The long evolution of the rural-urban relationship: beyond a normative approach to rural development

Abstract

Underlying the emergence of what is conventionally called “the new rurality”, there is a shift in the social context and in the quality of the articulation between its three defining and fundamental dimensions: rural-urban relations, proximity to nature, and interpersonal ties. The broader implications of this change are, on the one hand, the erosion of the agrarian paradigm that supported the prevailing views of the rural throughout the last century and, on the other hand, the intensification of a long-term, heterogeneous process of rationalization of rural life. A long this process, instead of disappearing, the rural becomes wholy integrated into the wider dynamics of development process, both by means of the unification of different markets (for labor, products and services, and symbolics goods) and by the creation of institutions that regulate the forms of social use of these spaces, which today amalgamate interests whose social bearers are originate in non-rural spheres.