Rurality

La investigación social apela frecuentemente a la noción rural, bien sea para delimitar el territorio objeto de estudio o para aludir a una forma de vida. El análisis de las distintas perspectivas que confluyen en la construcción de esta noción es el propósito de este artículo. Se acude para ello a las formulaciones realizadas por distintos autores respecto a las principales tendencias contemporáneas sobre la ruralidad: lo rural como signo de atraso, el continuum rural-urbano, la desruralización, la fusión urbano-rural, el reencuentro con la vida rural y la nueva ruralidad. Se presentan, asimismo, los indicadores oficiales utilizados en América Latina para medir la ruralidad o para referirse a ella en términos técnicos, sociales o políticos, así como algunas reflexiones sobre las relaciones entre estas mediciones y las perspectivas conceptuales analizadas. Finalmente, se plantea una serie de consideraciones, a manera de retos actuales, frente a la necesidad de construir re- conceptualizaciones y metodologías más potentes e incluyentes sobre lo rural.

Social research often appeals to the notion of rural, either to define the territory under study or to refer to a way of life. The analysis of the different perspectives that shape the construction of this notion is the purpose of this article. For that, it draws upon the formulations made by various authors on the main contemporary trends on the notion of rural: the rural as a sign of retrogress, the rural-urban continuum, the deruralization, the urban-rural merging, the reencounter with rural life and the new rurality. It presents, also, the official indicators used in Latin America to measure rurality or to refer to it in technical, social or political terms, as well as some thoughts about the relation between these measurements and the conceptual perspectives that were analyzed. Lastly, it presents a number of considerations, as current challenges facing the need to build more powerful and inclusive re-conceptualizations and methodologies of the rural.

This paper is concerned with bringing together and drawing out some diverse strands of thought and action that are striving-from within a broadly green anti-capitalist agenda-to produce a rural space that is different from and a challenge to the mainstream trajectories that the production of the rural is taking in the global North. First, I outline the main elements of a new model for thinking about rural space in general that tries to incorporate three different facets of 'space' that have been teased out through geographical scholarship. This draws inspiration from work by Henri Lefebvre. After demonstrating this model in respect of the post-1945 productivist rural, I introduce it to debates about the emerging contours of the post-productivist countryside. Drawing predominantly on British examples, the second half of the paper develops one element within the heterogeneous potentiality of this post-productivism to consider some key aspects of what I term an example of 'radical' rural spatiality. This examines its perceived localities, conceived formal representations and partially lived everyday lives. The final main section gives brief consideration to opportunities now being presented to this radical rurality but also notes the considerable challenges that lie ahead. r

This study examines the patterns and driving factors of identity change amongst residents of Chongdu Valley, China, who have been experiencing tourism development since the mid-1990s. Employing semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this study uncovered four types of identity change in the community: (1) a transition from notions of rural hardship to notions of rural amenity; (2) a corresponding transition from a sense of rural shame to a sense of rural pride; (3) an overall rise in community identity; and (4) rural identity became less ''rural. " Residents' identity changes can be attributed to three factors: shifted government policies, improved living standards, and host-guest interaction. The findings suggest that material changes brought by tourism development can impact residents' rural identity change.

Il y a plus de soixante ans, Sacha Guitry réalisait un film qui rencontra un immense succès, « Si Versailles m’était conté »… Nul doute qu’aujourd’hui, la fronde des « gilets jaunes » ferait le bonheur de son humour caustique. Sacha Guitry n’est plus là, mais rien n’empêche de s’en inspirer pour appréhender les conditions d’émergence de ce mouvement avec humour et causticité.
[More than sixty years ago, Sacha Guitry made a film that met with immense success, "If Versailles was told me"... No doubt that today, the sling of "yellow vests" would make the happiness of its caustic humor. Sacha Guitry is no longer there, but nothing prevents to be inspired to apprehend the conditions of emergence of this movement with humor and causticity]

