The countryside seems to be in a deep crisis. The limits to the global corporate food system and the deep environmental and social unsustainability of the agrarian sector – as well as the rural and environmental impacts of many other industrial sectors - are becoming ever-more apparent. As farmers are protesting against an agricultural system that renders it is increasingly difficult for them to subsist, that same system continues to be one of the main causes of rapid biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation around the world. All the while, rural abandonment continues, leaving many rural areas desolate and marginalized with people scrambling for alternative livelihood sources or migrating to urban centres.

At the same time, estimates of this migration and its consequences have been critiqued as overexaggerated and the countryside also seems to be going through a renaissance. Many urban dwellers have moved to the countryside, before, during and after COVID19, to find a new sense of space and means of reconnecting to the land. This includes new forms of nature-based living but also a dramatic resurgence of eco-based tourism. Meanwhile, smallholder farmers have organized on a global scale to resist their domination and displacement by corporate monoculture.

Within global biodiversity conservation debates, discussions concerning the future of the countryside are similarly ambivalent. On the one hand, programmes like Half Earth and Nature Needs Half advocate for emptying of rural areas to allow for dramatic expansion of conservation reserves. Growing campaigns to ‘decolonize’ conservation, on the other hand, seek to reorganize conservation efforts around the rights and territories of Indigenous peoples living in relatively low population densities in rural spaces on the margins of the global economy.

Both these faces of the countryside – depopulation/abandonment and revitalization/reinvestment – cannot easily be characterized in simple negative or positive terms; they are extremely uneven. While the majority of farmers remain wedded to the corporate agrarian sector and its severe impact on the environment, many are also switching to renegerative, convivial forms of farming. And while many tourists deeply enjoy reconnecting with nature during their countryside holidays, these activities often lead to major CO₂ emissions, much waste and massive environmental and social transformations. Political ecology has long studied this unevenness, its capitalist roots and the environmental, social and political-economic transformations they have wrought. Indeed: a focus on the relations between agrarian roots, environmental transformations and capitalist conflicts is central to political ecology’s early heritage and seems to be making a revival through new empirical insights, dynamics and theoretical insights.

This year’s Wageningen political ecology PhD spring school goes back to the agrarian-environmental roots of political ecology within the context of deepening global and local capitalist conflicts. It aims to interconnect, debate and revisit the three central elements of 1) agrarian roots; 2) environmental transformations and 3) capitalist conflicts and how these are resisted and/or overcome.

1. Agrarian roots

Early political ecology debates were deeply influenced by older agrarian studies discussions. Over time, however, critical agrarian studies and political ecology – despite having consistently influenced each other and taking inspiration from similar social-theoretical and philosophical debates – have maintained rather strong institutional, intellectual and thematic boundaries. At the same time, urgent empirical and theoretical developments render these boundaries ever more problematic. While recognizing their distinctness in many ways, this year’s PhD Spring school starts from the assumption that there is a need to more systematically pursue and stimulate cross-fertilization and ‘critical integrations’ between the two fields. Contemporary issues such as agrarian change, land use change, biotechnology, climate change, biodiversity conservation, tourism development, food security and so forth are all anchored in both agrarian and political ecology dynamics and their joint study deeply enriches the intellectual outcome.

2. Environmental transformations

Over the last decades, we have seen an incredible intensification of diverse environmental transformations. While older forms of land-use change due to agricultural production, (peri-)urban development and forms of resource extraction continue unabated, we now see potentially larger transformations with truly planetary impacts unfolding before us. Entire ocean currents may be changing or collapsing, the Amazon rainforest is at a tipping point towards another environmental state altogether and broader climate and atmospheric changes likewise show unprecedented dynamics across scale. Political ecologists are trying to make sense of these environmental transformations and the impacts they are having on diverse human and nonhuman communities. This new sense and awareness of planetary forms of environmental transformation and collapse – including on the level of genes through new biotechnologies - is changing environmental politics and how it understands diverse nonhuman natures, including animal and plant species, ecosystems and their interactions. In doing so, linking agrarian and political ecology debates is, again, critical as land-based means of subsistence and production, including agro-food and resource harvesting, are intrically entwined with human and more-than-human ecosystem dynamics.

3. Capitalist conflicts

One of the key ways of connecting the foregoing is through their common roots in capitalist political economy. Both agrarian studies and political ecology have long roots in critically examining capitalism from different perspectives, including Marxist, Foucauldian, ANT, STS, post-humanist, feminist, critical race theory and many other lenses. As global capitalism seems to increasingly embrace populist-fascist means and forms of governance to keep accumulation going apace, its crisis-ridden nature is in full view. Many of these conflicts are in one way or another rooted in or linked to agrarian-environmental transformations, and political ecologists and agrarian studies scholars have studied these in detail. What different capitalist factions and incentives clash in these dynamics and what (potential) outcomes emerge for diverse human and nonhuman communities? What are convivial, structural alternatives in relation to these conflicts and transformations? These are among the questions addressed in this years Spring school.

