Tag Archives: food sovereignty

MSc course Sociology of Food Provisioning and Place-based Development

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On the 16th of March 2015 the MSc course ‘Sociology of Food Provisioning and Place-based Development’ (RSO-31806) starts. Students that want to participate in this course can contact the course coordinator Han Wiskerke (han.wiskerke@wur.nl) as the deadline for online registration has passed.

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The course aims to provide a theoretical, empirical and methodological understanding of place-based development processes, with an emphasis on food provisioning and rural and territorial dynamics in urbanizing societies. The course is based upon recently completed and ongoing research activities within two of the main research domains of the Rural Sociology Group:

  1. The sociology of food provisioning;
  2. The sociology of place-based development.

Being based on recently completed and ongoing research projects implies that this course provides an up-to-date  insight into current theoretical debates and research findings. These are mainly derived from international collaborative research programmes (see ‘our projects’), carried out by multi-disciplinary research teams in different countries inside and outside Europe. Within and linked to these programmes the Rural Sociology Group has approximately 30 ongoing PhD projects. Some of these projects will also feature during this course.

The course is divided into four main themes: Continue reading →

From corporate control to food democracy – Food Otherwise video

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Watch the video recorded during the 2014 Food Otherwise conference in Wageningen University, Netherlands. Interviews with activist Vandana Shiva, prof. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg and coordinator Europe for Via Campesina Hanny van Geel. See voedselanders.nl for more information on the conference.

Declarations by The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC)

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The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) is an autonomous and self-organised global platform of small-scale food producers and rural workers organizations and grass root/community based social movements to advance the Food Sovereignty agenda at the global and regional level.

More than 800 organizations and 300 millions of small-scale food producers self organize themselves through the IPC, sharing the Food Sovereignty principles as outlined in the Nyeleni 2007 Declaration + 6 pillars of the synthesis report IPC facilitates dialogue and debate among actors from civil society, governments and others actors the field of Food Security and Nutrition, creating a space of discussion autonomous from political parties, institutions, governments and private sector.

The IPC recently published several declarations on food sovereignty for Europe, Asia and Africa. See the IPC weblog for more information or Facebook page IPC for Food Sovereignty 

 

Food Sovereignty: A critical dialogue – live streaming of conference

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Food sovereignty conferenceFollowing the Yale conference (see the post), the ISS-Agrarian, Food & Environmental Studies (AFES), Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS), Transnational Institute (TNI), Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, Land Deal Politics Initiatives (LDPI) and The Journal of Peasant Studies organised a Food sovereignty Conference in The Hague, Friday 24.

Download the programme. There will be live streaming of the conference.

Towards Implementation: Reflecting on 10 years of the Right to Food

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Today an interim report by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, made to the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly has been released. You can download a PDF copy here: Assessing a decade of progress on the right to food

The report – Assessing a decade of progress on the right to food– provides insight into practical aspects of realizing the right to food. It notes that the right to food has “become an operational tool” that is “widely recognised as a key to the success of food security strategies” (para 3).

Focusing on progress made since the 1996 World Food summit, the report identified:

  • Best practices
  • Roles of key actors: governments, parliaments, courts, national human rights institutions, civil society organisations and social movements.

The report also notes that systems of national protection are being redefined in terms of rights, a welcome move away from the understanding social benefits as charitable hand-outs. It argues that the right to food has entered a new phase: implementation. This is key as it moves from theory and law to practice. Grievance redress mechanisms (e.g. courts, social audits) are playing a role in promoting this change.

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