En los umbrales del siglo XXI, con toda su complejidad, se hace necesario
repensar el papel desempeñado por las ciencias sociales; por la gran cantidad de acontecimientos socioculturales que lo significan, algunos
no son nuevos, otros son verdaderamente novedosos a los cuales hay
que enfrentar con nuevos recursos epistemológicos. La descomposición
y desintegración del orden social capitalista cada vez es más notoria, se
hace visible la pérdida de rumbo que ancle los intereses de los diversos
grupos sociales, un refugio, ante la situación prevaleciente lo representan
los estudios culturales. México es un país grandioso gracias a su diversidad cultural, durante largos siglos presenciamos el desmantelamiento de nuestra cultura ancestral por diversos motivos y razones, el resultado ha sido la pérdida de brújula que guie el sentir nacional. El naciente siglo representa la posibilidad de hacer posible el renacer principios que han mantenido y sustentado las viejas culturas, la modernidad con su tecnología y el desarrollo de sus medios de comunicación, y el mercado, han resuelto ciertos problemas,
pero, han agravado otros, sobre todo el abandono de principios y
valores humanos que han caracterizado a nuestra cultura desde tiempos
ancestrales...(Tomado de la introducción)

Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in a public school of largely migrant children in suburban Xiamen, south-east China, this article first looks into the formation of class lines between people with different backgrounds – migrant, urban or rural – against the suzhi jiaoyu programme of the school. This programme particularly targets the rural populace with a carefully and specifically selected curriculum and quantifiable techniques, in order to turn them into the self-individuated and homogenized subjects of China’s modernization project. However, this article also argues that the coercive concept of suzhi has revealed internal contradictions that render any attempt at consensus on what plural qualities constitute capital Q Quality self-contradictory and ultimately less productive. Lastly, it suggests that suzhi may be better understood as an ever-ongoing project of meaning making that aims to form a body of knowledge in China’s exploration of new paradigms of governance.

Building on more than ten years of ethnographic research in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article documents discourses and practices of civility as mutuality with limits. This mode of civility operates to regulate the field of socio-political inclusion in Bosnia-Herzegovina; it stretches to include self-described ''urbanites'' while, at the same time, it excludes ''rural others'' and ''rural others within.'' In order to illustrate the workings of civility as mutuality with limits, the focus is on interconnections and messy relationships between different aspects of civility: moral, political/civil, and socio-cultural. Furthermore, by using ethnography in the manner of theory, three assumptions present in theories of civility are challenged. First, there is an overwhelming association of civility with bourgeois urban space where civility is located in the city. However, the focus here is on how civility works in the context of Balkan and Bosnian semi-periphery, suspended between urbanity and rurality. Second, much literature on civility implies that people enter public spaces in ways that are unmarked. As is shown here, however, people's bodies always carry traces of histories of inequality. Third, scholarship on civility mainly takes the materiality of urban space for granted. By paying careful attention to what crumbling urban space looks and feels like, it is demonstrated how civility is often entangled with, experienced through and articulated via material things, such as ruins. These converging, historically shaped logics, geographies and materialities of (in)civility illustrate how civility works as an ''incomplete horizon'' of political entangle-ment, recognition and mutuality, thus producing layers of distinction and hierarchies of value, which place a limit on the prospects of democratic politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina and beyond.

The chapter focuses on how the rural tourism entrepreneurs create ‘sensescapes’, various environments and related activities, that provide a multitude of sensory experiences for tourists. Tourism entreprenerus are looked at as directors who stage sensescapes for their guests and thereby act both as directors of and performers in these environments. Focusing on three examples from contemporary Estonia – guided explorations of nature, tasting (local) food, and taking a sauna – the authors analyse, how the settings for these activities are designed and guidance performed. The chapter suggests that the way sensescapes are created and mediated in the context of rural tourism depends significantly on what sensory experiences are meaningful for the hosts, and how they situate these in their own way of life and relationship to the place. The focus on sensescapes emphasizes the rural tourism entrepreneurs as creative and reflexive individuals and cultural brokeres, who selectively shape the potential sensory experiences of the modern rurality.

