Towards New Paths for Regional and Territorial Development in Rural Areas

Abstract

The aim of this article is to shed some light on issues of territorial development and of rural development and to identify what links and opposes them. Indeed, everything pushes towards joining these two dimensions, which for a long time seemed disconnected. On the one hand, the policies targeting rural areas explicitly include the territorial dimension, while the distinction between rural and urban is getting blurred. In the meantime, decentralization, subsidiarity, the regionalization of agriculture, short circuits and local foods take place in parallel with the generalization of an urban model. Finally, we find that regional sciences are paying increasing attention to rural and agricultural dimensions, while studies concerning rural questions are starting to consider territorial issues. The first section of the article provides a critical presentation and attempts to define and distinguish the notions of development, territory and the rural. The second section addresses questions of regional and territorial development by presenting the main theories and public policies and concludes with a discussion about the possibilities of reconciling the theories and the policies. The third section follows the same structure, applied to the question of rural development, from analyses to grass-roots policies.     

Crafting identities in a multinational context: evidence from Catalonia

The nationalist messages that family and school transmit are very often concurrent, making it difficult to measure their independent impact on individuals. In order to separate out the leverage of these two agents of socialisation, this article focuses on a case study in which such concurrence cannot be taken for granted: Catalonia. The article exploits variation in parents' national identification, resulting from the presence of a population born in other regions of Spain outside Catalonia, to tease out the effect of both parents and Catalan school in crafting individuals' identification. The results, which draw on the analysis of a household survey, suggest that more years of schooling makes more likely that individuals develop a dual identity; however, parents' attachment to Catalonia is key in fostering an exclusive identification with Catalonia. Results also suggest that residence in neighbourhoods in which the proportion of natives and immigrants from other regions of Spain favours contact between children from different identity backgrounds is decisive in promoting a more Catalan‐oriented identification between second generations.     

A Simulation Study to Explore Inference about Global Moran's I with Random Spatial Indexes

Inference procedures for spatial autocorrelation statistics assume that the underlying configurations of spatial units are fixed. However, sometimes this assumption can be disadvantageous, for example, when analyzing social media posts or moving objects. This article examines for the case of point geometries how a change from fixed to random spatial indexes affects inferences about global Moran's I, a popular spatial autocorrelation measure. Homogeneous and inhomogeneous Matérn and Thomas cluster processes are studied and for each of these processes, 10,000 random point patterns are simulated for investigating three aspects that are key in an inferential context: the null distributions of I when the underlying geometries are varied; the effect of the latter on critical values used to reject null hypotheses; and how the presence of point processes affects the statistical power of Moran's I. The results show that point processes affect all three characteristics. Inferences about spatial structure in relevant application contexts may therefore be different from conventional inferences when this additional source of randomness is taken into account.     

Archaeology in Antarctica: Nineteenth-Century Capitalism Expansion Strategies

Antarctica was the last continent to be discovered in the early nineteenth century. In order to become acquainted with the process of incorporation of Antarctica to the scope of the capitalist system we have focused on particularity: i.e., specific economic and technological and ideological aspects of everyday life in sealer camps spread along the coastline of the South Shetland Islands. Archaeological research in Byers Peninsula–Livingston Island provides an approach to the mechanisms implemented to organize the first resource exploitation in these lands.     

Révolution industrielle logique et signification de l'opératoire

In England, during the first half of the xix^th century, a network organised around Charles Babbage (1791–1871), John F. W. Herschel (1792–1871), George Peacock (1791–1858), Duncan F. Gregory (1813–1844), Augustus de Morgan (1806–1871), George Boole (1815–1864), and other less known authors renewed the status of algebra in a peculiar way. As a result, their works are often considered to mark the birth of abstract algebra. But these algebraists were also involved, as reformers, in the new organisation of science. Taking this into account, I propose a more contextual reading of their works, which can then be understood as side-effects of the Industrial Revolution (1760–1830). These works are analysed as cultural mediators between the roots of University teaching, founded on fidelity to the Ancients on the one hand, and new forms of construction of knowledge on the other. Such a mediation brought together algebra and logic for the first time.     

THE FOOD VALUE CHAIN AS A LOCUS FOR (DIS)AGREEMENT: CONVENTIONS AND QUALITIES IN THE SPANISH WINE AND NORWEGIAN SALTED COD INDUSTRIES

According to the theory of conventions, food value chains (FVCs) involve a complex array of actors who share an agreement about the qualities embodied in their particular foodstuff. Nevertheless, that agreement is continuously challenged by changes in consumer markets. Therefore, I argue that FVCs able to adapt those qualities to new trends will perform better than FVCs whose commitment to certain qualities leads to a misunderstanding between producers and consumers. The organization of the chain itself, the values of national regulatory frameworks, and the goals of the national innovation system are discussed as factors that shape an FVCs' ability to re‐arrange that core agreement. By using professional reports, statistical records and personal interviews, this article focuses on two FVCs that have experienced contrasting trajectories in recent decades in the Spanish market: the wine industry located in the region of Castile and Leon (Spain) and the Norwegian salted cod industry. The growing wine FVC has achieved a successful agreement about a set of qualities linked to nature, tradition, and place, all of them guaranteed by the reputation of the Designation of Origin (DO) system. In contrast, the salted cod FVC is losing its market share because its main actors are failing to properly communicate the key qualities of environmental sustainability and artisanal cod production to concerned Spanish consumers, as well as in the adoption of the place‐related attributes that still shape consumer preferences in Spain.