This book aims to unravel how rural gender regimes are constituted, enforced, made sense of and resisted, and how struggles of resistance lead to empowerment and change in various countries in the four corners of Europe as well as Australia and India. The book focuses on the intricate relationship between laws and institutions and everyday life. It analyzes on the one hand how laws and institutions are constituted and on the other hand how gender regimes are built at the local rural level, sometimes in compliance with these frames and sometimes contesting them. The articles, in diverse ways, give voice both to women's struggles for recognition and men's voices in gendered rural societies. Through applying the concepts of the welfare state and gender regimes within rural research, this book contributes to the further development of a comparative theoretical framework for rural gender studies. The importance of integrating rural gender studies into both the mainstreams of rural and feminist research has been emphasized in previous research, as has that of developing comparative analytical frameworks. The conceptual framework adopted in this volume sets out to meet this challenge by approaching rural gender relations as the meeting point of two core research areas: gender regimes and rural transformative processes. Research into gender regimes offers a promising analytical framework for comparing gender relations in diverse rural settings. At the same time, by addressing rural concerns deriving from the specificity of rural transition processes and gender regimes, the approach also contributes to an elucidation of the complexity of citizenship. Book jacket.

This book explores how rural gender relations are changing in a globalizing world that fundamentally impacts on the structure of agricultural life in rural areas and urban-rural relations. It analyses the development of rural gender relations in specific places around the world and looks into the effects of the increasing connectivity and mobility of people across places. The themes covered are: gender and mobility, gender and agriculture, Gender and rural politics, rurality and Gender identity and women and international development. Each theme has an overview of the state of the art in that specific thematic area and integrates the case-studies that follow.

Rural societies around the world are changing in fundamental ways, both at their own initiative and in response to external forces. The Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies examines the organisation and transformation of rural society in more developed regions of the world, taking an interdisciplinary and problem-focused approach. Written by leading social scientists from many countries, it addresses emerging issues and challenges in innovative and provocative ways to inform future policy. This volume is organised around eight emerging social, economic and environmental challenges: Demographic change. Economic transformations. Food systems and land. Environment and resources. Changing configurations of gender and rural society. Social and economic equality. Social dynamics and institutional capacity. Power and governance. Cross-cutting these challenges are the growing interdependence of rural and urban; the rise in inequality within and between places; the impact of fiscal crisis on rural societies; neoliberalism, power and agency; and rural areas as potential sites of resistance. The Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies is required reading for anyone concerned with the future of rural areas.

Through international case studies, this book evaluates how various 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.

Participatory Research in Conservation and RuralLivelihoods: Doing Science Together starts from theunderstanding that all people create knowledge and that thecreation of sustainable livelihoods and of conditions that protectand sustain rural ecosystems are interrelated. Here local experts and professional researchers writeindependently about the participatory research processes throughwhich they created new knowledge together. They demonstrate thatinterdependent science can produce more accurate and locallyappropriate data, while frankly addressing persisting issues suchas unequal power, whose knowledge and what ways of knowing count,whose voice can be heard or appear in print, and other dilemmas ofthis practice. Conservation scientists and practitioners will bothbenefit from reading this book. First book to examine community participatory researchtechniques that focuses on conservation aims Unique book in that it is written from the perspective ofparticipating community volunteers and researching scientists Part of the prestigious Conservation Science and Practiceseries published in association with the Zoological Society ofLondon "Participatory Research in Conservation and RuralLivelihoods is brilliant, passionate, and inspiring..." Richa Nagar, University of Minnesota, co-author ofPlaying with Fire

Forty years have passed since the first UN-organized World Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975. In that time, women’s rights, and later gender equality, have become firmly established as an important area of global politics and human rights. What shape have these processes taken in different parts of the world? How do global and internationally designed institutions adapt to local cultural, religious, political, and economic contexts? What are the problems and contradictions embedded in this process when viewed from a global perspective? What effects do grassroots, local, and national actors have on transnational institutions? In answering the questions, the book draws on historical and global perspectives, beginning in the 1960s, an important moment for internationalization during the Cold War, and looking to a global selection of case studies. Providing a series of “snapshots” of historical and contemporary global gender equality politics, the chapters allow for an examination of how local, national, and transnational actors have interacted in ways that affect the dissemination of gender equality institutions, both formal and informal. The case studies demonstrate the relationship between the supranational, regional, national, and sub-national or “local.” They explore the power dynamics, interactions, and mutually constituting nature of two analytic levels of organizations and actors involved in the institutionalization of gender equality–the transnational level as well as the level of activity within specific national political systems (as represented by states, grassroots organizations, and other sub-national actors). The findings reveal that the institutionalization of gender equality is dependent on national and local context, the potential for interactions between gender equality policies and other state agendas, the depth of informal institutions, and the degree to which a given state is integrated into the norms of the international system.

Fundamental societal changes in the globalising European countryside impact women's migration decisions. The chapters in this volume represent diverse attempts to explain women's movements from rural areas, taking prevailing labour market conditions as well as gender relations into account. Utilising empirical findings from countries including Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Spain, this collection particularly aims to build bridges between research following the 'cultural turn' and functionalist explanations which refer to material and practiced ruralities. The international range of contributors to Women and Migration in Rural Europe focus on societal constructions of gender and rurality, and in doing so, address various female perspectives on rural life. The analysis of the different working and living conditions in different parts of rural Europe reveals distinct obstacles but also prospects for young women. Importantly, the book includes policy implications with respect to the challenges of demographic change, questions of gender equality and women's contribution to rural development.

The LEADER programme, initiated in 1991, aims to improve the development potential of rural areas in the European Union by drawing on local initiatives and skills. Highlighting this unique policy approach, this book presents up-to-date research results on LEADER’s achievements and restrictions at the local level in a comparative way in order to discuss its merits and problems. What makes LEADER important is not only that it has a major role in rural development efforts, but also that it has a pioneering role in the new type of governance, participatory democracy. Asking whether LEADER strengthens local democracy or not, this book also looks at how it affects the power balance among stakeholders, between national and local actors and between genders. It questions whether LEADER projects are genuinely grass-root level activities, reflecting local needs and ideals; and if the approach brings local know-how back onto the development agenda in innovations and development activities. Finally, the authors examine the success of dissemination of knowledge within the LEADER programme to other regions.

This open access book is about socio-spatial theory in, and the nature of, Nordic geography. From both historical and contemporary perspectives, the book engages with theorisations of geography in the Nordic countries. Including chapters by geographers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, it reflects how theories about the relations between the social and the spatial have been developed, adopted and critiqued in Nordic human geography in relation to a wide range of themes, concepts and approaches. The book also traces institutional developments, distinct geographical traditions and intellectual histories, as well as authors’ own experiences as geographers in and beyond the Nordic area. The chapters together introduce and engage with debates and discussions that permeate Nordic geography and allows readers a glimpse of geographical thinking and the role of socio-spatial theory in the Nordic countries. By providing insights into how geographical ideas emerge, travel and are translated and adapted in specific contexts, the book contributes to debates about historical-geographical situatedness and theorisations of geography.

This book analyses the key global processes transforming rural spaces in the early 21st century – financialization; standardization; consumption, and commodification. Through detailed case studies, the book examines why these processes are important, how they work in practice, and the challenges they raise as well as opportunities created.