In 2016, Italian production of wine exceeded 51 million hectolitres and among the twenty regions, the region with the most production by volume (millions of hectolitres) was the Veneto region, north-east of Italy, with almost 11 million. In particular, the success of Prosecco at the global level is the most important driving factor at both the economic and productivity levels. The worldwide success of Prosecco wine entails a remarkable change in both the local and regional configuration of agrarian landscapes. Traditional winegrowing swiftly changed into an intensive monoculture with remarkable investments and the spread of new viticulture entrepreneurships. The discussion proposed here intends to investigate the process of heritage construction or ‘heritagisation’, UNESCO candidacy, as an important issue for rural tourism promotion in the context of a productive winescape.
We concentrated our analysis on the DOCG area, a complex space where several forces need to coexist; the productive drive of growing requests (global and local) of Prosecco, as well as rural representation based on local habits and a concrete hilly landscape. Rural tourism is clearly an important sector in terms of revenue and employment, especially for local communities, and it can help to ensure economic stability; however, doing so in a way that benefits the area and the landscape is not so straightforward. There are potential problems in facilitating increased urbanization, such as the standardization of landscape and damage to the area if plans are mismanaged. In the case of best practices, a desirable model of tourism can be tapped into while helping rural regions take advantage of more sustainable tourism development and landscape management.

A publicação apresenta ao governo e à sociedade brasileira os produtos da primeira fase do projeto consubstanciados, sendo dividida em: introdução, na qual se descreve e analisa todo o processo de elaboração do projeto e seus principais resultados, e outras três partes: Parte 1 -Tipologias de ruralidades em agências multilaterais e organismos internacionais selecionados; Parte 2 -Concepções de ruralidade e políticas públicas na América Latina e na Europa: análise comparativa de países selecionados; e Parte 3 -A singularidade do rural brasileiro: implicações para as tipologias territoriais e a elaboração de políticas públicas.

This paper is concerned with bringing together and drawing out some diverse strands of thought and action that are striving-from within a broadly green anti-capitalist agenda-to produce a rural space that is different from and a challenge to the mainstream trajectories that the production of the rural is taking in the global North. First, I outline the main elements of a new model for thinking about rural space in general that tries to incorporate three different facets of 'space' that have been teased out through geographical scholarship. This draws inspiration from work by Henri Lefebvre. After demonstrating this model in respect of the post-1945 productivist rural, I introduce it to debates about the emerging contours of the post-productivist countryside. Drawing predominantly on British examples, the second half of the paper develops one element within the heterogeneous potentiality of this post-productivism to consider some key aspects of what I term an example of 'radical' rural spatiality. This examines its perceived localities, conceived formal representations and partially lived everyday lives. The final main section gives brief consideration to opportunities now being presented to this radical rurality but also notes the considerable challenges that lie ahead. r

Past research has demonstrated that island tourism is mainly developed along the coast, and that hinterland areas face inherent disadvantages in developing their tourism industry. Peripherality; rurality; limited infrastructure and facilities; and the increasing demand of international tourists for beach holidays have shown that the alternatives of hinterland areas for ‘touristisation’ and selfsustaining growth are limited. In effect, rural population tends to leave their birthplaces and migrate to the cities and the coastal resorts in the search for better life and employment opportunities. All the above issues reported in tourism literature are evident in Crete. Through a literature review and a statistical analysis it was found that in Crete there is an unequal distribution of tourist spending and accentuated regional imbalances with the vast majority of tourism activity concentrated on the coast and economic activity in the hinterland mainly directed to agriculture. Bearing all these in mind, it is the aim of this paper to study the development gap between the hinterland and the coast and provide recommendations for bridging this gap.

Keywords: development gap; coast; hinterland; rurality; tourism; Crete

We use mixed methods and first-hand household data in Mexico to investigate credit practices by households engaged in agricultural wage employment. Quantitative analysis shows evidence of rationing in the formal sector but also suggests the existence of mitigating mechanisms. Qualitative analysis provides additional insights. First, income patterns associated with agricultural wage generate income smoothing needs that are sometimes better met by the informal sector. Second, family networks can perform key functions as gateways to the formal sector, through specific informal arrangements that inject flexibility into formal rules and procedures.

Los paisajes del desarrollo han sido unas de las herramientas analíticas que nos han permitido evidenciar cómo, por medio de los discursos y las operaciones del desarrollo, se ha agenciado la producción social del espacio. En este contexto, el turismo en la naturaleza como práctica espacial ha servido como estrategia de localización de las operaciones del desarrollo, con la intención de insertar en condiciones de desigualdad a las localidades rurales en el mercado mundial de acumulación de capitales, a través de su sentido de lugar histórico/tradicional en la producción y el intercambio.

