Social re/construction in rural territories: developmental sustainability

In the last ten years, sociological science has returned to the somewhat forgotten and, it was thought, spent concept of territory in an effort to better understand and explain the processes of changes in space. There are several reasons, but let’s mention only two here: the territorial approach enables a more complete understanding of the modernization processes of the rural world, since the rural, far more than the urban, in all its aspects is determined by the physical features of the space and because it facilitates the connection of different scientific fields in the research of the countryside. In addition, recent scientific literature and research highlight the perception of the territory by local participants, whether they are politicians, employees in branches of decentralized state services and institutions, elected representatives, etc., and especially participants in economic life, and of course representatives population in all its (recomposed) social diversity, heterogeneity. In this direction, new constructions of the territory, new structuring on the local terrain, influences on the shaping of the territory that the local population, elected local representatives, or local government, or partners in rural development have, are being considered. It is particularly important what kind of changes (or their absence) are produced (or could be produced) by local development crises and development setbacks or the lack of suitable development models, or the type of decentralization implemented by the state, or the appearance of powerful development participants, too powerful for, as a rule, modest, receptive abilities of the rural area. Precisely the receptive possibilities of small rural societies (or peripheral small urban agglomerations), their demographic, social and territorial limitations, the social capital at their disposal, the will to participate, aspirations, the development of local self-government, the possibility of equal cooperation, etc., are the most often neglected circumstances when in terms of development. The insistence on the individual, while neglecting the common, is one of the causes of the inappropriate transformation of the rural world.