Rethinking European Rural Development policy: taking stock of local collective experiences and theory

Important dates

Submission of abstracts (max. 300 words): 1st of November
Notification of acceptance: 4th of November
Confirmation of attendance: 11th of November
Final program: 15th of November

Background

European rural regions are vulnerable to new socio-demographic and environmental problems, including depopulation, climate change, or an often-unjust corporate food system. To confront such vulnerability, some rural stakeholders have begun to experiment with new, transformative development initiatives that could simultaneously reduce socio-environmental risks and empower the most marginalized social groups whilst advancing more sustainable ways of interacting with nature. These new initiatives vary and range from community-based-agroecological production and marketing ventures to cultural and landscape revitalization projects.

The momentum of these new initiatives parallels the evolution of European rural development and common agriculture policies, which have evolved from a narrow understanding of development in economic terms (e.g. productivity and efficiency) to a broader attention to both economic as well as social inclusiveness and environmental matters (e.g. ecological sustainability and social equity) and a promotion of local community agency. Such shift is visible in the progressive greening of farmer subsidies and their conditioning to social cooperation, new support to so called farmer operational groups and rural development public-private partnerships, or the LEADER program and its bottom-up participatory approach to development planning.

Workshop goals

The aim of this workshop is to take stock of these emerging policies and initiatives, and to interrogate their effectiveness and ability to produce public goods at different scales, as well as to value and promote local knowledges. We welcome analyses of rural development challenges and opportunities in the context of the agriculture, irrigation, tourism, forestry or other sectors across the EU or in specific EU countries, and particularly contributions focused on the interface between policy, local collective action and sustainability (i.e., resilience, vulnerability and transformation).

Specifically, we welcome (but will not be limited to) papers on topics such as:

• Grassroot innovation movements, their emergence, scaling out and up and interaction with European and national policies.
• Local collective agency to mitigate the impacts of climate change, depopulation, the global corporate regime and other socio-environmental drivers of rural vulnerability.
• The role of irrigation associations, farmer unions and cooperatives in sustainability transformations.
• Bright spots and blind spots of collaborative agro-environmental schemes, operational groups (Common Agricultural Policy), local action groups (LEADER), landscape partnerships, and similar.
• Opportunities and challenges of top-down (e.g. European policy) promotion of local collective action in the context of, e.g., agricultural innovation, conservation, and rural development.

The contributions can come from any field of knowledge across the social and socio-environmental sciences: from institutional and ecological economics to agrarian studies political ecology and rural sociology, among others.

Preliminary framework of the group to be co-developed during the workshop.

The goal of the workshop is to work on a joint research proposal and/or special issue on the topic to be published in e.g., Sociologia Ruralis, The Journal of Peasant Studies or similar.

Organization

Submit your abstracts to: luisamaria.sanjuan@uab.cat
Venue: ICTA-UAB Building, UAB Campus, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona
Registration fee: none
The organization will provide coffee and lunch catering services during the workshop
The organization will allocate three 350-Euro grants to support the attendance of early career researchers and/or researchers without institutional/project funding.

Those interested, please indicate so in the abstract so the organization can contact you to assess the case.

The grants will be allocated based on competence and need.