havent they Always been `at the crossroads`?
D

>>> "Little, Jo" <[log in to unmask]> 06/18/08 11:26 AM >>>
Those with 'rural' interests may like to know about the following.  Apologies as
usual for cross posting.
Cheers
Jo
 
 
 
 
 
CALL FOR WORKING GROUPS
 
XXIII Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology
17-21 August 2009 in Vaasa, Finland
RE-INVENTING THE RURAL: BETWEEN THE SOCIAL AND THE NATURAL
 
Rural areas and people in Europe stand at a crossroads, caught between global
and local flows and processes. The ESRS Congress will address this critical
moment through the following five key themes: 
 
1. Mobilities and Stabilities in Rural Space
2. The Rural Bites Back
3. Animal Farm 
4. The Sciences of the Rural 
5. Sustainable Ruralities
 
Those who are interested in organizing a working group should send their
proposal for a working group (not longer than 600 words) to the ESRS Scientific
Committee by Friday 25 September 2008. Please use the following email address
[log in to unmask]  
 
MEMBERS OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:
Philip Lowe, University of Newcastle, Chair of the Scientific Committee
Mary Cawley, National University of Ireland, Galway
Charalambos Kasimis, Agricultural University of Athens
Erland Eklund, Åbo Akademi University
Keith Halfacree, University of Wales, Swansea 
Marit Haugen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
 
FURTHER EXPLORATION OF THE FIVE THEMES:
 
1. MOBILITIES AND STABILITIES IN RURAL SPACE
Rural areas across Europe are experiencing extensive migration flows. EU
enlargement and the effects of the Single European Market are accelerating the
movement of workers between regions and countries. Small towns and rural areas
are attracting migrant labour, not just the cities. At the same time most rural
areas continue to lose many of their young people as they move to the cities for
higher education and employment. Much of the periphery of Europe - southern
Europe, Scandinavia, eastern-Europe - continues to experience net rural
depopulation: the outmigration of the young, the educated and the economically
active leaving behind declining and ageing communities. Other areas are
experiencing counterurbanisation as affluent middle-class people move in, in
search of the rural 'good life'. These forces of labour migration, depopulation
and counterurbanisation are differentially transforming the social structure and
culture of rural areas. The complexity of flows and contexts produces different
local patterns and outcomes: ranging from prosperous, buoyant places afflicted
by shortages of affordable housing and access to key services such as schools
and elderly care: to aging and debilitated communities reliant on external
support and transfers. To the local/newcomer dynamic may be added age-related,
ethnic, class and permanent/temporary residence divides. What are the effects on
social cohesion? What social risks and opportunities does migration bring, for
the migrants, their families (who do not always move) and for rural communities
both in 'delivering' and 'incoming' regions? How do different 'welfare models'
found throughout Europe respond to the challenges of migration? Do communities
and welfare services show different capacities to cope with and benefit from
migration flows?
 
2. THE RURAL BITES BACK
Much of the literature on the rural presents it as passive space without agency,
and even then in decline or retreat. But the rural has power, both as a
constituency and as a point of contradiction. While rural power, in the form of
some traditional constituencies (e.g. farmers' unions, the Common Agricultural
Policy, agricultural research institutions, the rural working class) may be in
relative decline, the power of the rural recurringly reasserts itself. Issues to
do with food production and with rural environmental protection preoccupy public
debate and popular concern. The rural is also the source of a great deal of
chaos and disorder, including occasional outbreaks of flooding, animal diseaand food scares. More recently, the power of the rural has been demonstrated in
the market place in huge hikes in commodity prices, dramatic increases in rural
land values and food riots around the world. These recent expressions of the
power of the rural provide new opportunities to re-assert or redefine rural
power.  For example, there has been the re-emergence of concerns about food
security and demands for a 'new productivism', as well as programmes for
bio-energy and more broadly the bio-economy. What have rural academics (whose
power may be waxing or waning) to say about this rural resurgence?
 
