The Contemporary Situation and Preferences of the Ukrainian Rural Family

The purpose of this paper is to determine the family situation and family preferences in rural parts of the Ukraine. This study investigates social integration of people in various types of municipalities and size characteristics of families. The results were compared with Ukrainian urban families and Czech rural and urban families. Besides the statistical data, results of a questionnaire survey were organised by means of social networks were used. The results suggested that relations between people and their community life and their social integration are influenced by the cultural context, historical aspects and the economic level. The differences between the contemporary Czech and Ukrainian rural families can be observed in different pathways and in a different part of the job market.

Development Perspectives of Rural Tourism Policy – a Comparative Study of Rural Tourism Competitiveness Based on Perceptions of Tourism Workers in Slovenia and Serbia

This paper deals with the development of rural areas in Slovenia and Serbia. The article identifies the main characteristics of rural tourism competitiveness in Slovenia and Serbia, analysing the main contributions and making a series of proposals to guide a future research agenda. The aim of the paper is simplified and clarified around one clearly defined objective: point out the competitiveness of rural tourism. The data for this study was collected using Dwyer and Kim’s (2003) Integrated Model of Destination Competitiveness to observe Slovenia’s and Vojvodina’s (Serbia) destination competitiveness. Determinants were assessed using a survey evaluating 24 indicators (demand factors and supporting factors), based upon a Likert Scale.

Think Locally and Act Globally: Understanding Human Development in the Era of Globalisation

For well over two decades the phrase “Think Global, Act Local” shaped the rhetoric used by social movements, environmental activists and intellectuals critical of the neoliberal narrative of globalisation. The intention was to obtains ideas and solutions elaborated in various parts of the world implemented in local communities and to give special meaning to progressive proposals of international social movement contesting globalisation. This approach could certainly be beneficial in terms of the diffusion of good environmental practices or spreading civil society ideas in developing countries. However, when global ideas reach local ground, they remain global ideas, and sometimes very foreign ones, which may take over or eclipse local concepts in unintended or less-than-ideal ways. Occasionally, this approach could even lead to overpowering what is local instead of empowering it. Therefore, having the empowerment of local communities in mind, we propose that those who really contest globalisation of the neoliberal narrative should turn the tables and work to “Think Locally, Act Globally.” Thinking locally and acting globally helps to ensure that adequate attention will be paid to local needs and local ideas. Presently, no local community exists outside of the global context and its influences, which affects the writings of contemporary sociologists who tend to emphasise the concept of “place” when analysing local communities. The nature of bonds on the local level changes in the globalised world, as local communities become more goal-oriented, utilising the functional proximity of people and other assets of the community. These new types of communities emerge even in places previously recognised as being shaped by local customs and traditions. These changes can be seen in the rural, semi-rural and small-town communities of Zalipie and Dąbrowa Tarnowska in Małopolska, as well as Radzionków in Silesia and in the nationwide study of rural communities in Poland. Their potential as the communities of the new type can be recognised as matching with neo-endogenous and sustainable development concepts.

25 Years of Rural Development in post-Soviet Central Asia: Sustaining Inequalities

To show that post-Soviet rural development in Central Asia has been confronted with sustained inequalities, three particular factors are analysed in this paper have being viewed as fundamental in influencing national and rural development. Firstly, most countries have based their growth models on economic nationalism (not only creating borders and national institutions, but also choosing inward-looking strategies), while leaning one-sidedly on their natural resource wealth (carbohydrates such as oil, natural gas and minerals, but also industrial crops like cotton). Secondly, and related to the first explanatory factor, the region has been struck by hidden and open resource-based conflicts, in particular on land and water. Inter-state tensions have emerged, in particular between downstream (irrigation water dependent) countries, such as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and the upstream (hydropower energy dependent, and carbohydrate-poor) ones, such as Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Thirdly, all the countries analysed here have followed a rather unequal capital city-centric growth model, using the proceeds of exports of mineral wealth (or cotton) for rapid urbanisation with little or no investment in rural development, resulting in a growing urban-rural divide and increasing rural-urban and cross-border migration. While it is recognised that this region is indeed a bridge between West and East (also re-emphasised by the Chinese ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative), it is argued in this paper that there is a need to reduce these inequalities and unbalanced growth, being that they will be an obstacle to the sustainable growth and development of rural areas.

Autobiographies or Portraits? Methodological Differences in Qualitative Social Research

The author considers methodological differences in the use of autobiographies. However, while doing so, he does not focus on technical differences in the application of the method but asks about cognitive possibilities that come (or not) with certain methodological tools. It is through this perspective (epistemological capacity of theory and empirical knowledge) that the author discusses the difference between two very close and yet so separate methods of research: sociological autobiography and anthropological portrait. He refers to Florian Znaniecki’s methodological guidelines and juxtaposes them with other important sociological works. Analysing Znaniecki’s method, he finds elements that make it seem closer to anthropological portrait. This approach is to encourage the readers to look at the method in a different way – as something secondary to the accurate definition of the socio-cultural context for the studied phenomena.

