Joost Dessein
Biographic Data
| ID | 102272 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joost Dessein |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joost |
| FAMILY NAME | Dessein |
| SIGNATURE | DESSEIN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6879-6269 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 257 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Endogenous innovation and change: Community agency in two case studies in Ghana
Agricultural innovations have often been framed within a narrow, modernist narrative of technological modernisation and yield improvements–economic targets that often do not take the needs and knowledges of local communities into account. We therefore propose to re-define the term as ‘endogenous innovation’ to emphasise community agency and epistemic empowerment, in analogy with endogenous development processes. We analyse case studies in Ghana i…
Land to the tiller? Agroecology and the blueprint of dispossession and resistance at the agricultural frontier in Argentina
Unpacking the role of non-state actors' discourses in enhancing climate justice in Uganda's extractive industries
Governance by satellite: Remote sensing, bureaucrats and agency in the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union
Increasingly, European member states are using remote sensing technologies to determine if farmers comply with measures of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Member states use satellite images, aerial photographs and geotagged pictures, and combine this with advanced algorithms and machine learning to determine if farmers comply with requirements that they have set out in their CAP strategic plans. Our research analyses the use of satellite im…
Urban food policy councils as politicized spaces: The case of Arusha, Tanzania
Science as a territory in dispute: An Analysis of Power and Paradigms in the Conceptualization of Agroecology
The people of Techiman eat Teporo: Migrant farming and epistemic pluralism in Forikrom, Ghana
The worry of the next meal: Food insecurity experiences of street-connected children in Ethiopia
Food insecurity is a growing global concern, with millions of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition every day. Street-connected children are disproportionately vulnerable to food insecurity due to their living conditions and social status. However, little is known about their food insecurity experience, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This study, therefore, aims to address this gap by examining the food insecurity experi…
Cyborg farmers: Embodied understandings of precision agriculture
Precision agriculture is often seen as disembodied and placeless, promised to either bring about a fourth agricultural revolution or as the start of dystopian rural futures, where farmers and their knowledge will be replaced by machines. A growing body of literature shows more nuanced ways of working with precision agriculture. This illustrates the need to investigate how, and under which conditions, precision agriculture is integrated and intern…
Understanding Integration Experience and Wellbeing of Economic-Asylum Seekers in Italy: The Case of Nigerian Immigrants
The literature on migrants’ integration and wellbeing is ample, but the case of economic-asylum seekers in a protracted asylum application system is yet to receive sufficient attention. The economic-asylum seekers are a unique group who migrate with an economic motive but apply for asylum to achieve economic integration in the host country. We use the aspiration-capability framework and a mixed-method approach: participant observation, focus grou…
Undoing the development army: A paradigm shift from transfer of technology to agricultural innovation system in Ethiopian extension
Between on-site and the clouds: Socio-cyber-physical assemblages in on-farm diversification
This paper sheds light on the integration of digitalisation in multifunctional and diversified agriculture. In this empirical work based on socio-cyber-physical assemblage thinking, first we found that on-site material and immaterial conditions like living on the farm, farm settings, and creative human work still matter and deserve more attention in responsible digital agriculture. Second, in our small sample we found that internet and cloud-comp…
We are not Drug Traffickers, We are Colombian Peasants’: The voices and history of cocaleros in the substitution programme of illicit crops in Colombia
Drugs and development policies lack a historical and political economy perspective. This has led to a situation where issues of everyday state-making and agrarian conflicts are ignored. Alternative frameworks that incorporate these elements do not go beyond mere procedural participation. This is also the case with Colombia's Comprehensive Plan for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (‘PNIS’), resulting from the recent 2016 peace agreement. Through …
Exploring approaches to equal and effective participation of governance actors in trans-local city food networks
Power relations in the co-creation of water policy in Bolivia: Beyond the tyranny of participation
