A rural(–urban) perspective: Agricultural grassroots initiatives and the making of post-capitalist futures

PhD student: Julia Spanier.

Supervisors: Giuseppe Feola, Ellen Moors, Marion Ernwein

This thesis employs a rural-urban perspective to investigate agricultural grassroots initiatives as post-capitalist agents and spaces. Building on scholarship on capitalism’s production of rural-urban space and socially unjust and ecologically unsustainable rural-urban relations, as well as on analyses of capitalist and right-wing performances of the rural, it explores how agricultural grassroots initiatives, predominantly considered for their role in the transformation of the food system and the prefiguration of post-capitalist futures, are shaped by these rural-urban geographies, and how they are shaping them in return.

The thesis asks:

1. What does it mean to study post-capitalist transformations from a rural-urban perspective?
2. Whether and how do agricultural grassroots initiatives prefigure rural-urban relations, and contribute to the transformation of the countryside, in line with visions of post-capitalist futures?
3. What is the potential for agricultural grassroots initiatives to engage in rural-urban alliances for post-capitalist transformation?, and
4. How do the rural and rural-urban relations shape post-capitalist transformations?

To engage with these questions, the thesis studies the case of community-supported agriculture (CSA) in Germany, both through an in-depth exploration of four CSA initiatives and through an exploration of the German CSA network.

PhD thesis:

Spanier, J. 2024. A rural(–urban) perspective: Agricultural grassroots initiatives and the making of post-capitalist futures. Utrecht University.

Publications within the PhD project:  

Spanier, J., Feola, G. 2022. Nurturing the post-growth city: bringing the rural back in. In: Savini, F., Ferreria, A., von Schönfeld, K. C. (Eds.)  Post-Growth Planning: cities beyond the market economy. Routledge, 159-172. 

Spanier, J., Guerrero Lara, L., Feola, G., 2024. A one-sided love affair? On the potential for a coalition between degrowth and community-supported agriculture in Germany. Agriculture and Human Values 41, 25-45.

Further Publications: 

Pixová, M., Spanier, J., Guerrero Lara, L., Smessaert, J., Sandwell, K., Strenchock, L., Lehner, I., Feist, J., Reichelt, L. & Plank, C., 2025. Building solidarities and alliances between degrowth and food sovereignty movements. Journal of Political Ecology 32(1).

Guerrero Lara, L., van Oers, L., Smessaert, J., Spanier, J., Raj, G., Feola, G., (in press). Degrowth and Agri-Food Systems: A Research Agenda for the Critical Social Sciences. Sustainability Science, DOI: 10.1007/s11625-022-01276-y

Feola, G., Guerrero Lara, L., Smessaert, J. Spanier, J. 2020. Book Review: The Case for Degrowth. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 37: 381-382.