Actors of New Rural Social Movements as Agents of Change

Abstract

Rural and urban populations include a lot of different actors, i.e. small and large farmers, agribusiness, agricultural companies, agricultural cooperatives, large-scale retailers and many others on the one hand and agents of rural development such as groups and movements of consumers, various back-to-the-land movements and various new forms of a rural lifestyle, such as ecovillages or co-housing movements inspired by urban population on the other. The scope of this chapter is to discuss the most important rural and urban population’s agents, their goals, level of organization, ways in which organizations operate, and how they change the rural areas and their development. The most important question is not only how these agents align with new rural social movements but also how they influence and change rural development and more important—how they change the rural development paradigm shift. Taking into account Van der Ploeg and D. Roep’s (2003) research on agricultural enterprises three directions—broadening rural area, deepening agro-food supply chain and regrounding mobilization of resources—of rural development are employed for further analysis.