Integrated water management is complex and requires the participation of diverse actors to identify and implement transformative solutions. However, power relations can obstruct the more inclusive and equitable experiences of participatory approaches, hence limiting the empowerment of vulnerable groups. It is thus important to study how power relations are influenced by people's interests, socio-political structures, and knowledge in the process …
Protectors or enablers? Untangling the roles of traditional authorities and local elites in foreign land grabs in Cameroon
Place‐embedded agency: Exploring knowledge–place connections for enabling plurality in governance of social–ecological systems
Including different forms of knowledges and views in decision‐making is crucial to managing the complexity of social–ecological systems (SES) in ways that are inclusive and embrace diversity. Sense of place scholarship can explain subjectivity in SES; however, it has hardly been considered together with the literature on knowledge processes, overlooking the epistemic dimension of sense of place and its potential to shed light on the roles and vie…
Eroding Traditional Ecological Knowledge. A Case Study in Bolivia
Constructing legitimacy for technologies developed in response to environmental regulation: The case of ammonia emission-reducing technology for the Flemish intensive livestock industry
This study is focused on unsustainable agri-food systems, especially intensive livestock farming and its resulting environmental harms. Specifically we focus on the development of technologies that seek to mitigate these environmental harms. These technologies are generally developed as incremental innovations in response to government regulation. Critics of these technological solutions allege that these developments legitimate unsustainable foo…
Relating inclusive innovations to Indigenous and local knowledge: A conceptual framework
City-to-city learning processes in the development of sustainable urban food systems: Insights from South American cities
Beyond institutional bricolage: An ‘intertwining approach’ to understanding the transition towards agroecology in Peru
Understanding farm generational renewal and its influencing factors in Europe
Understanding the complex process of generational renewal (GR) in agriculture is essential for supporting the continuation of farming. This paper demonstrates how multiple factors, simultaneously and through their mutual interactions, influence GR and related individual decision-making processes. Results originated from 155 in-depth interviews performed on 85 farms in eleven European regions, and were triangulated with the literature. Our analysi…
Digital transformation of agriculture and rural areas: A socio-cyber-physical system framework to support responsibilisation
Digital technologies are often seen as an opportunity to enable sustainable futures in agriculture and rural areas. However, this digital transformation process is not inherently good as it impacts on many aspects (e.g. economic, environmental, social, technological, institutional) and their relations. The responsible research and innovation approach calls for a better understanding and anticipation of the often unknown impacts. To meet this aim …
Governing food futures: Towards a ‘responsibility turn’ in food and agriculture
The economic potential of agroecology: Empirical evidence from Europe
Digital transformation of agriculture and rural areas: A socio-cyber-physical system framework to support responsibilisation
Digital technologies are often seen as an opportunity to enable sustainable futures in agriculture and rural areas. However, this digital transformation process is not inherently good as it impacts on many aspects (e.g. economic, environmental, social, technological, institutional) and their relations. The responsible research and innovation approach calls for a better understanding and anticipation of the often unknown impacts. To meet this aim …
Different farming styles behind the homogenous soy production in southern Brazil
Soy is often perceived as a typical example of a homogenous capitalist agricultural model that is responsible for ecological damage and social conflicts. But this monolithic perception of soy production can be challenged: more than 30 percent of the soy producers in Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) are family farmers. In this contribution, we study soy production, the soy producers and their institutional environment from an actor-oriented perspective.…
Politics of scale in urban agriculture governance: A transatlantic comparison of food policy councils
Taking context into account in urban agriculture governance: Case studies of Warsaw (Poland) and Ghent (Belgium)
This article explores the role of local particularism in relation to the global interest in urban agriculture (UA). A growing movement is advocating UA, but future prospects are limited by variability, unclear expectations, vague responsibilities and leadership in the UA movement. We wonder whether the poor understanding of UA governance is associated with a "public discourse and academic literature that too easily adopt the generic and universal…
Be like bees - the politics of mobilizing farmers for development in Tigray, Ethiopia
