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Welcome to a research conference on the future of Nordic rural areas. The aims of this conference are to establish an arena for researchers with an interest in the Nordic rural areas as an empirical field and to offer young researchers an arena to discuss their ongoing research with key scholars from the region.
For this purpose, biennial conferences circulating
between the Nordic countries are planned. We
welcome papers from established researchers as well
as PhD-students from the fields of political science,
anthropology, sociology, human geography and rural
economics etc.
The first conference, ‘Nordic Rural
Futures: pressures and possibilities’, will be held
in Sweden on 3–5 May 2010 with the following subthemes:
New understandings and use of
nature and landscapes
New ways of relating to and using nature, landscapes
and natural resources are emerging. This leads
to processes of re-evaluation, appreciations and
innovations as well as new kinds of claims on
resources. How is this enacted in the rural areas?
What are the impacts on local levels, for example on
rural economy and rural entrepreneurship as well as
on local development and social cohesion? What are
the futures for agriculture and forestry in the Nordic
countries and what are the economic, social and
cultural implications of the pressures and possibilities
in these sectors? How do trends in tourism, nature
conservation, and other fields affect Nordic rural areas?
Flows of people, ideas and images
Rural communities are in transition as the mobility
of images, ideas and people lead simultaneously
to new fragilities and opportunities. Multi locational
living, with homes in urban as well as in rural places,
is becoming all the more common. This leads to
social transformations, to new alliances and linkages,
new assemblages and boundaries as well as to
the breakdown of older forms. For instance, the
attractiveness and aesthetics of place may become a
contested issue. Many rural residents no longer make a
living from natural resource-based production. Migrant
labour becomes vital to many rural economies but
migrants might face several problems in the receiving
countries, such as social exclusion or insufficient
legislation etc. Processes of inclusion and exclusion
may be at work in parallel and the ‘periurban’ and
the ‘rural’ characteristics may overlap, which brings
increasing rural complexities. How will this affect rural
areas? Will there be a deeper divide between remote
areas and those closer to urban centres? How are
these flows and mobilities explored in research
Politics and policy
Rural politics and rural policies are changing. In the
context of the EU, the integration of rural development
issues into the CAP is one aspect of this. What is on
the horizon beyond the present period of the EU rural
development programme? Changing regional policies
and welfare state regimes also affect rural areas.
New governance practices invite and open for new
constellations and partnerships in rural development.
Local and multilevel governance is becoming more
common, bringing the potential conflicts between
governance- and government-directed policies to the
fore. What characterises the relations between the
project-oriented rural “policy” and its actors and those
involved in planning and regulation? What concepts
of rurality underpin these different practices? How
are issues of local embeddedness and endogenous
development understood and handled in policy
processes?
 For sending abstracts to the different workshops »
Keynotes
Professor em Ottar Brox, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research
Professor Johannes Nørgaard Frandsen, University of Southern Denmark, Institute of Literature, Media and Cultral Studies
Professor Katherine Gibson, University of Western Sydney
Professor Erik Westholm, Institute for Future Studies, Stockholm
Planning Committee
The planning committee for
the conference includes:
Cecilia Waldenström, Assistant professor, Rural
Development, Swedish University of Agricultural
Sciences, Sweden
Ann-Kristin Ekman, Professor in Rural Development,
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Leif Berndtsson, Research coordinator, Swedish
National Rural Network
Lars Pettersson, Ph.D, Swedish Agricultural Board and
Jönköping University
Hilkka Vihinen, Professor of Rural Policy, MTT Agrifood
Research Finland
Michael Kull, Principal Research Scientist, MTT
Agrifood Research Finland
Hanne Tanvig, Senior researcher and adviser, Forest &
Landscape, University of Copenhagen
Marit S. Haugen, Research Manager, Centre for Rural
Research, Trondheim, Norway
Karl Benediktsson, Professor of Human Geography,
Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University
of Iceland
Conference coordinator is Stina Powell, Department of
Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences. Stina.Powell@sol.slu.se
The conference is hosted by the Department for
Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University
for Agricultural Sciences and Swedish National Rural
Network in collaboration.
We look forward to receiving your submissions, and to
meeting you in Sweden next year! Most welcome!
Deadlines
Sept 15th - call for workshops
Oct 15th - call for abstracts posted
Jan 7th - deadline for abstracts
Jan 20th - abstracts accepted/rejected
April 15th - deadline for papers
Registration to nrf@sol.slu.se no later than
March 15th, 2010.
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