Rural Renaissance--A Perspective and a Process.

If the path to a better rural life is to be a change preferred by the rural people involved, recent world experience would suggest that it must be a change born from within the given rural social system, be controlled by its beneficiaries, and be integrated into the larger system of which it is a part. Such a perspective and such a process might be labeled "rural renaissance", for as perspective, it gives priority to the view of the farming family, and as process, it draws initiative and energy from that same family. Rural renaissance, then, may be defined as the marriage between traditional patterns (values, norms, technologies, and behavior) and those innovative patterns which result in the birth of change. Since values and beliefs vary from one social system to another, interaction between a rural renaissance stimulation system (outsiders) and a rural renaissance acquisition system (insiders) should facilitate positive change, if consideration is given by both outsiders and insiders to questions of appropriate organization, doctrine, leadership, programs, resources, and linkage systems. The larger rural renaissance stimulation system, then, would be a world wide network of interacting people who are able to learn from each other in the universal quest for improvement of the human condition. (JC)