Introduction
Joost Jongerden is associate professor at Rural Sociology, Wageningen University, the Netherlands and project professor at the Asian Platform for Global Sustainability & Transcultural Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. He is also one of the founding member of Kurdish Studies. He studies the ways in which people develop alternatives to market- and state-induced insecurities. This he refers to as ‘Do-It-Yourself-Development'. His main geographic area focus is Turkey, Kurdistan and the Middle East. A list of his publications is available at https://joostjongerden.academia.edu/
Expert
‘Do-It-Yourself Development’ refers to people’s attempts to shape their own future. I developed the concept in relation to the wide range of practices through which people i) challenge inequalities and injustices and ii) create and maintain a ‘livable life’ under conditions of insecurities and uncertainties. This ‘Do-It-Yourself Development’ refers to both individual and collective attempts and is distinguished from state and market as order (future) making institutions. In my work I have a particular interest in the social dimensions of ‘Do-It-Yourself Development’ and the spatial network of activities and connections that actors create and operate in, their ‘social space’, as I term it. My aim is to build a group around ‘Do-It-Yourself Development’ and better understand the significance of self-organized (constituting) practices for addressing inequalities and injustices.
My research on ‘Do-It-Yourself Development’ was carved out in response to the interrelated questions how to address inequalities and injustices and a generalized state of insecurity and uncertainty, together referred to as ‘precarity’. This precarity is a key-concern in the social sciences in general (Bourdieu 1988, Laclau and Mouffe 2001, Bauman 2003, Butler 2015) and development studies in particular (Sachs 2010, Escobar 2018, Suliman and Weber 2018). One can distinguish between two perspectives regarding precarity’s occurrence in modern society:
1. Precarity is often discussed in relation to various dimensions of contemporary capitalism, such as increasing inequality in income and wealth distribution (Sassen 2010, Thernborn 2013, Sassen 2014, Phillips 2017) and vulnerability (Harvey 2001, Bauman 2003, Sassen 2014, Butler 2015). It has been argued that after a brief period in which income inequality decreased, we are back to the extreme inequality of the early 20th century, with growing numbers of people living at the margins (Sassen 2010).
2. Further to these, the state’s ordering of society, based on the idea of rational design and extensive prescriptions, can also function as a source of precarity. The effect of this state ordering can destabilize and disrupt what people consider to be existential identities (Gellner 1983, Lefebvre 1991: 43, Scott 1998, Scott 2009) and contribute to the proliferation of risk (Beck 1992, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2009), vulnerability (Butler 2015, Mbembe 2019) and harm (Ophir 2005, Biner 2020).
My ‘Do-It-Yourself Development’ research program focusses on the individual and collective practices through which people themselves are addressing precarity and try to ‘change the world that is changing them’ (Berman 1982: 16). Locating these practices in the context of daily lives, examples of this range from the peasant household taking advantage of job-opportunities in the city (to compensate for deteriorating farming produce prices) to city-dwellers maintaining backward links with their rural hinterland (as supports to help them deal with income insecurity in the city). However, these self-organized practices extend also to social and political movements building alternative economies and governance structures to address inequalities and injustices.
Broadly, my research on ‘Do-It-Yourself Development’ aims to address the problem of inequality and insecurity by highlighting the possibilities and potentials of alternative futures grounded in daily practices and present struggles. This ‘Do-It-Yourself Development’ is analytically distinguished from state and market as ordering institutions.
Fields of expertise: Agriculture and rural development, Inclusive social development / inclusive societies / social inclusion, Migration, Social change / social transformations