Based on long-term ethnographic research, this article analyses the relations between local politics and farmers' participation in rural development in Tigray (Ethiopia). It takes an actor-oriented approach and focuses on local government officials and farmer representatives, who mediate between the government agencies that undertake rural development programmes and the farmers whom they address. To reach the target numbers of programme beneficia…
I'm Sad To Be Glad'. An Analysis of Farmers' Pride in Flanders
It is widely acknowledged that agriculture in Europe is going through a process of great change at the economic, social, political, and environmental, as well as the cultural, level. Pride may be considered as the fit between the farmers' identity (and hence their expectations and aspirations) and the daily reality of being a farmer in this constantly changing environment. Based on qualitative interviews with farmers in three Flemish villages and…
Stakeholders perception of attitudes towards major landscape changes held by the public: The case of greenhouse clusters in Flanders
Understanding farm generational renewal and its influencing factors in Europe
Understanding the complex process of generational renewal (GR) in agriculture is essential for supporting the continuation of farming. This paper demonstrates how multiple factors, simultaneously and through their mutual interactions, influence GR and related individual decision-making processes. Results originated from 155 in-depth interviews performed on 85 farms in eleven European regions, and were triangulated with the literature. Our analysi…
Investigating the limits of multifunctional agriculture as the dominant frame for Green Care in agriculture in Flanders and the Netherlands
Social justice-oriented narratives in European urban food strategies: Bringing forward redistribution, recognition and representation
More and more cities develop urban food strategies (UFSs) to guide their efforts and practices towards more sustainable food systems. An emerging theme shaping these food policy endeavours, especially prominent in North and South America, concerns the enhancement of social justice within food systems. To operationalise this theme in a European urban food governance context we adopt Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional theory of justice: economic redi…
Using the rural web in dialogue with regional stakeholders
No region without individual catalysts? Exploring region formation processes in Flanders (Belgium)
This paper focuses on the process of region formation and its interrelation with agency and regional identity. The region formation processes of two regions in Flanders (Belgium) were analysed, using a framework assessing the institutionalisation of regions. Based on semi-structured interviews and policy documents, the analysis confirmed the usefulness of the concept of institutionalisation to understand and visualise the evolution and ongoing dy…
Prioritising land to be preserved for agriculture: A context-specific value tree
Governing food futures: Towards a ‘responsibility turn’ in food and agriculture
The organisation of complexity: A set of five components to organise the social interface of rural policy making
Exploring Synergies between Place Branding and Agricultural Landscape Management as a Rural Development Practice
This article explores the synergies between place branding and agricultural landscape management as a rural development practice. We hypothesise that place branding strategy can be used as a process to combat the homogenisation of regions and help to build networks and institutions that strengthen rural development. In order to explore these synergies an extended case study was undertaken in four Belgian regions that display major differences in …
Relating inclusive innovations to Indigenous and local knowledge: A conceptual framework
City-to-city learning processes in the development of sustainable urban food systems: Insights from South American cities
Governance by satellite: Remote sensing, bureaucrats and agency in the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union
Increasingly, European member states are using remote sensing technologies to determine if farmers comply with measures of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Member states use satellite images, aerial photographs and geotagged pictures, and combine this with advanced algorithms and machine learning to determine if farmers comply with requirements that they have set out in their CAP strategic plans. Our research analyses the use of satellite im…
Cyborg farmers: Embodied understandings of precision agriculture
Precision agriculture is often seen as disembodied and placeless, promised to either bring about a fourth agricultural revolution or as the start of dystopian rural futures, where farmers and their knowledge will be replaced by machines. A growing body of literature shows more nuanced ways of working with precision agriculture. This illustrates the need to investigate how, and under which conditions, precision agriculture is integrated and intern…
Between on-site and the clouds: Socio-cyber-physical assemblages in on-farm diversification
This paper sheds light on the integration of digitalisation in multifunctional and diversified agriculture. In this empirical work based on socio-cyber-physical assemblage thinking, first we found that on-site material and immaterial conditions like living on the farm, farm settings, and creative human work still matter and deserve more attention in responsible digital agriculture. Second, in our small sample we found that internet and cloud-comp…
