Agency, Regional Differentiation and Environment in Rural Conflict and Change

摘要

The last 25 years have seen major repositionings of agriculture and rural areas in social systems at many scales. Directions of movement show many contradictory potentialities, and the ultimate working out of these potentialities remains unclear. Attempts to discern these directions and possibilities has preoccupied the attentions of rural social scientists, yielding a vigorous discussion rather than consensus. Globalization of food production and consumption systems, increasing appropriation of natural production processes by commodified inputs, and the rising power of consumptive relative to productive interests in decisions over the use of rural environments are clear structural trends, yet these trends are constructed rather than inevitable andhence are subject to resistance and contestation. Geographic analysis, emphasizing tensions between processes at different geographic scales from the local to the global, is particularly suited to exploring these issues.