Por medio de la descripción del caso de San Sebastián de Palmitas, se verá a continuación cómo se ha venido produciendo un espacio turístico local desde la práctica del turismo en la naturaleza. Dentro de este proceso, se analizará cómo ese espacio turístico viene siendo actualmente producido desde un régimen espacial, el cual ha dispuesto una valoración (eco)turística hegemónica, generando una mirada totalizante sobre el espacio turístico.

Explorations of the cinematographic landscape sometimes neglect to examine the dramatic and generic uses of visualisations of space and place. This paper seeks to address this through an analysis of the cinematography of Sightseers (2012), directed by Ben Wheatley. The film uses distinctive aesthetic strategies in its depictions of rural landscapes for dramatic and affective purposes. For example, through restrictive framing visual information is withheld, and the unseen spaces beyond the borders of the frame both inform and detract from our understanding of the place and its implications; handheld camerawork evokes a sense of both uncertainty and exploration of the limits and possibilities of the landscape. Aesthetic approaches such as these are thematically and stylistically linked to the acts of wandering and exploration, both spatial and temporal. Entwining a distinctive cinematographic vision with themes of the rural, these films shape our understanding of countryside environments, and question the meaning of contemporary rural landscapes, both within cinema and the wider art world. These issues will be examined through a close textual analysis of the film, which focuses on its use of cinematography, and is supported by an interview with the director, Ben Wheatley. Alongside this, the paper will draw from and build upon major works of Martin Lefebvre and Andrew Higson, as well as related theoretical explorations of the cinematic landscape and its connections to other media (most commonly photography and painting), and its multiple social and cultural functions and ramifications, particularly as it concerns depictions of the rural realm.

Los procesos democráticos son cíclicos y para el caso argentino comienza la cuenta regresiva respecto a renovar a quien dirigirá aquel país del continente latinoamericano por los siguientes cuatro años. No obstante, es importante que los votantes realicen un proceso de reflexión que se sustente en tres preguntas relevantes, a saber: a) ¿Cómo estábamos antes de la administración que está por salir? b) ¿Qué hizo el actual presidente en su gestión? y c) ¿Cómo estamos ahora? Ya que con esas preguntas se podrá perfilar al menos desde el punto de vista ciudadano, las áreas prioritarias que deberán tomar en cuenta los contendientes en sus propuestas políticas si es que desean llegar a la Casa Rosada.
Bajo este contexto, es que el presente trabajo pone en análisis un área
considerada importante no sólo en el ámbito económico, sino
sociodemográfico y productivo: la ruralidad argentina, ya que el sector agropecuario, forestal y pesquero sigue representando no sólo actividades fundantes en una economía (particularmente una latinoamericana), sino un conjunto de prácticas y saberes colectivos que se producen y transforman por las intervenciones a veces tecnológicas, a veces políticas que el Estado realiza. En este sentido, se abordan los elementos más relevantes en tanto, crecimiento poblacional, producción y exportación para generar lineamientos básicos para consolidar una política pública que innove y desarrolle un sector que cada día se resiste a sucumbir ante la mirada urbana.

This paper concentrates on the creation of value(s) by rural tourism entrepreneurs via intangible and atmospheric natural resources, the aural environment. The creation of value is analysed with regard to how the rural tourism entrepreneurs facilitate and mediate the aural environment of their farms to their guests and how by doing so the notions of rurality and rural environment are constantly (re)created and (re)negotiated. The paper concentrates on the notion of ‘silence’ which the tourism farmers regard as one of the most valuable qualities of their environments and shows how the personal experience of the host is one of the most important aspects when creating and mediating the experience for the visitors. The paper begins with a theoretic discussion of the idea of rural idyll, after which the research background is described with a brief overview of the Estonian rural context and the description of the methodology and empirical data of the article. This is followed by the analysis of the gathered data which is divided into two main topics: the creation of value by the tourism entrepreneurs when constructing the rural sound idyll and the question of competing values in the rural tourism context.

Resumen:
Las Tecnologías de la Información y la comunicación (TIC) son un medio para reducir la brecha social y digital existente entre la población urbana y rural. El presente artículo muestra los resultados del proceso de formación de los maestros en los programas INTEL, A Que te Cojo Ratón (AQTCR) y Entre Pares, como alternativas digitales y pedagógicas de mejoramiento de los modelos de educación flexible implementados en el sector rural colombiano, a través del convenio firmado entre el Ministerio de Educación Nacional (MEN), la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira (UTP) y el Proyecto de Educación Rural (PER).