We are not Drug Traffickers, We are Colombian Peasants’: The voices and history of cocaleros in the substitution programme of illicit crops in Colombia
Drugs and development policies lack a historical and political economy perspective. This has led to a situation where issues of everyday state-making and agrarian conflicts are ignored. Alternative frameworks that incorporate these elements do not go beyond mere procedural participation. This is also the case with Colombia's Comprehensive Plan for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (‘PNIS’), resulting from the recent 2016 peace agreement. Through …
Behind the Scenes of Place Branding: Unraveling the Selective Nature of Regional Branding
Processes of globalisation, internationalisation and rescaling of statehood have led to an increased competition between regions. Place branding has become one of the central concepts for promoting local competitiveness and for capturing significant mind and market share. It is a promotional strategy that includes all activities that increase the attractiveness of an area as a place for working, living and spending free time. Place branding invol…
Exploring approaches to equal and effective participation of governance actors in trans-local city food networks
I'm Sad To Be Glad'. An Analysis of Farmers' Pride in Flanders
It is widely acknowledged that agriculture in Europe is going through a process of great change at the economic, social, political, and environmental, as well as the cultural, level. Pride may be considered as the fit between the farmers' identity (and hence their expectations and aspirations) and the daily reality of being a farmer in this constantly changing environment. Based on qualitative interviews with farmers in three Flemish villages and…
Be like bees - the politics of mobilizing farmers for development in Tigray, Ethiopia
Based on long-term ethnographic research, this article analyses the relations between local politics and farmers' participation in rural development in Tigray (Ethiopia). It takes an actor-oriented approach and focuses on local government officials and farmer representatives, who mediate between the government agencies that undertake rural development programmes and the farmers whom they address. To reach the target numbers of programme beneficia…
Unravelling the dynamics of access to farmland in Tigray, Ethiopia: The ‘emerging land market’ revisited
Stakeholders perception of attitudes towards major landscape changes held by the public: The case of greenhouse clusters in Flanders
Prioritising land to be preserved for agriculture: A context-specific value tree
No region without individual catalysts? Exploring region formation processes in Flanders (Belgium)
This paper focuses on the process of region formation and its interrelation with agency and regional identity. The region formation processes of two regions in Flanders (Belgium) were analysed, using a framework assessing the institutionalisation of regions. Based on semi-structured interviews and policy documents, the analysis confirmed the usefulness of the concept of institutionalisation to understand and visualise the evolution and ongoing dy…
Exploring Synergies between Place Branding and Agricultural Landscape Management as a Rural Development Practice
This article explores the synergies between place branding and agricultural landscape management as a rural development practice. We hypothesise that place branding strategy can be used as a process to combat the homogenisation of regions and help to build networks and institutions that strengthen rural development. In order to explore these synergies an extended case study was undertaken in four Belgian regions that display major differences in …
Science–policy challenges for biodiversity, public health and urbanization: Examples from Belgium
Internationally, the importance of a coordinated effort to protect both biodiversity and public health is more and more recognized. These issues are often concentrated or particularly challenging in urban areas, and therefore on-going urbanization worldwide raises particular issues both for the conservation of living natural resources and for population health strategies. These challenges include significant difficulties associated with sustainab…
Perceptions of a small farming community on land use change and a changing countryside: A case-study from Flanders
In Flanders (Belgium), as throughout other parts of Europe, a decrease in the total number of full-time farms and a concentration of production in fewer and larger full-time farms can be recorded. Meanwhile, developments in other sectors in the economy, such as higher incomes, more free time and greater mobility, have increased demand for wildlife, landscape, leisure and outdoor recreation as an integral part of the countryside. These trends have…
Investigating the limits of multifunctional agriculture as the dominant frame for Green Care in agriculture in Flanders and the Netherlands
Using the rural web in dialogue with regional stakeholders
The organisation of complexity: A set of five components to organise the social interface of rural policy making
