Julia Spanier defended her PhD thesis

On 28 November 2024 Julia Spanier successfully defended her PhD thesis titled ‘A rural(–urban) perspective: Agricultural grassroots initiatives and the making of post-capitalist futures’.

Abstract. This PhD thesis explores the role of agricultural grassroots initiatives (AGIs) in societal transformations away from the capitalist status quo. AGIs are bottom-up, small-scale alternatives that exist within (and in opposition to) the dominant industrial agri-food system. In the thesis, they are not only considered for their role in the transformation of the agri-food system, but of capitalist society at large. They are thereby perceived both as safe environments within which post-capitalist ways of relating to each other and the environment can be experimented with, and as actors who engage with their outside world and initiate or fight for political changes. Specifically, this thesis embeds these initiatives and their engagement for societal change in their rural–urban geographies. It focuses on the ways in which their actions are contextualised by rural and urban space, and investigates how they transform rural-urban dynamics: how AGIs change the relationship between countryside and city, and how they may initiate progressive, post-capitalist transformations in villages and rural regions. Empirically, the thesis explores the case of community-supported agriculture (CSA) in Germany. CSA is a type of small-scale farming that relies on a direct linkage between producers and consumers. Consumers share the costs and risks of a farm and in return receive a share of the harvest. Often, these initiatives stretch across culturally defined rural-urban boundaries, connecting rural or peri-urban producers to predominantly urban members. Amongst others, the thesis finds that CSAs have the potential to nurture material solidarity and care between rural producers and urban consumers, and may even facilitate encounters between rural and urban communities that go beyond the exchange of food. It also finds that CSAs may partake in the transformation of rural places, encouraging alternative, post-capitalist practices and politics in villages or contributing to the revitalisation of social and cultural life in the countryside. At the same time, the thesis illuminates that none of these potentials are automatically realised through the mere structure of a CSA. Not all CSAs automatically contribute to the local politics in their villages, and not all CSAs entail meaningful rural–urban encounters: They may, under some conditions, even CSAs (re)produce disharmonious relations between city and countryside. Overall, the thesis illustrates the importance of rural–urban collaborations and alliances for progressive, post-capitalist societal change, stressing the potential of hybrid, rural–urban initiatives—such as CSAs—in facilitating these alliances. While identifying, through the case of a possible alliance between the degrowth movement and the CSA movement, several challenges and hindrances to such alliances, the thesis emphasises their relevance at a time of multiple socio-ecological crises and a rising far right.