Transforming the Rural: Global Processes and Local Futures Vol: 24

The purpose of this volume is to offer a sustained analysis of how global restructuring is enacted through specific social processes and the constraints as well as forms of agency to which this gives rise across different dimensions of rural life and livelihoods.

In recent decades globalisation has transformed rural societies and economies across the world. Much has been written by social scientists about the key actors and structures behind these transformations, as well as the uneven social and economic consequences of global change for rural regions. More recently, attention has turned to the broad socio-material processes such as commodification and standardisation that constitute globalisation, the power relations that arise in and through those processes and the constraints as well as opportunities for local action. The dynamics of globalising processes, and their effects on particular social groups, organisations and industries, has been researched in some detail. However, there has been limited scrutiny of which processes are fundamental to contemporary rural change, how these work in practice to transform the rural and the constraints as well as opportunities for rural spaces, populations and livelihoods created by such processes.

The volume Transforming the Rural: Global Processes and Local Futures arises out of four sessions organised by the editors at the XIII World Congress of Rural Sociology held in Lisbon, Portugal, between 29 July and 4 August 2012.

This collection of 15 papers provides a critical overview of the main global processes underpinning rural change in the 21st century. This is achieved by the identification of four key themes and processes affecting rural change: Financialisation, Standardisation, Consumption and Commodification. In what follows we offer a glimpse of what is included in each section giving more detail on the contents of the chapters. All the chapters gathered in the volume explore a plurality of processes of rural change from a variety of countries, namely the United States, Canada, Australia, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Portugal.