Reviving Rural Europe

This book reflects on how the economies, social characteristics, ways of life and global relationships of rural areas of Europe have changed in recent years. This reveals a need to refresh the concepts we use to understand, measure and describe rural communities and their development potential. This book argues that Europe has 'outgrown' many of the stereotypes usually associated with it, with substantial implications for European Rural Policy. Rural structural change and its evolving geography are portrayed through regional typologies and the concept of the New Rural Economy. Demographic change, migration, business networks and agricultural restructuring are each explored in greater detail. Implications for equality and social exclusion, and recent developments in the field of governance are also considered. Despite being a subject of active debate, interventions in the fields of rural and regional development have failed to adapt to changing realities and have become increasingly polarized. This book argues that rural/regional policy needs to evolve in order to address the current complex reality, partially reformulating territorial or place-based approaches, and the New Rural Paradigm, following a set of principles termed ‘Rural Cohesion Policy’.

Instigated by technological and political change, Europe's rural areas have undergone profound and all-pervasive restructuring processes. Although the impact of these processes has often been depicted negatively, this is not always the case. Bringing together a range of comparative case studies from France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, the UK and other countries, this book provides a comprehensive and balanced picture of rural change over the past five decades. It explores which aspects of the European countryside have benefited and which have suffered as a consequence of the often contradictory forces of restructuring. The book looks into economic aspects as well as into the social impact of rural change. The final part examines regional issues and illustrates how different rural areas have responded to the transformative pressures.

This text is a presentation of the case for returning life to the countryside, restoring the rural economy and putting agriculture on a sustainable footing.

This book argues that the marginal upland regions of southern Europe are facing a growing agrarian crisis. Drawing on an extensive period of original field research in northern Portugal, a theory of crisis is put forward, which draws on recent advances in the fields of geography, rural sociology, and development studies. In an in-depth analysis of the Serra do Alvao, the importance of external political economic factors are highlighted. It is argued that traditional agriculture systems have been undermined, and farmers marginalized, without creating the conditions for restructuring and more efficient production. A strategy for economic growth which prioritizes increases in productivity is rejected, in favour of a more flexible approach to development.

This volume of essays examines one of the crucial periods in the evolution of the European rural economy and society, assessing the effects of the Second World War on the European countryside, and the impact of food and agricultural problems on the outcome of the war.

This book examines the interaction - at national and international level - of the economic, political and social change processes within Europe that are bringing about fundamental transformations in rural areas. Although such changes are experienced at a local level, they are heavily imbued with a national tone, given that European nations possess distinctive visions of their rural areas. These rural identities set limits within which economic, political and social agents can act. Yet these limits are constantly being subjected to strain, particularly with the globalization of economic activity and the strengthening impetus for integrated EC policies.

How, if possible, to re-populate declining rural and regional areas? Examining this crucial and complex issue in relation to Australia, this book explores how a particular organization, 'Country Week', has emerged and developed as one means of stimulating the repopulation of declining or stagnating areas. While this is a problem shared by many other developed countries in Europe and North America, Australia's 'Country Week' programme puts forward an innovative range of place-marketing strategies that challenge rural decline and urban migration and can offer new approaches which could be adopted more widely.