Abstract:
The information and communication technologies are a means to reduce the social and digital gap that exists between urban and rural population. This article shows the results training process of the teachers in programs INTEL, A Que Te Cojo Ratón and Entre Pares, how digital and pedagogy alternatives to improve flexible education´s models that they are in the rural Colombia´s sector, through of convenium signed between the National Education Minister (NEM), Tecnological University Pereira (TUP) and Rural Education Project (REP).

In this paper I demonstrate how an attention to rural queerness offers a beneficial and necessary opportunity to examine queer subjectivies through the lens of space, place, and class. I highlight how individuals' claims to queerness can actually be embeddd within identifications with class and place. I demonstrate how identifications with place are illustrative of a broader coneption of rurality, an often-ignored yet immensely pervasive thread of identity, which, governed by familiarity, familial affiliation, and community participation, can actually provide rural queer individuals with a means of both acceptance and queer expression alternative to dominant models. I illustrate how rurality is not only absent from hegemonic urban conceptualizations of queer visibility, but is actually incompatible with the basic tenets of mainstream urban queer visibility politics. Rurality thus provides a compelling vehicle of critique and alternative envisioning for contemporary queer politics and subjectivities.

Historically rooted in cities, GLBT identities and communities
have been mapped onto a narrative of rural-to-urban migration.
Often represented as homophobic, rural space is valued insofar
as it is left behind. !is article posits rurality as an often-ignored
yet pervasive thread of identity, which is absent from hegemonic
conceptualizations of queer visibility. While urban queer visibil-
ity politics center on the di"erent-but-equal paradigm, I argue
that rural queer visibility politics involve a delicate balance of
queerness and localness, putting forth an approach of di"erent-
but-similar. !e construction of GLBT identities in non-urban
contexts may therefore complicate dominant conceptions of the
closet model.

El libro “Reflexiones regionales sobre el desarrollo sustentable en contextos interculturales” representa un aporte fresco y aleccionador para la comprensión de las realidades y problemáticas socioambientales que emergen en diferentes regiones de México.
Éste es un producto colectivo resultado de un largo proceso de
discusión y debate del cuerpo académico “Estudios interdisciplinarios e interculturales sobre espacios regionales” de la Universidad Intercultural del Estado de Hidalgo (UICEH), lo que ha implicado conjuntar miradas diversas y multidisciplinarias sobre un objetivo común de investigación.

On June 23rd, 2014 Reverend Charles Moore drove his car to a nearly empty parking lot, doused himself in gasoline, and committed self-immolation in the small town of Grand Saline, my hometown in East Texas. Leaving a note on his windshield claiming that when he was young he heard racist stories of the town, he recited an old memory for his local audience: “Uncle Billy…cheerily [told] us about helping to kill ‘niggers’ and put their heads on a pole...[in] ‘pole town.’” Growing up in this town, I heard similar racist “histories” about Pole Town and other spots too: a “secret” meeting spot existing for the KKK at Clark’s Ferry (right outside of town) and previous signs at the city limits acknowledging Grand Saline as a “sundown town.” In my essay, I explore how these racist folklores and urban legends compose my hometown’s identity by formulating a public memory for consumption, one that produces a racialized climate for residents. Utilizing theories on public memory (Phillips, Vivian, Casey) and rituals (Feuchtwang), I will demonstrate that the racist stories of my childhood, the stories that haunted Reverend Moore and myself, construct a 21st-century racism that relies on the rhetorical use of memorization and repetition as a type of ritual to remain in power. Interviewing old friends, former teachers, and other town members, I will recite this folklore with them, leading me to investigate how these stories fostered a more progressive stance on race for me and altered my hometown’s image as being “safe” as well. Overall, by exploring specific sites of public memory and urban legends, I will compose a dual meaning of place for myself and other townsfolk in this small salt mine town in East Texas: a literal place for home and a figural place for the legacy of racism.

