of household, rural economies is linked to substantial changes in these spaces, most notably, a significant drop in the rural population from 71.8% in 1950 to 14.3% in 2000 (Seijo 2005). The State’s forestry program was incredibly ambitious, planting five and a half million hectares of forest in the period between 1940 and 2006 (Vadella, 2016) with Galicia being a particular area of interest for the State’s reforestation program (Picos, 2017). After the Franco dictatorship ended, lands were returned to communities yet the processes and reasons for the devolution are contested and context-specific. Some communities never received their lands back, some received fractured parcels, some lands were filled with monocultures of eucalyptus and pine, while others house public facilities like schools and hospitals. About 3,000 montes vecinales en mano común exist throughout Galicia and each is shaped by a particular historical and situated process, allowing us to explore the cracks, resistances, and adaptations that have shaped the Galician commons becoming what they are today and what they could be tomorrow.

Thesis projects can be formulated around the following:

  1. Chronicling diverse economic practices over time in a historical perspective. People’s physical presence in the commons has changed over time, in line with modernization and economic ‘development’. Using qualitative methods such as interviews, these changes can be studied to learn about how commoning changed over time, what this meant for rural livelihoods, and commoners’ subjectivities.
  2. Exploring current configurations of diverse economic practices in the monte and how these came to be. Here students can examine how the commoning community has come to be, how initiatives have arisen in the commons, and how diverse economic practices have taken shape and relate to human flourishing.
  3. Futuring and imaginaries. Here we consider the futures commoners imagine or aspire to. Through qualitative research methods, this part of the project considers the meanings people ascribe to the commons and what commoning could look like in the future. We ask what role the commons have in human well-being as imagined by commoners but also by other actors like policymakers, scientists, and research centers.

The research takes place in connection to a PhD study by Noortje Keurhorst (University of Vigo). She will also be the local supervisor for this research.  For fieldwork a good command of Spanish and/or Galician is useful.  

MID, MOA or MDR students interested can send an e-mail to joost.jongerden@wur.nl

Internship: Governing food sharing in Utrecht

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We are looking for a research intern to conduct scientific research on food sharing and governance in the Municipality of Utrecht as part of the EU-funded project CULTIVATE. Knowledge of Dutch and experience with qualitative research methods and analysis are essential.

CULTIVATE uses a multi-actor approach to build sustainability and resilience in urban and peri-urban areas through a ground-breaking online social innovation support platform – The Food Sharing Compass. Built with and for five key stakeholder groups – food sharing initiatives, policy makers, food supply actors, researchers and citizens – the platform will make it possible to navigate diverse food sharing landscapes and cultures, in order to understand, develop, replicate, expand and strengthen sustainable food sharing in Europe. In essence, CULTIVATE will establish the EU as the global frontrunner in the development of resilient and inclusive food sharing economies, identifying drivers and implementation gaps and challenging existing theories and practices which currently constrain sustainable food sharing.

Internship description: The intern will be participating in research which aims to better understand the evolution of, and help transform, existing policies, regulatory regimes, governance structures and habits to strengthen local food sharing economies, promote sustainable food sharing and prevent and reduce food waste.

The intern will part of the Rural Sociology Group of Wageningen University but the work will be based mainly in Utrecht from September 2023 to January 2024 (4 months, full time).

For questions about the position, please contact Dr Lucie Sovova lucie.sovova@wur.nl

Generally, the intern will support the WUR Research team and other members of the CULTIVATE to collect, organize and analyse information and data to help achieve the scientific objectives of the project, develop effective task management and collaboratively work, publish and disseminate project findings.

We seek highly motivated candidates to:

  • work in an international, innovative and multistakeholder project,
  • develop qualitative research skills while working with different types of stakeholders,
  • communicate and amplify scientific, policy and innovation knowledge around food sharing in Utrecht.

Key responsibilities:

  • Follow research protocols to analyse the urban food sharing governance landscape in the city of Utrecht with special focus on food waste, social and solidarity economies, and urban agriculture with support from the research team.
  • Work closely with university researchers and the Municipality of Utrecht to identify leverage points and pathways for transformative change, using scenario and backcasting tools.
  • Support the organisation of project meetings.

Expertise/Competence/Skills:

  • Excellent Dutch and English language skills are a requirement
  • Capable of working independently and meeting deadlines
  • Proven capacity to synthetize and communicate complex ideas
  • Experience with qualitative research methods, especially interviewing is an asset
  • Experience with data collection and policy analysis is an asset
  • Experience with food sharing initiatives is an asset
  • Experience working in diverse teams is an asset

Beyond farming women: queering gender, work and family farms

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The issue of gender and agriculture has been on the research agendas of civil society organisations, governments, and academia since the 1970s. Starting from the role of women in agriculture, research has mainly focused on the gendered division of work and the normative constitution of the farm as masculine. Although the gendered division of work has been questioned, the idea of binary gender has mostly been taken as a given. This explorative research shifts the attention from the production of (traditional) gender roles to the making and unmaking of binary gender. An ethnographic study of four farms in Switzerland is drawn on to explore queer farming practices and investigate how queer farmers navigate gender normativity and what this tells us about gender in agriculture more broadly. After considering the mechanisms through which queer farmers are discouraged from farming as a livelihood on the basis of their sex, gender or sexuality, this article argues that queer farmers de- and re-construct gender and farming identities differently, which has research and policy implications for a more diverse and resilient rurality.

Keywords Performativity · Agricultural practices · Swiss faming · Ethnographic research · Gender · Queer farmers

Read the full article by Prisca Pfammatter and Joost Jongerden here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10449-z