The Social and Economic Valuation of Resources of Rural Territories in the Context of Modern Societies

Abstract

Starting from a reflection on the processes of social revaluation of the rural in contemporary modern societies, this article discusses the different and possible modalities of transforming the rural into a laboratory of experimentation in the field of social innovation through, in particular, the "maximization "of the multifunctional nature of agriculture and rural areas as a key element of sustainable agricultural and rural development. Taking as a background the question of the social, economic and environmental valorization of the material and immaterial resources of the rural territories in the context of modern societies and with reference to the Portuguese empirical situation, the processes of social construction of rurality between 1926 and these days - identified as a social construction of rural and rurality marked, essentially, by the social perception of rural as an environmental category; the process of environmentalization of agriculture and rural space is analyzed; the sociological problematic underlying the articulation between agriculture, rural environment and rural development policies is discussed. We conclude that it is important to consider the various issues that are explicitly associated with the sociological approach to development processes, and discuss the need for a change of perspective both by policy makers and by other stakeholders' relationship between socio-economic development and environmental preservation.