Understanding Relations between Science, Politics, and the Public: The Case of a GM Field Trial Controversy in Belgium
In 2011, a Belgian field trial with genetically modified crops triggered fierce public protests and debates. Opponents of the trial protested against its performance and some advocated its destruction, in response to which scientists and the government defended a scientific freedom to perform the trial. This article investigates why the different stakeholders came to occupy such mutually exclusive positions towards the trial. Based on analyses of…
Cultural Sustainability and Regional Development: Theories and Practices of Territorialisation
Behind the Scenes of Place Branding: Unraveling the Selective Nature of Regional Branding
Processes of globalisation, internationalisation and rescaling of statehood have led to an increased competition between regions. Place branding has become one of the central concepts for promoting local competitiveness and for capturing significant mind and market share. It is a promotional strategy that includes all activities that increase the attractiveness of an area as a place for working, living and spending free time. Place branding invol…
Culture-Sustainability Relation: Towards a Conceptual Framework
Several individual scholars and international organizations have attempted to conceptualize “culture” in its different meanings in sustainability. Despite those efforts, a tangle of different approaches are being used, reflecting the various disciplines and policy aims. In this paper we propose an interdisciplinary framework for identifying the different roles of culture in sustainability in an attempt to guide the research and policy activities …
When technology is more than instrumental: How ethical concerns in EU agriculture co-evolve with the development of GM crops
Taking context into account in urban agriculture governance: Case studies of Warsaw (Poland) and Ghent (Belgium)
This article explores the role of local particularism in relation to the global interest in urban agriculture (UA). A growing movement is advocating UA, but future prospects are limited by variability, unclear expectations, vague responsibilities and leadership in the UA movement. We wonder whether the poor understanding of UA governance is associated with a "public discourse and academic literature that too easily adopt the generic and universal…
Different farming styles behind the homogenous soy production in southern Brazil
Soy is often perceived as a typical example of a homogenous capitalist agricultural model that is responsible for ecological damage and social conflicts. But this monolithic perception of soy production can be challenged: more than 30 percent of the soy producers in Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) are family farmers. In this contribution, we study soy production, the soy producers and their institutional environment from an actor-oriented perspective.…
Using policy discourses to open up the conceptual space of farm education: Inspiration from a Belgian farm education network
Farm education organized by farmers and directed towards students and groups of citizens is a relatively new practice often considered as one specific business strategy to diversify farmers’ income. Although we endorse the importance of an economic rationale we argue that this conceptualization undermines a diversity of perspectives on educative processes that address societal transformation and the political role of intergroup and interpersonal …
Discursive Representation within the Institutional Void: The Rise and Fall of a Governance Network on Sustainable Food in Belgium
Recently, democratic theorists have turned their attention to political representation. This renewed attention is inspired by a questioning of the formalist interpretation of representative government that presumes a strict division between elected political elites and deliberative participation in the public sphere. Several scholars argue that the standard account of representative democracy based on residence-based and electoral representation …
Politics of scale in urban agriculture governance: A transatlantic comparison of food policy councils
The economic potential of agroecology: Empirical evidence from Europe
Social justice-oriented narratives in European urban food strategies: Bringing forward redistribution, recognition and representation
More and more cities develop urban food strategies (UFSs) to guide their efforts and practices towards more sustainable food systems. An emerging theme shaping these food policy endeavours, especially prominent in North and South America, concerns the enhancement of social justice within food systems. To operationalise this theme in a European urban food governance context we adopt Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional theory of justice: economic redi…
Beyond institutional bricolage: An ‘intertwining approach’ to understanding the transition towards agroecology in Peru
Political science (33 works) · Geography (32 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Agriculture (26 works) · Economics (21 works) · Business (17 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (14 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Ecology (13 works) · Law (13 works)