Contenu du sommaire : Le rural en mouvement

Reforms of agricultural policy and the management of rural areas This article is part of a research aiming at anticipating the short term evolution of Europe's rural areas. Indeed, the forthcoming negotiations to be held under the aegis of the World Trade Organisation condition the future Common Agricultural Policy. Besides, the measures recommended by Agenda 2000 might well herald a genuine transformation of Europe's rural areas based on a triple breakaway : an exacting environmental protection, the end of the subsidizing of farming products and the management of the rural areas by parties involved at regional or local level within changing space frameworks.

The Confédération Paysanne between traditional contesting and new proposals At the end of the 1980's, the crisis of productivist agriculture obliged farmers' unions to change their practices, to debate and to change their project. The Confédération Paysanne, a minority leftist union, tried to change and proposed new ideas. It wanted to defend a non productivist agriculture, which respects the environment and allows numerous farmers to remain in the different regions of France. This article analyses the way this project is defended in different regions and for different productions (wine, milk), and what is new and what is traditional in these proposals on a local scale and what practices are defended locally.

Interactions at the heart of the relationship between industry and the rural milieu The creation of an industrial activity in rural areas is a recurrent theme in any territorial-development policy. Rural areas are generally considered in terms of available resources that may work to the benefit or to the disadvantage of the company. Hie result is a simple advantage/disadvantage analysis. The tremendous diversity of situations, for companies as well as for the rural areas, disqualify the above approach. We propose here a new form of economic analysis on enterprises and rural area relations based on «interaction ». Interaction is understood on three levels : rural/urban dependency, co-construction between territories and industrial fabric, and companies spatial behaviour.

Today, incontestably the most outlying rural areas are subjected to the economic effects which favour the phenomenon of agglomeration. Nevertheless, far from mechanically depending on rules of macroeconomic determinism, some enclosed geographical environments can reveal diversified and successful trajectories of evolution. An analysis framework, and its application to a French rural area (vallée de l'Eyrieux) accent to the importance and the evolutional forms of the territorial anchoring of firms (localization factors, demography, organization of the social actors) and contribute an explanation of the diversity of those logics of development.

Tourism and rural development in European regional policy. Aims and planning tools This contribution rests on two main ideas : the current European policy for development and regional planning, and the role given to rural tourism within this policy. These two ideas will influence further comments specifically aimed at analysing several significant examples from the France/Spain contexts. The main goal is to question the aims of these specific European planning tools relying on the promotion of rural tourism. Furthermore, choosing this topic seemed crucial to us, since it implies the questioning of a common assumption : tourism viewed as an economic progress weapon for declining rural sectors.

Local development in the face of Europe. The invention of the «Pays cathare » This sociological study of the project of «Pays cathare » development shows how a local policy network innovates in mobilizing a territory. The Pays cathare imagined territory is first defined by the local actors who oppose their conception of development to that of the state agents. The particularity of this policy is reinforced by the logic of action particular to the European policies of aid to development in rural areas (Leader program). However, we then observe the reappearance of the French state administrative services. Also, this process of reinvention of the territory is not without effects on the political actions of the local representatives, particularly in what concerns the links between policy and policies.

The «Pays » : an environmental area ? Protection of the countryside in Puisaye ThePuisaye is an area where public policies and the initiatives of associations have the same goal : the protection of a natural environment seen as more and more menaced. But these interventions are not able to give rise to a collective project embodying the idea of a territory, even though the notion of pays is constantly being advanced to define the Puisaye. How can we interpret the pressure which presents nature both as an element of identification and of discrimination ? Should we not see in the multiplication of protected areas simply a touristic device and an indication of the fragmentation of territories ? Or could this pressure become the vector of a comprehensive territorial project ? But in this latter case, what will be the nature of the mediations ?

Wet area, high tension zone. The controversial management of a water level project This article analyses the conflicts and controversies raised by a project to protect the biotope of a natural humid zone, the area of water situated at the confluence of the rivers Tarn and Garonne (France). The activities of an ecological association relayed by the administration encounters the hostility of the local people involved, anxious to preserve their traditional activities and practices (fishing, shooting, leisure). This conflict raises the problem of the social acceptability of regulatory measures imposed on local communities in the context of public environmental policies.

The environmental stake : an impossible consensus ? If the environmental preoccupation seems to become more and more considered in the development of the country area, in return, there is no consensus in this field. Between the supporters of a full laissez-faire and those close to absolute interdictions, the demands for occupation and uses of the rural areas are of various kinds and very often conflicting. Which are the arguments of the different sides and will it be possible to find an agreement which could give partial satisfaction to the different sides and avoid hard struggles ?

The notion of a territorial project is questioned The purpose of this article is to ponder the meaning, the interest, and the weaknesses of one of the most widely-used contemporary regional development policy concepts -the project. The aim is actually to examine the relationship between project and power, and more particularly as far as political local subdivisions are concerned. Considered as an innovating tool in some cases, as an instrument used -animal-like -to defend one's territory in others, the project turns out to be an ambiguous concept that brings to light new and particularly interesting issues of regional development.

Economy and technoscience. (3) Computerization, globalization of economy, and social atony. Synchronic conjunction of computerization process, economic globalization and social fabric lack of tone, has generated an extraordinary impact on the economic system : on the one hand, the gap between rich and poor is widening ; on the other hand, impecuniousness situation is being appeared in the rich countries while we are witnessing some wealth accumulation in the poor countries. And all this in accordance with each country technological hierarchy.