L’urbanisation s’est déployée en France sous l’effet de plusieurs facteurs depuis le début de l’ère industrielle. Toutefois, depuis la fin du XXe siècle, ce processus apparaît en stagnation, voire en déclin selon le concept utilisé d’unité urbaine. Or ce concept su-révaluent l’urbanisation et donc sous-évalue la ruralité.
[Urbanization has been spreading in France due to several factors since the beginning of the industrial era. However, since the end of the 20th century, this process appears to be stagnating or even declining according to the concept of urban unity. But this concept overlooks urbanization and thus underestimates rurality.]

Becca Cragin, Advisor Diana Inosanto reimagines the 1980s AIDS epidemic in her film, The Sensei (2008) and implements cultural issues on rurality, sexuality, and tolerance within the overall narrative structure. Finding it important to use the works of Rick Altman, John G. Cawelti, and Fredric Jameson, I theorize how postmodernism affects film genres and their evolution through pastiche and historical events. Within this genre cycle, The Sensei fits into several other film genre types that include the queer film, AIDS film, and martial arts film. Drawing from the works of Richard Dyer, B. Ruby Rich, Kylo-Patrick Hart, and David West, I place The Sensei into each category to develop thoughts on how hybrid genres work into film creation. Analyzing the works on myths of the small town and rurality, assumptions about queer migration, and stigmatizations about AIDS, I attempt to disprove these myths and assumptions through the works of Bud W. Jerke, Judith Halberstam, Michael Kennedy, and Emily Kazyak. My overall goal is to project social awareness about queer cultural geography, issues with AIDS in rural areas, and the vitalization of anti-bullying issues that have saturated our media landscape within the last two decades using Inosanto's The Sensei as a vehicle to evoke thought. iv! ! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I'd like to thank and show respect to Dr. Becca Cragin for her never ending encouragement offered toward me to finish this project and pointing me in the right direction toward queer studies; Dr. Jeffrey A. Brown for making me feel more comfortable with the topics of sexuality and sexual identity through his undergraduate classes and graduate seminars; and Dr.

Site/Seal/Gesture is a collaboration between cultural geographer Rupert Griffiths and archaeologist Lia Wei. This collaboration develops a shared language of fieldwork, process and making. Working together as artists and from our disciplinary perspectives, we deal with two distinct types of site, one in the UK, the other in China.
In the UK we look at the ruins of defensive architectures, such as sound mirrors and bunkers, on the Thames Estuary and South East Coast. In Southwest China we look at ancient rock cut tombs, set high in cliff face, sometimes reached by expanding urbanisation. We correlate these sites by considering them as both monuments and dwellings in rural margins. We see the bunkers and the rock cut burial sites as proto‐dwellings, drawing a line between life and death, with bunkers protecting the living from
death and rock cut tombs separating the living and the dead. Both use the material monumentality of rock or concrete to do so, whilst set precariously at the physical and psychological margins of the host culture, and between land and sea, wilderness and settlement, living and non‐living.
As geographers and archaeologists our aim is to investigate correspondences between materiality, landscape and the human subject, and to develop and extend approaches to ethnographic and autoethnographic fieldwork. As artists our aim is explore the process by which cosmologies emerge, developing our own microcosmology that synthesises an assemblage of bodies, materials, atmospheres, tools, technologies, agents and actants, both human and non‐human. Through our encounters with the landscape and the material artefacts, diagrams, traces and inscriptions we produce, trajectories are created between living and non‐living. We approach this as a reverse archaeology that sketches the original process by which meaning emerges rather than recreating a
culture from material relics.

The article is focused on the introduction and categorization of various approaches to rurality, and
the identification and delimitation of rural areas in Visegrad countries. Three substantively different groups of
conceptualizations and definitions of rural and rurality are described as follows: functional definitions, rural as
locality (political-economic approaches), and social representation. Latter, basic sorts of methods and approaches
to the delimitation of rural areas in V4 countries are introduced emphasizing its historical development,
differences in spatial level and criteria of delimitation in current research. Due to different nature of rural areas
and even local administrative units (the basic units usually used for delimitation of rural areas), it is not possible
to reach sufficient and reliable identification of rural areas for whole V4 area using any of criteria or definitions
applied in the research at national levels. Therefore, the average population density of entire V4 area was used
as a main criterion for distinguishing between urban and rural LAU 2 at the whole Visegrad area level. Such
approach is also affected by generalization but it captures various conditions in each country relatively well and
moreover, it is comparable with the OECD and European Union methods to some extent.

