To kick off the CSPS Year of Anti-Oppression the Political Ecology reading group met on October 15th to discuss Frank Wilderson’s Afropessimism. Nine people attended the reading group from within and beyond CSPS, which signals a growing interest and commitment to exploring this topic together. Dr. Sierra Deutsch facilitated our meeting with the following ground […]
In Bukavu, a rapidly growing city in the troubled east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, neither claimants of land nor claimants of authority can solely rely on one identity or institution in order to secure their claims. Lasting recognition of claims requires constant renegotiation across a shifting diversity of competing individuals and their practices; […]
In an increasing multicultural society, the stories we tell of the past can bring us together or push us further apart. Through travel and tourism we encounter new cultures and perspectives on such stories of the past in certain places. The stories of slavery as told through slavery heritage tourism, is not merely ready-made but […]
How do urban gardens work as sources of food? That is, in a nutshell, the central question of this thesis. Urban gardening and other food alternatives have received growing attention in relation to issues such as food quality and the environmental impacts of food production. However, we know little about how urban gardens actually provide […]
Ampumuza, C., Duineveld, M., René Van der Duim, R. (2020) The most marginalized people in Uganda? Alternative realities of Batwa at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. World Development Perspectives 20: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2020.100267 Indigenous peoples such as the Batwa in Uganda are predominantly seen as marginalised groups, leaving little room for foregrounding their power, influence and involvement in tourism and […]
The CSPS Foodscapes cluster is looking for BSc and MSc students interested in researching emerging foodscapes in times of uncertainty. Covid-19 has displayed many of the vulnerabilities and externalities of our current corporate food regime, such as unequal access to food, the dependence of our food supply on global supply chains, the exploitation of (migrant) […]
For more information: https://www.wur.nl/nl/activiteit/Understanding-the-psychological-and-social-environmental-determinants-driving-young-infant-feeding-practices-among-Rwandan-households-a-salutogenic-approach.htm The defense will be livestreamed via the following link https://weblectures.wur.nl/P2G/Player/Player.aspx?id=C217
Political ecologists recognize that environmental issues are political and therefore intricately tied to social and economic issues. We also understand that such issues have shared (political) root causes and that addressing ecological problems means addressing social and economic problems at the structural level as well. And although the PE Reading Group has included readings by […]
cover image by 帅 郭 via Pixabay For more information and to register: https://www.wur.nl/en/show/Critical-Gender-Studies-in-the-Life-Sciences-domains-.htm Introduction & objectives of the course Today, research in the life sciences done to support sustainable development is increasingly interdisciplinary and demands better understanding of roles of gender and other differences, such as race and colonial history. This course directly enables […]
Anthropometric determinism, the 19th century notion that the human body, individual personalities, cultural traits, and social groups can be reduced to numbers, is back. The critical social sciences were, essentially, forged alongside, and fighting against, this idea that informed pseudoscientific practices, namely Euro-American racist ideologies at the heart of so many anti-immigrant and refugee sentiments, […]
In the period of quarantine The Covid-10 crisis has isolated many people but it didn’t stop people from sharing stories about the situation and about what comes back after quarantine. In many countries one can witness a very contrasting set of discourses (see for an overview Matteo, 2020). Social cohesion and solidarity are praised, nationalists’ discourses […]
Can online meetings be generative and energizing! Yes, they can! On June 10th, we had the fourth meeting of our U.lab 2x journey, in which teachers and students at Wageningen University explore how to integrate head, heart and hands in Higher Education. Since The Netherlands went into ‘intelligent lockdown’ mid-March, we have been organizing our […]
Tuesday June 9 | 15.00 CEST | ZOOM (link will be shared after registration) The CSPS Foodscapes Cluster warmly invites you to join this online public lecture. Please share with others that might be interested! To register, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/tC9wHCs8cHh8QNgo8 Foodscapes after Covid: from corporatism to the politics of possibility The pandemic […]
Introduction Being an artist and being in quarantine, she did what artists have always done — make wonder out of limitation, privation, and boredom; illuminate the universal through the tiny aperture of the deeply personal. Maria Popova, April 2020, reviewing work by Sophie Blackall. Maria Popova poses a challenge for artists working within Corona restrictions. I had […]
Thursday May 14, 2020 | 11.00 am (CET)| Weblectures.wur.nl Syed Omer Husain will defend his PhD-thesis ‘(De)coding a technopolity: Tethering the civic blockchain to political transformation‘. See the abstract below. The full thesis can be downloaded from WUR Library after the defence ceremony. The ceremony will be live-streamed by Weblectures.wur.nl but is recorded and can be viewed […]