Knowledge Networking in Agricultural Practice. Case study from Slovenia

This study analyses knowledge networking between educational institution/knowledge provider, associations and knowledge users in the agricultural sector within the local environment in Slovenia. It is based on the theory of expansive learning and the concept of knowledge networking. A qualitative research paradigm using ethnography and in-depth semi-structured interviews has been used and involved various actors included in selected activity systems (the educational institution, associations and knowledge users). Our findings indicate that cooperation between associations and the educational institution has advantages for all involved and that, according to research participants, it fosters the transfer of knowledge from the academic/research sphere into practice. In the case studied, we describe the development of new forms of connections between local knowledge and academic knowledge, both developing as a part of real-world complex learning environment. Knowledge networks have thus been built by enabling the transfer of explicit and tacit knowledge through social networks and by the development of new practices.

The Palace Architecture of the Roma Population in Romania

Contrasting the local specific architecture through an obvious opulent style, “palaces” of Roma population in Romania generate controversial debates. The present study analyses this phenomenon from a socio-geographic perspective in its attempt to draw attention to the new constructions appearing in the post-communist period after 1990. The Roma palaces are a choice of a showy non-constrained way to manifest an ethnic socio-economic status at the local level are perceived differently in Romanian society by the Roma community and by the Romanian population respectively. Our research methodology was correlated with the particularities of this topic and has been very infrequently approached until the present moment. It has hence used as its main tools direct observation, a social survey based on semi-structured interviews and media monitoring. The results of the study have mainly showed that the appearance of the new type of residences is a consequence of the change in the socio-economic statute of the Roma population, the size of the house being directly proportional to the status of the privileged within a community. Moreover, we have already witnessed architectural trends in the aesthetics of these constructions, which were mainly perceived in a negative way by the Romanian respondents and in a positive way by Roma respondents.

Rural Sociology and ‘Rural’ Linguistics. The Biographical Method in the Study of Dialects and Languages in Contact

In the year 2018, marking the anniversary of their original releases, the main of the article is to discuss the question concerning the applicability of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918) by William Isaac Thomas and Florian Znaniecki and Młode pokolenie chłopów [The Young Generation of Peasants] (1938) by Józef Chałasiński, two crucial works in rural and general sociology to other areas of humanistic disciplines, with examples drawn from linguistic research. Here, we both characterise and justify the historical and contemporary relationships between sociology and linguistics both on a general level and in their rural varieties. Cooperation between representatives of the given disciplines is possible on the ground of structuralism and, in fact, is being implemented in many joint research projects. Rural sociology has established itself as a subdiscipline of sociology and has developed its specific thematic and methodological autonomy within the major scope of the field. The existence of ‘rural’ linguistics is not so obvious, but there are certain phenomena and processes observed in rural conditions which justify the use of such a term. However, it is not the officially accepted name of the subdiscipline which, in the present article, is defined as ‘linguistic (and sociolinguistic) research in rural area’ with constant references to dialectology. Hence, methods such as the personal documents method and the biographical method are already present in linguistics and sociolinguistics, although direct references to sociological works (both in general and specifically to both Thomas and Znaniecki’s and Chałasiński’s texts in detail) are rare. Still, some popular linguistic approaches – e.g. language biographies or the use of personal documents as a source of linguistic data – are very close to the ideas postulated by the precursors of rural sociology. There are also authors who have so far used Thomas and Znaniecki’s as well as Chałasiński’s theoretical achievements, while they refer consciously and directly to The Polish Peasant in Europe and America and The Young Generation of Peasants.

After a Long March: the Results of Two Decades of Rural Restructuring in Hungary

This paper aims to show the main processes of rural restructuring of Hungary after the change of political system and EU integration. It describes the changes of agricultural land-use, new dynamics of urban rural relations and rural development of the last 25 years. In the paper, we argue that the most dynamic changes happened in the era of post-communism, ended by EU-accession and the era of consolidation. A characteristic phenomenon of these changes was the urban demand for providing facilities related to rural landscape and culture. Therefore, permanent and temporary migrations into rural areas have become the most important element of development for rural places in the last decades. The introduction of a new Europeanised rural development system has shaped these processes and reconfigured local power relations, economic and social networks. These turbulent changes occurred at the same time with the collapse of the socialist-type co-operative and state farm system, along with the restitution and reprivatisation of land, resulting in the concentration of land use and agricultural production. The paper aims at analysing these processes by discussing the dynamics of urban-rural relationships and the new rural development system, while the final part focuses on land-use changes and its impacts on rural society.