Preliminary Programme

Within the broader picture of the history of education during Italy’s Liberal era, the theme of agricultural education has been given a certain amount of attention at the secondary and university level, however, it has not been adequately explored at the primary level. This paper aims at investigating the dissemination of agricultural education in Italian primary schools between the unification of the country in 1861 and the First World War within a wide perspective, analysing on one side the positive impact of social, cultural and institutional changes and economic developments on the transmission of agricultural knowledge for children. Increasing importance seems indeed to have been given to agricultural education in primary schools during the economic crisis of the 1880s – as it happened in other European countries – when the expansion of this provision was thought to be among the factors that might help to foster an improvement of the national agricultural sector. Also the cultural transformation in act during that period (pedagogical positivism, in particular) played a key role in determining a sort of turning point of the agricultural education expansion process.
We will also investigate the factors responsible for the negative trend of this phenomenon during the last decade of the century, when initially efforts to encourage agricultural awareness by the ruling classes seemed to reverse, with the return to a conservative vision in ministerial policy on primary school education and a consequent decrease in the public funding supporting this sector. The paper will examine how these ‘context factors’ were taken into account by the legislator and by the government, what were the policies adopted by the two Ministries involved in the agricultural education – the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, and The Ministry of Public Education – what effectiveness they achieved and what were the main hindrances to the concrete implementation of educational policies that emerged during that phase. In particular, to what extent local institutions were influenced by national policy on this issue, and how they act autonomously, interacting also with private stakeholders. A special focus will be on the educational institutions in charge of training primary schools teachers, which had a fundamental role in the agricultural education process. (Show less)

There is a long history of research into many aspects of the history of mass education education systems. However, those involved in schooling (e.g. teachers, children, parents) have traditionally remained invisible in research.
In the international literature, there has been a rise in research exploring the history of teachers as a social group in recent decades In the last few years, the social history approach has been strengthened, and topics such as the material reality of teachers, teachers' backgrounds, and teachers' earnings and living conditions have become the focus of international literature (Westberg, 2019).
Although, the history of their training or professionalisation has been thoroughly explored, the above statements are also true for Hungarian elementary teachers. Drawing on previous international and Hungarian studies (Nóbik, 2017), my research contributes to a better understanding of the social history of late 19th century elementary teachers.
In my research, I investigated the presence and activity of elementary teachers in the 1887-1897 volumes of the beekeeping journal Beekeeping Gazette. As the bi-weekly journal of the Transylvanian Beekeepers' Association, it was one of the most important periodicals in the country and played an important role in the professional life of beekeepers' associations in Transylvania. The journal can be found in several online databases, where I have searched by keywords to find items related to elementary teachers.
The relationship between the teaching profession and beekeeping is well known, but has not been systematically researched, and the research to date has used pedagogical journals as a source. However, the present research confirms the preliminary hypothesis that a large number of teachers who played an active role in the dissemination of beekeeping are to be found among the authors of the beekeeping journals. Several types of publications testify to the role of the elementary teachers in the field of beekeeping. The journal regularly reported on the activities of beekeepers' associations and the teachers who participated in them. Some of the publications explicitly addressed the (possible) role of the teachers in the promotion of beekeeping. The advertisements also provide information about teachers who are entering the field of beekeeping or are about to enter the market.
The previous research mentioned above (Nóbik, 2017) has pointed out that the role of teachers as educational experts and beekeeping experts is sharply separated in pedagogical journals. This can also be observed in the Beekeeping Journal, since - and this can be explained more strongly by the profile of this journal - the publications written by teachers are dominated by those related to the technical aspects of beekeeping.
The research contributes to a better understanding of the (social) history of the late 19th century elementary teachers, especially their income and livelihood conditions.

Nóbik, A. (2017). Nem szakmai tartalmak megjelenése a Néptanítók Lapjában (1868–1892). In Új kutatások a neveléstudományokban 2016 (pp. 325–343).
Westberg, J. (2018). How did teachers make a living? The teacher occupation, livelihood diversification and the rise of mass schooling in nineteenth-century Sweden. History Of Education, 48(1), 19-40. doi: 10.1080/0046760x.2018.1514660 (Show less)

After World War Two, soybeans played a crucial role in the Western Nutrition Transition as animal feed of the expanding meat industry and as vegetable oil in human nutrition. However, before they became a globally traded cash crop and an inherent part of the agro-food regime, soybeans were a niche product. To better understand soy’s rise to success, the paper adopts the Multi-Level Perspective ¬-(regime, niche and landscape level) on socio-technical transitions to examine niche-regime interactions and the formation of soy-centred networks on a (sub)national level in Austria. Hence, the central question of the paper is which actors and networks in production, distribution and consumption led to the rise of soy in Austria since the late 1960s. According to food regime theory, this period comprised the crisis of the ‘US-centered food regime’ and the (possible) transition to the ‘WTO-centered food regime’. At that time imports of soybeans took-off in Austria and domestic production was discussed as a solution to reduce import-dependency. By drawing on interviews with Austrian soy pioneers and conducting secondary data analysis, the paper offers an in-depth analysis of social interactions, practices and innovation processes that enabled soy to become part of the agro-food regime in Austria. The paper is an outcome of the research project “Soy and Agro-Food Transitions: Austria from a Multi-Level Perspective, 1870s-2020s” at the Department of Social and Economic History at the Johannes Kepler University Linz (financed by the Austrian Science Fund). (Show less)