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The article presents information on the XXI Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology. Through European policies and regulations rural development the here and the there are unavoidably connected. From this perspective it is interesting to explore how agricultural and other economic activities are re-allocated in rural Europe. The XXIst Congress in Keszthely takes an important current event the one-year anniversary of the European enlargement as starting point for engaging in the ongoing questions around change and continuity, diversity and cohesion in rural Europe.

This paper examines some recent analyses of alternative agro-food networks (AAFNs) and claims that these innovative modes of food provisioning are emblematic of a new rural development paradigm in Western Europe. A political-economic critique of the territorialised, farm-centric value added strategies underlying these claims suggests that this characterisation is overdrawn and premature. The neglect of the consumption side of the rural development equation also argues for a more modest assessment of AAFNs and their paradigmatic potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lack of data or empirical information, insecurity about scientific knowledge, and disputes on how to manage knowledge emerge as central concerns when we study changes in rural development under the influence of sustainability discourses. In this synthesis we summarise and interpret results from the CORASON project for sustainable resource management, both within policy discourses and the local realities of rural development projects. We identify a range of operational variants for sustainable development in these projects. The understanding of sustainable development found in rural development practice is more diverse and pluralistic and less standardised than in the policy programmes that guide it, and practitioners are also critical of some premises of these programmes. From the knowledge forms and ideas entering rural development practices emerges a model of sustainable rural development that is less hierarchical and hegemonic than those in policy programmes and comes more from the target groups, beneficiaries and local populations than the actors in the policy process and scientific discourses. It requires more in-depth study of knowledge interaction in resource management. To describe the emerging ideas of knowledge practices we use the concepts of situated and relational knowledge, formulated in recent epistemological studies but not yet systematically introduced in the analysis of rural development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the "Sociologia Ruralis" issue of January 2004, David Goodman elaborates a series of critical reflections on rural development processes in Europe and, more specifically, on the emergence of new Alternative Food Networks. In this, Goodman questions the position that, both in theory and in practice, a paradigm shift is being created. A ten point rejoinder is presented. Central to the current practices of rural development is that the creation of new wealth, the rise of new institutional patterns and identities, and the shift in power balances, are increasingly being intertwined. This strengthens the autonomous momentum of rural development processes. Whether the process of rural development will unfold further is unsure. It basically depends on the social and political struggles that are currently taking place on different levels.

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