3. ANIMAL FARM
Rural areas are arenas in which the changing relationships between society and
nature play out in distinctive and mutually reconstitutive ways. The
relationships are material and moral ones (e.g. what to eat and how to care for
it); corporeal and imagined ones (the disassembling and marketing of animal
bodies versus visions of the rural gothic and enchanted creatures); or projects
that creatively mix the two, such as biosecurity, rewilding, or the introduction
of genetically modified organisms. Key sites for the performance of rural
society-nature relationships are farms, animal clinics, livestock markets,
abattoirs, laboratories, television and the cinema. The constant churn and
exchange of matter and ideas within and between these sites affords creative
opportunities and makes demands on the social sciences.  There is a need to
understand the innovative possibilities of such heterogeneous flows and
connections (e.g. the turn to quality in cultures of consumption). The lack of
fixity in the rural from this perspective suggests the need for ethical
explorations that are more empirical and situated than ideological.  Finally,
attention needs to be given to ontological politics: the struggles and
accommodations, the controversies, interferences and synergies, amongst the
multiple worlds being enacted in rural production spaces.
 
4. THE SCIENCES OF THE RURAL 
Rural research is diverse and often involves many disciplines, including
non-social sciences.  Within the social sciences one question that might be
considered is whether there is, can be or should be a specific rural sociology,
as opposed to an interdisciplinary rural studies which more fully acknowledges
the irreducible spatial, political and economic dimensions of rurality. The
challenges of land management in the current era of climate change mitigation
and adaptation surely require that an interdisciplinary rural studies extends
further into working with the natural and physical sciences. This will require
innovative methods for working together, for framing problems and for
integrating outputs.  Experiments in these areas are already underway across
Europe and North America.  Natural Scientists should not expect their own ways
of working to go unchanged and part of working with them must be studying their
practices and understanding the politics inherent in the knowledge they produce.
 In this process, insights from the field of Science and Technology Studies can
be of help, whether through practical intervention or simply through making
trouble. The rural social sciences have grown from applied roots in extension
services and production modernization programmes, although in recent years many
have stepped away from this heritage and introduced a much-needed critical
dimension from their wider disciplines. Has this move been at the expense of
distancing ourselves from the coalface?  In the context outlined above it
becomes all the more vital to understand the expertise and performativity of
rural social science: the politics it entails and the worlds it enacts through
its research.  Only through such inquiry can we bring the insights of new
critical approaches to bear on processes of social and technical change.
 
5. SUSTAINABLE RURALITIES 
Concerns around climate change have risen up the political agenda in recent
years, alongside growing recognition of the pressure on oil and gas supplies
during the transition to a 'post-carbon economy'. These global issues raise
important questions for the future of rural areas, which provide vital
environmental functions such as renewable energy generation, waste assimilation,
flood mitigation and carbon sequestration. How should rural land be used to
secure a sustainable future for the next generation? Where will energy crops be
grown, and should the planting of energy crops replace food crops? What can be
done to preserve and improve carbon storage systems in fragile peatlands for
example? Will much of temperate agriculture move north in Europe, and with what
wider consequences?
 
In debates around climate change and 'sustainable communities', rural areas are
often seen by policy-makers and planners as inherently unsustainable, and as
making a proportionately greater negative contribution to climate change per
household than urban areas, for example, through higher car ownership and usage.
Emphasis has been placed on concentrating housing and other development in
existing settlements, but is this at the risk of producing an increasingly
socially exclusive countryside? What implications do such policies have for
decisions by individuals in rural areas about where they live and work and how
they travel? Actors at local and regional levels have responded to these agendas
in myriad different ways. What factors shape the attitudes, motivations and
behaviours of individuals, businesses and communities in their responses to the
climate change agenda? What sources of expertise are being drawn upon in shaping
such responses, and how can communities and individuals be effectively consulted
and involved in decision-making processes? 
 

On the behalf of the Scientific Committee
 
 
Jo Little
Department of Geography
University of Exeter
Amory Building
Rennes Drive
Exeter
EX4 4RJ
 
01392 263351