Cultural Sustainability In Rural Communities

There has been a recent expansion of interest in cultural approaches to rural communities and to the economic and social situation of rurality more broadly. This interest has been particularly prominent in Australia in recent years, spurring the emergence of an interdisciplinary field called 'rural cultural studies'. This collection is framed by a large interdisciplinary research project that is part of that emergence, particularly focused on what the idea of 'cultural sustainability' might mean for understanding experiences of growth, decline, change and heritage in small Australian country towns. However, it extends beyond the initial parameters of that research, bringing together a range of senior and emerging Australian researchers who offer diverse approaches to rural culture. The essays collected here explore the diverse forms that rural cultural studies might take and how these intersect with other disciplinary approaches, offering a uniquely diverse but also careful account of life in country Australia. Yet, in its emphasis on the simultaneous specificity and cross-cultural recognisability of rural communities, this book also outlines a field of inquiry and a set of critical strategies that are more broadly applicable to thinking about the "rural" in the early twenty-first century. This book will be valuable reading for students and academics of Geography, History, Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Anthropology and Sociology, introducing rural cultural studies as a new dynamic and integrative discipline.

"Sustainability and the Civil Commons" moves beyond rural roots to build a comprehensive understanding of sustainability that combines global reach with local focus.

The rapidly changing nature of life in Canadian rural communities is more than a simple response to economic conditions. People living in rural places are part of a new social agenda characterized by transformation of livelihoods, landscapes, and social relations, inviting us to reconsider the meanings of community, culture, and citizenship. This volume presents the work of researchers from a variety of fields who explore social transformation in rural settlements across the country. The essays collectively generate a nuanced portrait of how local forms of action, adaptation, identity, and imagination are reshaping aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities of rural Canada.

Rural tourism represents a merging of perhaps two of the most influential yet contradictory features of modern life. Not only are the forces of economic, social, cultural, environmental and political change working to redefine rural spaces the world over, but broad global transformations in consumption and transportation patterns are reshaping leisure behaviour and travel. For those concerned with both the nature of change in rural areas and tourism development, the dynamics and impacts of integrating these two dramatic shifts are not well known but yet are becoming increasingly provocative discourses for study. This book links changes at the local, rural community level to broader, more structural considerations of globalization and allows for a deeper, more theoretically sophisticated consideration of the various forces and features of rural tourism development. While Canadian in content, the cases and discussions presented in this book can be considered generally relevant to any rural region, continentally and globally, that has undertaken or is considering rural tourism development.

This book examines the interaction of the dimensions of economy, society, and environment in the context of rural systems. It embraces a wide range of topics, including globalization and reregulation in sustainable food production, conservation and sustainability, the development of sustainable rural communities, and sustainable rural-urban interaction. It is relevant to advanced-level students, teachers, researchers, policymakers and agency workers.

In a neo-liberal era where society in the Developed World is reliant on mass-produced cheap foods, and living standards are based on high consumption of non-renewable energy and materials, this book investigates the growing significance of sustainable systems in rural areas. Drawing on a wide range of topical case studies, primarily in the UK, it provides an in-depth analysis of the progress made towards sustainability within rural systems, focusing specifically upon sustainable agriculture and sustainable rural communities. The authors provide an overview of the various systems of sustainability currently being applied in the Developed World. They highlight key environmental, economic and social issues, including post-productivism, 'alternative' food networks, organic farming, GM foods, conservation, rural development programmes, sustainable tourism, local training schemes and community participation. The various studies provide important lessons in the ongoing search for greater sustainability and suggest positive directions for future policy practice.

This book highlights the challenges and opportunities of (re)constructing a sustainable rural community on the outskirts of the urban community. Based on knowledge and experience accumulated through implementing a rural revitalisation project in Hong Kong since 2013, the book provides an in-depth analysis of a case study along with related concepts from the literature. In particular, the concept of rural resilience is broken down and used to examine how communities at the urban-rural interface can leverage their position and connections to (re)create vibrant sustainable communities. The revitalisation project was showcased in the databases of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s Equator Initiative and the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI) as well as achieving Special Recognition for Sustainable Development in the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation in 2020. This book teases out the key issues in the process of revitalising a rural community in the peri-urban context and examines the complexities embedded in each issue and how they can be addressed in the quest for rural sustainability.

Meeting the aims of sustainability is becoming increasingly difficult; at the same time, the call for culture is becoming more powerful. This book explores the relationships between culture, sustainability and regional change through the concept of ‘territorialisation’. This new concept describes the dynamics and processes in the context of regional development, driven by collective human agency that stretches beyond localities and marked-off regional boundaries. This book launches the concept of ‘territorialisation’ by exploring how the natural environment and culture are constitutive of each other. This concept allows us to study the characterisation of the natural assets of a place, the means by which the natural environment and culture interact, and how communities assign meaning to local assets, add functions and ascribe rules of how to use space. By highlighting the time-space dimension in the use and consumption of resources, territorialisation helps to frame the concept and grasp the meaning of sustainable regional development. Drawing on an international range of case studies, the book addresses both conceptual issues and practical applications of ‘territorialisation’ in a range of contexts, forms, and scales. The book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduates in sustainable development, environmental studies, and regional development and planning.