L'evoluzione della ruralità nei Paesi in via di sviluppo (PVS). Approcci teorici ed applicativi

Rural economy, that is, the integrated system of non-homogeneous activities as performed out of urban areas, has very often been confused, in the development literature, with agricultural economy, which aims at the increase of agricultural and zootechnic production. The two terms imply distinct, yet linked, theories and paradigms, which emphasise the many paths leading towards economic growth of the non-urban areas of the Developing Countries. The thesis “Evolution of rurality in Developing Countries. Theoretical and applied Approaches” highlights such aspects, first presenting the historical evolution, from the 50’s to the current days, of the theories concerning the rural development in the Developing Countries (chapter 1), secondly following the various steps of the economic journey from agricultural to rural systems which opened the way to the new territorial economy (chapter 2), the latter based on new rural-urban relationships and new ways of expressing them. The approach that is suggested to explain these aspects of the development of rural areas in the Developing Countries, in particular in Latin America, is the view that rural areas hold an integrated dialogue, economic, social, political as well as cultural, with the adjacent urban ones, in a union that leaves behind the traditional rural-urban dichotomy, and instead searches new ways of organising the territory. Such approach has been tested in extensive case studies undertaken in Latin America, and more specifically in Ecuador (chapter 3). Utilising several analyses, both qualitative (SWOT and scenario planning) and quantitative (analysis of assets and liabilities as well as analysis of budget, financial and economical indexes), field research was applied on two organisations that have been relevant in the recent economical rural growth of Ecuador, that is the non-government organisation FEPP and the Social Group Salinas. The results of these analyses show that the approach above described is not only substantially proved in these case studies, but that it also explains further-reaching entailments of the individual cases. The theories portrayed in chapter one, and the proofs evinced in the case studies of chapter three, confirm and reinforce the contents and the methodological approach panned out in chapter two with regards to the concepts of rurality and new territorial economy.