The harm supply chain: food, agriculture and colonialism in Kurdistan[1]

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Joost Jongerden

Introduction
Food is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about politics. Yet the political does not always present itself explicitly as political (Day 2022). This is certainly the case for food. While food is essential for the reproduction of biological life and an important cultural and economic artefact, various authors have shown it is political too. Single food products, such as sugar (Mintz 1985), palm oil (Csevár and Rugarli 2025) and soy (Hiraga 2025), have been shown to be inseparable from the histories of capitalism and colonialism. Their examples illustrate how food is entangled with broader systems of power, exploitation, and domination. Similarly, in the development of a food supply chain in Kurdistan, we see that food can both foster life and community, and foil it, serving as a vehicle for the deliberate destruction of political and socio-economic existence.        

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Agricultural Innovation and Social Sustainability: Gender, Social Reproduction and Labour

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This PhD thesis by Daun Cheong explores why social progress towards gender equality in agrarian societies remains slow by analysing policies, academic research, and empirical evidence of farmers’ lived experiences and their interrelationships, paying particular attention to the relationship between agricultural innovation and gendered agrarian labour.

It examines the impacts of innovation that extend beyond the technical and material, investigating the reconstruction and renegotiation of gender and labour dynamics, which ultimately shape the lived experiences of subsistence farmers. By employing post-structuralist feminist approaches, including feminist critical discourse analysis, social reproduction, and capabilities framed as relational autonomy, the thesis demonstrates the gender discourses produced by policies and research, the new subjectivities they construct and frame, and the processes through which they shape reality. Empirically, the research adopted a mixed method approach including micro-focus group discussions, surveys, key informant interviews, and systematic document reviews focusing on women subsistence farmers in Nepal’s Terai region.

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New Publication | On Babushkas and Postcapitalism: Theorising Diverse Economies from the Global East

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Sovová, L., Cima, O., Jehlička, P., Pungas, L., Sattler, M., Smith, T.S.J., Decker, A., Johanisova, N., Kovanen, S., and North, P., writing as Polička Collective (2025), On Babushkas and Postcapitalism: Theorising Diverse Economies from the Global East. Antipode. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.70034

As transformative visions for more just and sustainable societies multiply around the globe, the Diverse and Community Economies approach presents one of the most influential strategies to advance postcapitalist visions. In this paper, we contribute to this project based on our research and activism in the Global East, intended here as Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. We argue that engaging with the Global East is not only a matter of epistemic inclusivity but also a (too-often-neglected) opportunity to learn from a region with a history of dramatic economic transformation and diversity. We highlight examples of community economies already contributing to more-than-human wellbeing, and we present emerging theoretical insights concerning temporality, the multi-sitedness of the enterprise, and diverse economic subjectivities. With that, we articulate our ongoing research agenda and advance conversations with postcapitalist scholarship and politics.

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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