Postdoctoral Working Group - "Rural Futures"

Summer Term 2019, starting May 2019


How might we rethink the “agrarian question” today? How does advanced capitalism in its globalized, financialized form penetrate and reshape agrarian (and post-agrarian) life? And in this context, how do we approach the categories that scholars have used for describing and analyzing “the rural”? This working group seeks to look beyond the presumption that urban spaces are at the forefront of global change and to instead examine how “rural futures” are at once entangled with global changes and persistently marginalized by them. Through a reading group and a series of public events, we will examine transformations taking place in rural spaces, while simultaneously asking how “the rural” and associated concepts operate as analytic categories today.

Activities
Reading Group 

Please join our reading group! 
We meet every two weeks to read and discuss texts dealing with topics like: “value and nature,” “the pasts and futures of peasant studies,” “the financialization of agriculture,” and “growth and destruction.” For more information, contact amiel.bize@uni-bayreuth.de or come to our first meeting on 2. May (10:00, S55 (RWII), UBT Campus). 

 
Public Events

26th of June 2019, 19h:
Public Lecture by
Dr. Kupakwashe Mtata (Bulawayo)
Commodification of Culture and Contested Visions of the Future in Rural Matobo

Life in the villages in the Matobo Hills of Zimbabwe seems to quintessentially demonstrate the notion of “the rural,” particularly when it is juxtaposed with practices in the neighboring city of Bulawayo. However, links between town and country undermine the rural-urban dichotomy in a number of fundamental ways. This presentation explores challenges to the rural-urban divide through an analysis of some practices and contestations in Ntabaemnyama, Dewe, Njelele and Fumugwe villages. It also proposes a way by which the ideas of “rural” and “urban”can be more profitably conceptualized.
Please join the discussion.
Venue: Iwalewahaus, Wölfelstraße 2, Bayreuth
wheelchair-accessible entry through the courtyard (Münzgasse)
2. July 2019, 20h:

Queer Gardening in North America:
Documentary & Discussion
The Working Group Rural Futures cordially invites you to a movie screening with discussion in cooperation with pop-political space of Sübkültür.
Film-maker Ella von der Haide is present and will moderate the discussion. 
What a pleasure!   
Queer Gardening in North America examines how queerness is reflected in the horticulture, place making and poethics of LGBTQI* gardeners in North America. As part of a research project on queer-feminist ecologies and spatial planning, Ella von der Haide’s poetic and probing film examines how gardening can empower queers to develop their own ecologies. It is part of a longer series on community gardens, titled Another World is Plantable!. 

Ella von der Haide is a German filmmaker, gardener, ecological activist, and spatial planning researcher from Munich. Her documentary film series on community gardens and their connection to social movements is called “Another world is plantable!” and features gardeners in Argentina, South Africa, Germany and North America (www.communitygarden.de).
The event is organized by the University of Bayreuth’s working group on Rural Futures, and supported by the Bayreuth Academy and the Cluster of Excellence “Africa Multiple.” 
Venue: Sübkültür, Kämmereigasse 9 1/2, Bayreuth
22. July, 18.30h  

“Rural Impossibility” - Public Lecture by Basil Ibrahim 
Nairobi-based independent scholar and Working Group Fellow Basil Ibrahim speaks to the theme of "Rural Impossibilities" in the context of the WG's topic "Rural Futures". We are looking forward! More info soon!
Venue: Foyer, Iwalewahaus (Wölfelstraße 2, 95444 Bayreuth)

16.-18. October 

Workshop on Rural Life and Value
Venue at UBT, tbc