Workshop 3
Rural and Mountain Areas in Transition
FRAMEWORK AND OBJECTIVES
Globalisation has set rural areas on trajectories conditioned by the nature and intensity of mobility. The countryside has become a “moving mosaic”, with peripheral areas close to the centres and others further away but still under their control. Some margins remain isolated and depreciated, while others are productive and innovative. This diversity leads us to speak of rural areas subject to different logics. For a long time, their positioning was marked by a reading of their handicaps, in relation to metropolitan areas. To enable them to adapt to the consequences of the opening up of markets, these rural areas have been invited to develop endogenous approaches. The culture of the regional project has taken root in these areas, in an ongoing quest for identity, homogeneity and the enhancement of specific features.
Today, the multiplication and worsening of crises are calling these balances into question, and are confronting rural areas with the challenges of transition. Other approaches are emerging. We need to move on from a policy of compensating for handicaps to policies of transformation, in terms of ecology and energy. Instead of the “territory project”, the “network project” aims to connect resources to amplify their benefits. Instead of endogenous autonomy, empowering autonomy aims to develop know-how on one’s own, among others. These issues are not unique to rural areas. However, the low population densities associated with the proximity of natural resources make them, in certain situations, learning areas, “learning territories” in the face of future transitions.
The aim of the workshop is to examine the trajectories of rural areas in the face of these transitions. There is a controversy between those who believe that local authorities have the capacity to initiate and implement appropriate local policies, and those who believe that only collective, localised initiatives can innovate and ensure the conditions for a genuine transition. Our hypothesis is that the ability to transform the trajectory of local areas lies in the quality of the relationship between the people behind these innovations and local authorities. Far from the posture of local authorities taking over innovation, we need to think about the conditions for hybridisation, which involves developing networks or operators with the capacity to disseminate new values and principles of action. In this context, the Mediterranean mountains have significant experience of the complementarity of resources and their networking. It is an ideal place to study these innovative and instructive hybridisation processes.
STRUCTURE AND METHODS
The workshop will explore these hybridisations through 5 sessions. Each session will feature 3 papers, essentially based on the presentation and analysis of one or more case studies. Discussions will then be organised on the basis of cross-cutting questions from each of the workshops. The emphasis will be on exchanges with the other participants.
Expectations common to the various workshops
Papers will focus on the themes proposed in the workshops. They will be based on the observation of one or more rural or mountain areas, and may even be extended to the relationships they may develop with urban or metropolitan areas. They will seek to describe the trajectories of these areas, to understand the transitions they are facing, to identify the innovations that are being developed, the players involved and the ways in which they are organised, as well as the actions implemented to support them.
Coordinators:
Pierre-Antoine Landel (Grenoble Alpes University, France), Dimitris Goussios (University of Thessaly, Greece) ; Laurent Rieutort (Clermont-Auvergne University, France), Sylvie Lardon (INRAE, France), Theodosia Anthopolou (Panteion University, Greece)
Sessions
Schedule 8 30 – 10
Moderated by
- Sylvie Lardon (INRAE, France)
- Laurent Rieutord (Université Clermont-Ferrand – Auvergne)
The notion of the territorial trajectory can be understood as a succession of passages from one state to another, constituting a transition. Given the great diversity and complexity of territorial configurations, it raises questions about factors such as crises, ruptures, bifurcations, reorientations, innovations, continuities, relaunches or reversals of dynamics. The aim of the workshop will be to characterise these trajectories of transition in rural areas. What are the crises? What breaks are possible? What changes in trajectories? How do these forks in the road fit into the long history of the region? What processes mobilise heritage? What changes in values, standards and principles of action? What changes are there in relations with other territorial scales, particularly metropolitan areas?
Schedule 10 30 – 12
Moderated by
- Théodosia Anthopoulou (Panteion University, Greece)
- Pierre-Antoine Landel (Grenoble Alpes University, France)
Rural and mountain areas are often characterised by a proliferation of social innovations to replace services and meet new needs. They affect all sectors of local life and associated services: housing, work, transport, meetings, energy production, etc. The workshop will look at the nature of and changes in the relationships between these social innovations, which are often embedded in places, and the actions of other local players, particularly the institutions that govern them. What are the conflicts? What are the mechanisms for dialogue and deliberation? What hybridization processes are there between social innovations and local authorities? What capacity do these social innovations have to transform the trajectory of local areas?
Schedule 13 30 – 15
Moderated by
- Sylvie Lardon (INRAE, France)
- Laurent Rieutord (Université Clermont-Ferrand – Auvergne)
The crisis of the dominant models is generating profound uncertainties, within which experimentation is multiplying, often as a result of do-it-yourself processes opening up the right to trial and error. Under certain conditions, the territories are involved in the construction of new and transferable knowledge resulting from intermediation processes between different types of players and organisations. The aim of the workshop is to understand how this knowledge is built up, through a combination of local knowledge, external knowledge and the capitalisation of action. How do collective approaches emerge? What are the learning processes? What is the relationship with research? How is knowledge capitalised and disseminated?
Schedule 15 30 – 17
Moderated by
- Dimitris Goussios (Université de Thessalie)
- Pierre-Antoine Landel (Grenoble Alpes University)
Observation of transition initiatives reveals a proliferation of associated networks, both internal and external to the areas concerned. We are working on the assumption that the consolidation and dissemination of alternative values and practices within territories depends on the weaving of links between the bearers of alternative projects and their networking (which may or may not include other local players). The workshop will provide an insight into the diversity of these networks, but also their capacity to support territorial transitions. What are the conditions for the emergence of these networks? What forms do they take? What functions do they perform? What modes of governance? How do they evolve?
Schedule 15 30 – 17
Moderated by
- Jean Christophe Paoli (INRAE, France)
- Dimitris Goussios (University of Thessaly)
- Théodosia Anthopoulou (Panteion University)
Any repositioning of the Mediterranean mountains in the process of transition is guided by their ability to capitalize on opportunities. The Mediterranean mountains are both an area of significant depopulation and a reserve of biodiversity and traditions, making visible processes of hybridisation. How can we understand the different ecological levels and spaces in the mountains? Aren’t the physical contrasts, closed environments, and heterogeneous nature of the mountains all opportunities to develop and network complementary uses and categories of players? Is this a new perspective for multifunctional agri-farming as part of the agroecological transition? In what way does the importance of the commons and of a community of origin, attached to the land heritage, encourage more collective management systems?