The PhD course aims to provide PhD students with an advanced introduction to these questions, themes, their interconnections, and current academic perspectives on both and allows PhD students to interact with the international team of cutting-edge scholars engaged in research concerning these issues that we have assembled to deliver the course. The spring school, as always, makes an explicit effort to combine and introduce different (Foucauldian, post-Marxian, more-than-human, ANT, feminist, decolonial and other) perspectives so as to develop a broader understanding of contemporary theoretical currents in the field of political ecology and the prospects for alternative futures. This year, the spring school will be run in tandem with a graduate workshop of Critical Tourism Studies, running from 2-11 April at WUR (see here).

In the introductions and discussions, the theme and practice of ‘contestation’ will be central. We will delve into the contestations entailed in development and analysis of our interrelated themes and employ them productively to get a handle on different trends and traditions in political ecology. Special emphasis will be on identifying contestations between and among different theoretical traditions, empirical settings, material resources and political objectives that inform, or form the subject of, various political ecology studies. What consequences do different choices with regard to these ‘ingredients’ have for the types of political ecology presented in the literature and presentations? And how can we harness the contestations inherent within them to inform our own understanding and use of political ecology in research and action? One of the objectives of the course, then, is to answer the question of how to start thinking about political ecologies of agrarian and environmental transformations in the present era.

Besides looking for contestations in the literatures and presentations, we will also practice contestation. In small and large group discussions, we will aim to stimulate intellectual debate through various strands of argument and critique and problematize these from various angles. In this way, the course also explicitly incorporates development of academic debating skills.

Altogether, the workshop and these debates are also meant to support a second objective of the spring school, namely to contribute to a broader understanding of the meaning and nature of political ecology in the 21^st century.

Target group and learning outcomes

The course ‘Political Ecologies of the Countryside: agrarian roots, environmental transformations and capitalist conflicts’ is intended for PhD students across the social and environmental sciences, especially anthropology, geography, political science, sociology and development studies, with an interest in political ecology. In this course, we will move between close reading of texts, workshops, discussions, and) a field trip. Students following this course will not only learn about contestations in relevant themes and new dynamics in political ecology, but will also become part of and interpret these contestations.

Students participating in this course are expected to write a short statement (max. 1 page A4) to: i) introduce who they are in terms of disciplinary background and education ii); outline how they (intend to) engage with the theme of agrarian roots, environmental transformations and capitalist conflicts in political ecology; iii) outline questions or issues on these themes with which they would like to engage; and iv) offer expectations from the course. Two other assigments will be required to legitimate the 4 ECTS for the course, and will be communicated to accepted participants in due course.

After successful completion of this course students will be able to:

• Demonstrate a thorough knowledge of new dynamics in the thinking on agrarian roots, environmental transformations and capitalist conflicts, and the intersections among these;
• Critically reflect on different political ecology approaches to these themes and employ these in social science research;
• Broadly understand some of the main contestations around these themes in relation to theoretical traditions, empirical emphases, political projects and material resources;
• Formulate whether and how elements of these discussions and contestations could fit on and contribute to their own research projects;
• Engage in active learning, critical thinking and academic debating, especially by positioning oneself in (relation to) academic contestations.

Assumed prior knowledge

MSc in social sciences: anthropology, geography, political science, sociology or development studies.

Session Times/ Outline of the Course in Hours

Before starting the course, the students are expected to do several days of self-study to read the prescribed reading and write a 3–4-page annotated bibliography or ‘reflection document’ on the readings and how these (potentially) relate to their own research. In the week of the course, we will have lectures, group-work, a creative outdoor activity and discussions (7-11 April 2025).

Teaching methods

The course offers combination of different educational activities:

i)  Lectures to introduce and explain new dynamics and theoretical approaches

ii) Self-study to further develop the understanding of the new dynamics and theoretical approaches discussed.

iii) Assignments that address contestations regarding the new dynamics and theoretical approaches and apply these to the student’s own research

iv) Plenary discussions of literature and assignments.

v) Presentations by participants

Course fee

Cancellation conditions:

The participants can cancel their registration free of charge 1 month before the course starts. A cancellation fee of 100% applies if a participant cancels his/her registration less than 1 month prior to the start of the course.

The organisers have the right to cancel the course no later than one month before the planned course start date in the case that the number of registrations does not reach the minimum.

The participants will be notified of any changes at their e-mail addresses.