Rural Planning books

This edited book contains salient papers presented at the XII World Congress of Rural Sociology held in South Korea in 2008. These papers have been selected for their quality and have undergone a peer review process. The rationale behind this book rests on the desire to share the wealth of research presented at the World Congress with interested individuals who could not attend the event and it reflects the empirical work and thinking characterizing contemporary rural sociology. As this sociological sub-discipline evolves along with society and the rural world, it appears of paramount importance to make available ground-breaking research to the international scientific community. Rural sociology is changing and this volume testifies of this change by documenting the introduction of new themes of research as well as the evolution of established ones. In this regard, it provides a unique and uniquely international view of the most recent advanced production in rural sociology. The volume consists of eighteen chapters representing original pieces of research and an introduction that frames them in the context of the evolution of the discipline.

For many decades debates about the future of developed world agriculture policy have been dominated by a long political conflict between European/multifunctional policy regimes and the global trend towards trade liberalisation. The stalemate that had emerged between these two positions by 2000 has now been dramatically reconfigured. This book argues that there are four reasons why this area of policy has now reopened to wider debate: The World Food Crisis of 2008-2011 has signalled a potential end to the era of cheap food. The emergence of climate change as a core policy concern has shifted key targets for agricultural policy. New trends towards 'neo-productivist' agricultural policy have emerged to challenge multifunctional approaches to agriculture. New academic ideas around resilience of food chains and relevant policy interventions have challenged established approaches to achieving agricultural sustainability. Through international case studies, this book evaluates how these new policy challenges are having an impact on specific agricultural policy regimes, and what future lessons might be learnt from key policy experiments around neoliberalism and multifunctionality.