Tag Archives: Rural Development

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 

 

Theoretical approaches to the ecologisation of agrifood systems – European Society of Rural Sociology 2014 Summerschool

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Transitions towards more sustainable agrifood systems and rural landscapes are at the core of societal demands, technological but also social innovations and renewed public policies at various scales. In rural sociology they are addressed through different theoretical frameworks and the main objective of the ESRS PhD Summer School this year, is to discuss these competing and sometimes articulated frameworks and thereby to help the PhD students to clarify their own theoretical choices and to position them in relation to other theoretical frameworks that are used in rural sociology. For students who are rather at the beginning of their PhD, the aim will be to help them organize their state of the art and clarify their problematisation, while for students who are more advanced, it would rather be a discussion of their results in the light of existing literature and/or possibly the preparation of a future article. All the participants should have an interest in the theoretical frameworks that will be structuring the discussion, i.e. mainly Socio-Ecological Systems/Resilience theories, Food Regime Theory, Transition Theories, Actor Network Theory, and Social Studies of Science and Knowledge. Continue reading →

Well-working operational interfaces – PhD-thesis Wiebke Wellbrock

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December 4 Wiebke Wellbrock succesfully defended her thesis (can be viewed at wurtv.wur.nl):

Well-working operational interfaces: A key to more collaborative modes of governance

This thesis comprises five chapters that are independent scientific publications. In the first chapter, I show how the ‘learning region concept’ and ‘triple helix thesis’ can be reframed to address support for collaboration in rural areas. In the second chapter, I reflect on the experiences of using the conceptual lens as a research tool for studying the operational features of arrangements supporting joint learning and innovation in the case study area of Westerkwartier, the Netherlands. In the third and fourth chapters, I deal with the question of how to best arrange support for collaboration by comparing the operational features of arrangements across the German and European case study areas. This thesis concludes with a discussion of the lessons learnt concerning: 1) wellworking operational features of arrangements supporting collaborative modes of governance, 2) the development and refinement of the conceptual lens, based on experiences of using it as a heuristic research tool, and 3) the potential of the refined framework to effectuate more collaborative modes of governance.

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WASS-seminar: (Re-)Assembling Rural Places? by Prof dr Michael Woods

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Wageningen School of Social Sciences (WASS) seminar: (Re-)Assembling Rural Places?

A presentation by Prof. dr Michael Woods (Aberystwyth University, UK) and prof. dr Sally Shortall (Queen’s University Belfast) as first discussiant.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013, 15.30-17.00, room C67 Leeuwenborch building of Wageningen University

In recent work Prof. Michael Woods explores the prospective application of Assemblage Theory as a framework for analysing the recomposition of rural places through social and economic change. Assemblage Theory builds on the influences of Gilles Deleuze, Manuel DeLanda and actor-network theory to understand social formations as assemblages of heterogeneous elements that can be human or non-human, natural or technical, material or expressive, but which are held together in temporary entanglements which are constantly changing and which cannot be contained but reach out to intersect with other assemblages. The approach has attracted increasing interest among others human geographers that started thinking about places as assemblages. Assemblage theory presents a way of extending the relational approach to rurality pioneered by Jonathan Murdoch, connecting material relations to performative and discursive aspects of rurality. Assemblage theory supports investigation of the re-making of rural places in globalization, resonating with Woods’s description of the ‘global countryside’ as an emergent and contested space and globalization as proceeding through processes of negotiation, manipulation and adaptation within place. In the seminar Prof. Micheal Woods will present his state of the art in working with these notions supported by illustrative examples.

Study trip to Poland

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polandAre you interested in rural development, agricultural policy, nature conservation and climate change? Do you want to know more about how globalization processes affect these areas in an EU Member state, and what local responses can be identified? Join the study trip to Poland, organized by RUW Foundation and the Rural Sociology Group. In a 10 day intensive program, we will visit different cities and rural areas in Poland, meet with interesting organizations and work on a farm! Continue reading →