Research project

The Sociology of Consumption and Households (SCH) Group and the Rural Sociology (RSO) Group at Wageningen University are looking for a post-graduate researcher (Early Stage Researchers - ESR) to carry out a research project on: The politics of care and defining the good life: elderly women's community food economies in rural Japan (see the detailed descriptions below). The candidate will be employed by Wageningen UR, but they will spend secondments for three months in other research institutions defined in the project descriptions (see below).

Project title: The politics of care and defining the good life: elderly women's community food economies in rural Japan

Objectives: Conditions in Japan, which foreshadow a likely scenario in Europe (depopulation, aging, food insecurity, declining rural agricultural, economic and social vitality), have sparked concerted efforts to empower senior rural women. These women have been active in entrepreneurship that involves significant natural resources management over the last decade. Today, more than 10,000 rural women's enterprises in Japan generate livelihoods that nourish them, their families and communities. The ESR will examine relationships between rural, particularly senior women's entrepreneurial and care practices toward humans and nature in rural Japan and explore the embodied meaning of good life through a feminist political ecology (FPE) lens. The focus will be on the everyday, embodied interdependencies among rural women entrepreneurs, consumers and nature, created through a community food economy. The ESR will use participatory action research, life histories and collaborative interviews.

Expected results: This project will make visible the gendered nature of a community food economy produced through rural elderly women's entrepreneurial and care practices in interconnected spaces illuminating the situated meanings of good life. The study will have particular relevance for European policy given Europe's accelerating rural depopulation, aging, and the globalisation of food chains.

Planned secondments: The University of Western Sydney (3 months) to work on community economies and Freie Universität Berlin (3 months) to do a comparative study on the politics of food.

Tasks:
The contract duration is 36 months, starting September 1, 2018. The ESR will be offered a contract for 18 months, which will be extended after a positive performance evaluation, with another 18 months. The ESR will be responsible for:

• performing research on the described topic based on a research proposal which will be assessed by the host institute;
• following the WEGO training programme;
• doing two secondments in the context of the research at academic partner organisations;
• participating in the WEGO meetings, co-organising specific activities; and
• contributing to communication and dissemination products for example by giving presentations, and making scientific findings accessible to field partners.

Formal eligibility criteria

• You are eligible as an Early-Stage Researcher (ESR) if you are, at the time of recruitment (i) in possession of a university degree, and (ii) have a maximum of four years of full-time research experience, including any period of research training. This is measured from the date when you obtained the degree which formally entitles you to embark on a doctorate, either in the country in which the degree was obtained or in the country in which the research training is provided. Selection is, thus, based on professional experience in research. ESRs should not be PhD holders.
• Applicants may be of any nationality.
• Because the Marie Curie schemes are designed to encourage researcher's mobility to improve career perspectives, a mobility criterion applies for recruitment: applicants cannot have spent more than 12 months in the Netherlands (work/study/living) in the 3 years immediately prior to the recruitment date of 1 September 2018. Short stays, such as holidays, are not included.

The applicant must:

• have good verbal and writing skills in English and be proficient in the relevant language for ESR project (i.e. Japanese).
• be highly motivated, have a personal commitment to the research project as a whole.
• have proven ability to work in a network and an aptitude to meet challenges.
• demonstrate an excellent understanding of feminist political ecology.
• have two - three years' experience of working/campaigning/studying in the field of social - environmental science.
• be an early career researcher with less than 4 years of research since graduation.

• A full time contract with a competitive salary for 36 months. The remuneration of the recruited ESR is based on a monthly payment made up of living allowances, family allowance and mobility expenses where applicable and according to MSCA Horizon 2020 requirements.
• Office space in a professional and stimulating environment.
• Family friendly working conditions.
• A potential to register for a doctoral degree if the recruited ESR shows sufficient progress after one year.

Wageningen University & Research

WU is part of Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR). Its mission is 'to explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life.' Its domain consists of three related core areas: food and food production; living environment; health, lifestyle and livelihood. About 6,500 staff members, 10,000 students and 1,900 PhD candidates from over 100 countries work everywhere around the world in the domain of healthy food and living environment for governments and the business community-at-large. Its strength lies in 1) its ability to join the forces in collaboration with specialised research institutes and 2) the combined efforts of the various fields of natural and social sciences. This union of expertise leads to scientific breakthroughs that can be put into practice and be incorporated into education. The scientific quality is affirmed by the prominent position we occupy in international rankings and citation indexes.

Description department/chair group
Chair group Sociology of Consumption and Households (SCH)
SCH aims to explain how household practices of consumption and care enable or impede health and sustainable development and to analyse how household practices are co-structured by situated economic, political and environmental circumstances. In both teaching and research we look at the connections between care and consumption within the household and processes and practices in other locations (including Global North and Global South) and at different spatial scales, including socio-economic disparities, state policies and transnational flows. We draw from a range of sociological theory and we apply quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research methods.

Chair group Rural Sociology (RSO)
RSO is teaching and researching on a range of topics linked to rurality, systems of food provisioning and place-based development. RSO focusses on the dynamics, driving forces and time-space differentiation of transformation processes, including changing urban-rural relations, and the impact of these transformation processes on the development of rural and metropolitan areas. The research approach is predominantly comparative and multidisciplinary of nature collaborating with social as well as life sciences. Stakeholder involvement has since long been basic to RSO research.

For further information about working at Wageningen UR, take a look at:
www.wageningenur.nl/en/Jobs.htm.

WEGO-programme
Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity (WEGO) is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Innovative Training Network (ITN), funded by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (click here) and coordinated by The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. WEGO-ITN's consortium is made up of scholar-activists working on feminist political ecology from ten institutions in five European Union countries: Germany, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom and eight institutions from six countries for training and secondments: Australia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Uruguay and USA. The objective of WEGO is to develop a shared research and training agenda in order to educate the next generation of interdisciplinary social-environmental scientists on feminist political ecology in Europe. WEGO-ITN offers an exciting opportunity in an emerging field of feminist political ecology research for 15 ESRs. ESRs can potentially acquire a PhD at the end of the programme.