Rural Idyll Without Rural Sociology? Changing Features, Functions and Research of the Czech Countryside

• Authors: Martin Šimon , Josef Bernard
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The development of the Czech countryside differs in many ways from trajectories typical for Eastern and Central European rural areas in the last 25 years. In our article, we discuss the nature of the ‘Czech exceptionalism’, with reference to three examples, namely population development, the dynamics of rural/agricultural labour markets and rural governance. Firstly, we describe the major driving forces behind rural development in Czechia over the past 25 years and how these forces are reflected in the academic discourse. Secondly, we argue that an important feature of rural regions in Czechia is their population growth combined with a rapid labour market transformation and a low social importance of agriculture. All these changes are interpreted as a shift towards multifunctionality of rural areas rather than as a general trend towards post-productivism; indeed, this is because large parts of rural areas remain economically based on industrial production. The ongoing transformations have been reflected only partially in an academic discourse. In conclusion, we argue that there is a need to re-examine the use of EEC as a concept framing the position of sociology in rural research.

Keywords

EN

rural areas; rural idyll; Czechia; polarisation; agriculture; demographic change; global countryside

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Eastern European Countryside
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 53-68

Dates

published

2016-12-01

online

2016-09-18

Contributors

author

Martin Šimon

• Local and Regional Studies, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences

author

Josef Bernard

• Local and Regional Studies, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/eec-2016-0003