Description:
As custodians of tradition, entrusted with the mission of ensuring the continuing
survival of memorial areas and the permanence of social and productive relations,
rural areas and farming activities occupy a special place in the imaginations of
European citizens. Nevertheless, rural specialists have long stressed that the
changes that affect contemporary economies and societies also run through these
spaces and contribute to their evolution, sometimes in a radical way (Cloke et al.
2006; van der Ploeg et al. 2000).
The transformation of farming methods, the mutations in the agrifood industries
and their links with distribution, the demographic repopulation of rural areas and
the new activities taking place there, the demand for nature and protected areas, the
increasing role played by agricultural activities in sustainable development: these
are all changes a reality of which nobody today disputes. The socio-economic
upheavals in rural zones and changes in people’s conception of the countryside
and of nature are a subject of consensus for sociologists and economists, as well as
for specialists in town and country planning. All agree on the need to reconsider the
place of rural areas, to rethink their dynamics and to ponder their metamorphoses,
their future and the role they play in contemporary society