Culture is the main determining factor of dynamic changes in the ecological-territorial systems. Agriculture, rurality and landscape are basic concepts handling the study of said systems. Agriculture is conceptualized as the relationship between human beings and nature based on the degree of artificialization. According to the definition of agricultural problems and phenomena, the ontological and epistemological approaches of nature artificialization, resource management and cultural landscape construction change. The urban, rural and wildland are proposed as territorial typologies, and polis, ager and saltus as territorial components.

Deep cultural changes are as necessary as the change in paradigm to generate operative statements related with sustainable development. The emerging schools of thought, associated with the complex and transdisciplinary approach to life quality and existing sustainable development, from a theoretic-conceptual basis, and taking into account the cultural landscape from a holistic, systemic and constructive approach are trying to integrally incorporate the various dimensions of development and life quality.

Central concepts for sustainable cultural landscape construction, planning and design, are required to preserve governance in the cultural landscape. It is necessary to subordinate the hierarchical phenomenological limits and threshold from universal legality to construct sustainable cultural landscape adapted to our age. The concept of panarchy is fundamental for this orientation and consideration.

Advancing upon previous research, this study aims to develop knowledge upon the shaping of identity in homosexuals through the experience of rural to urban migration. Exploring theories of homosexual identity (Troiden, 1988), philosophy of space/place and the sexual being this study allows for an insight into the effects on identity due to homosexual migration.

Gerontologists have promoted positive representations of ageing to challenge stereotypes of degeneration and decline, in order to change social practices and to encourage wellbeing . Subsequently, a range of 'active ageing' policy frameworks, in which physical activity has been a key component, have been promoted (see British Heart Foundation, 2007a;. However, instead of promoting wellbeing in older age, the positive / successful ageing discourse has created, by default, binary subject positions which most older people largely embody: the "good", fit, slim, third ager and the "bad", sedentary, overweight, fourth ager. This is partly due to the unproblematic assumption that people are able, have the resources, and want to be physically active in later life . This thesis explores the experiences of physical activity amongst older people in rural West Sussex, examining the factors that affect their ability to be physically active, their preferences for physical activities and the reasons for their choices. A narrative inquiry was the chosen research design, triangulating focus groups, narrative interviews, activity diaries and re-interviews, using visual elicitation. Findings indicate that a number of corporeal, socio-cultural and discursive factors affect older people's ability to be physically active in rural West Sussex. Furthermore, this thesis makes a number of social policy recommendations, including the importance of promoting socially-centred physical activity, and tailoring health and wellbeing social policy in later life to the local area. Finally, the theoretical framework contributes to Frank"s (1991) theory of the body, by introducing a spatial component to understand corporeal identity.

Self-gifting is a performative process in which commodities purchased by an individual are ‘gifted’ to themselves. In negating the assumed necessity of transacting (but not necessarily witnessing) others, self-gifts challenge notions that gifting is minimally dyadic and characteristically results in enduring relationships of mutual reciprocity and obligation. Self-gifting shadows the post-industrial regimes of commodity economics and interpersonal gifting, casting the individual as an exemplary free agent and thus functioning as an illusio of ideal reflexive individuality. Tourists holidaying in Martinborough, a popular ‘wine village’, also indulged in self-gifting. Within the metro-rural idyll of a Martinborough holiday the tourists’ self-gifting was doubly idealised and expressed a nexus of middle class distinction, dialogic selfhood, and ideal reflexive individuality.

This chapter discusses the pattern of rural-to-rural migration to and from a rural fishing community called Hải Thành 1 in northern Vietnam. 2 I unpack this double migration pattern in order to illustrate the intimate relationship of mobility, social class and displacement. Hải Thành is famous in Vietnam as the community that has sent the largest percentage, nationwide, of its young women abroad in transnational marriages to foreign men in East Asia (transnational women). Hải Thành men are also well-known offshore fishermen who travel away 20 days per month and who, due to the transnational marriages of local women, have had to look for wives from other rural communities (translocal women). By comparing the gendered, racial and social elements of migration by translocal women with transnational women in this community, my chapter centres on how different kinds of movement become coded with specific kinds of class status and subjectivities. In order to accomplish this, I explore the diversity of rurality, within and between countries, which is often conflated in much scholarship as 'the rural'. I investigate how