This blog was written by: Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen, Monica Gruezmacher and Martijn Duineveld The global pandemic has frustrated many research projects and many scholars are in doubt about how to move forwards with their research. We cannot provide a solution, but perhaps shaking up the research mantra a bit, could help those scholars […]
Perhaps a useful for some of us: ‘Isolation measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 means that social researchers who have for doing fieldwork in a pandemic – specifically, ideas for avoiding in-person interactions by using mediated forms that will achieve similar ends. Social research has been conducted online for many years, of course. There […]
What would a healthy, generative Higher Education system look like? That’s the question we explore in the 4th session of our U.lab 2x project “Building Vertical Literacy in Higher Education” on May 6th, 2020. Using a method called ‘Social Presencing Theatre’ (SPT), we embodied various stakeholder roles to sense what the system feels like […]
The PhD course Critical Perspectives on Social Theory gives participants an opportunity to intensively engage with some of the major foundational movements in critical social theory, so that they can continue to explore contemporary expansions of those movements in their own research. It is organized as an intensive discussion seminar over the course of four […]
As all of us watch, experience and manage the challenges and opportunities of these days, we are also forced to be lone warriors in self-quarantining and virtualising many private and academic aspects of life… Therefore, CSPS started a drawing challenge as an alternative way of giving our eyes a break and our brain a calming […]
** Special online discussion on rural-urban relations** by Bettina Bock and Jessica Duncansource cover photo: Daily Mail How are the interactions and dependencies between rural, peri-urban and urban areas changing at this moment? Let us know! Comment at #ROBUST #RuralUrban The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the foundation of our societies, painfully demonstrating the enormous difference […]
Teken hier de petitie. – Nederlandse versie manifest (pdf)– English version manifesto (pdf)– Tweet met aankondiging van deze petitie COVID-19 doet de wereld op haar grondvesten schudden. De coronapandemie heeft nu al talloze levens gekost en ontwricht terwijl hulpverleners keihard werken om zieken te verzorgen en verdere verspreiding te voorkomen. De strijd om de enorme […]
Today (10 April) I made my debut in the Dutch newspapers along with colleagues from Wageningen University and Breda University of Applied Sciences. The article was published in the online edition of the Volkskrant (see here), but a synopsis of it appeared in the printed version. The frontpage headline of the print edition was however quite […]
Scientists from Wageningen University & Research give a short lecture about the impact of the corona virus, focused on their field of expertise. Today we listen to Jeroen Warner, Associate Professor of Disaster Studies at CSPS. He talks about the social dynamics of the corona pandemic. The Netherlands are not very used to disasters and […]
Below you will find a copy of this still growing blog on Thinking about place and power – a site written and curated by Stuart Elden: https://progressivegeographies.com/resources/geographers-sociologists-philosophers-etc-on-covid-19/ “First posted 24 March 2020; last updated 2 April 2020. Thanks to those who have sent additional ones, especially Michael O’Rourke. A much more extensive, chronologically ordered, and […]
Wipe the dust, exhaleUncover hidden treasuresSense the space and shine! This haiku summarizes some of the outcomes of today’s online session of the U.lab 2x project ‘Building Vertical Literacy in Higher Education’ at Wageningen University. The aim of the session was to establish a shared understanding of the current reality of the higher education system […]
Even though the Rural-Urban edition of the Informed Cities Forum, scheduled to take place on 2-3 April 2020 in Lucca, Italy, was canceled, we believe that fruitful discussions are possible, even when we can’t meet in person. We are happy to invite you to join us for an Informed Cities webinar with Carolyn Steel, who was […]
Pathways Europe 2020 Greetings all, The Pathways team has been closely monitoring the status of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it is having around the globe. To give everyone better predictability, we have decided to postpone Pathways Europe 2020. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause you and deeply appreciate your understanding. While we will […]
By Robert Fletcher, Ivan Murray Mas, Macià Blázquez-Salom & Asunción Blanco-Romero | Cover photo Source: Ultima Hora The COVID-19 crisis shows what degrowth in the global tourism industry could look like. But it would need much more concerted planning to address the social impacts of this transition. From Overtourism to Undertourism Just a few short months […]
When crises like coronavirus come around, people like me get excited. Not because we’re insensitive to the real suffering of people, but rather because so much space opens up for us to reimagine life as we know it in revolutionary ways that support collective survival beyond destructive realities like global capitalism and neocolonialism. And when […]