A short tribute to my highly esteemed (former) colleague Dirk Roep (one year after retirement)

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A year ago, my colleague Dirk Roep reached retirement age. He had organized a wonderful farewell party, where I was also supposed to give a speech to honour him, his work and his contribution to the Rural Sociology Group. Unfortunately, I had to cancel due to illness and was unable to give my speech. So now, a year later, on Dirk’s 68th birthday, I am writing down what I wanted to say a year ago at Dirk’s farewell party:

After 35 years of working for the Rural Sociology Group (and its predecessor, the Sociology Department) in various positions (and even more different employment contracts), the time has now come to enjoy a well-deserved retirement. Of those 35 years, we have known each other for 32 years, we have been colleagues for roughly 28 years, and I have been the chair of the Rural Sociology Group (and thus formally your ‘manager/supervisor’) for 20 years.

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NRC: Drie zij-instromers begonnen een duurzame boerderij: ‘We willen bijdragen aan de voedselproductie én gemeenschapszin’

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De NRC publiceerde op 1 september een achtergrondartikel over de Biesterhof, een boerderij die mede is opgericht door RSO-medewerker Howard Koster, samen met Claudi Rudorf en Eline Wilememaker. Met z’n drieën startten zij een regeneratief landbouwbedrijf dat gezonde voeding wil verbouwen, de bodem wil verbeteren, de biodiversiteit wil bevorderen en een gemeenschap wil opbouwen. “Er zijn momenten dat ik de natuur vervloek.”

Lees het volledige artikel hier: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/09/01/drie-zij-instromers-begonnen-een-duurzame-boerderij-we-willen-bijdragen-aan-de-voedselproductie-biodiversiteit-en-gemeenschapszin-a4904642

Best paper award Jan Douwe van der Ploeg: Rural studies: A new paradigm that integrates previously separated disciplines

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The International Scientific Committee of the REA – Italian Review of Agricultural Economics has awarded the REA Best Paper Award 2024 to Jan Douwe van der Ploeg for his article “Rural Studies: A New Paradigm that Integrates Previously Separated Disciplines”, published in Volume 79 (2024). In this article, Van der Ploeg argues that in reaction to a neo-classical approach, neo-institutional economics (NIE) and rural sociology (RS) equips rural studies with powerful tools to identify and analyse the institutions shaping farming communities.

The abstract of the article writes: “Rural studies are the theoretically informed and empirically grounded integration of disciplines that, until recently, were widely separated. This separation came with different grammars, mutually contrasting problem definitions and different methodological instruments that together resulted in a scattered understanding of countryside, farming, and the processing and distribution of food. The article discusses the main features of rural studies and especially explores the theoretical, institutional and historical backgrounds of these features. It argues that the specificity of agriculture strongly impacts its study and theoretical representation – as much as the resulting theories contribute to shaping the unfolding of agricultural activities over time.”

The full article is available here: https://edepot.wur.nl/687357

Field Notes: On the way

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Today, I’m on my way with a friend to visit an agroecological farm started a few years ago by a group of purged academics—scholars dismissed from their university positions during Turkey’s 2016 political crackdown. Once part of the local university, they turned to cultivating a few acres of land just outside the city. The farm still survives, though not without struggle.

As we bumped along the road toward the fields, our conversation drifted across dozens of topics—including the use of pesticides. Then suddenly, my friend turned to me and asked, “Have you heard of the ‘Black Wounds’—Birîna Reş?”

I hadn’t.

It was the early years of the Cold War. Turkey had been included in the U.S. Marshall Aid plan—not for post-war reconstruction, but for building a strategic alignment near the border with the Soviet Union. Alongside shipments of powdered milk and food came military bases. And toward the end of the 1950s, a shipment of wheat seeds treated with pesticide arrived in Turkey. The government distributed these seeds for free to landowners affiliated with the ruling party. But instead of planting them, many landowners sold the wheat cheaply on the open market. Easy money.

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New publication: Contesting an exclusive citizenship regime: the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its electoral mobilisation in Batman in the late 1970’s

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Joost Jongerden and Francis O’Connor have been working on spatial (rural) dimensions of political mobilisation and violence. In this article, they look into the politics of the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) through its engagement in municipal politics in the late 1970s in Batman, then a rural town in the Kurdistan region in Turkey, which rapidly industrialised after the local discovery of oil. Using a citizenship analytical lens, this article makes two substantial contributions. The article challenges overly simplistic, linear narratives regarding the PKK’s origins and its eventual embrace of violence. By analysing the PKK’s electoral and representational politics in the late 1970s, it emphasises the political dynamics of that period rather than reinterpreting its emergence solely through the later insurgency. Empirically, the article illustrates how the Kurdish political movement’s pursuit of representation directly challenged the ethnically exclusionary citizenship regime of the Turkish state.

The article is published open access in Third World Quarterly.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2025.2518501?src=exp-la#abstract