The XIII World Congress of Rural Sociology will be held at two different venues.

Plenary Conferences in the first day will be at the Reitoria of the University of Lisbon, namely in its Aula Magna located at the University Campus.

Ordinary Sessions and Symposia will take place at the Superior Institute of Social and Political Sciences at the Campus da Ajuda in Lisbon.

Call for proposals to participate on the 16 Session of the XIII World Congress of Rural Sociology to be held in Lisbon.

Session 16: New ruralities - Between virtual discourses, social imaginaries and urban consumptions

Convenors:

• Elisabete Figueiredo;
  
• Isabel Rodrigo; Luís Silva

Abstract

Various rural areas around the world experienced significant processes of reconfiguration and reinvention over the last decades in consequence of increasing global socio-economic dynamics of change. Many of these reconfiguration processes are fostered by current, often external, social discourses, representations and consumptions on rural ways of life, symbols, traditions and landscapes. Rurality seems increasingly deterritorized and delocalized, that is, increasingly independent of the actual characteristics of rural territories, being the symbolic representations of the rural and rurality apparently disconnected from their geographical references, consequently giving rise to a virtual and intangible rural.

• To assess the means through which such discourses and representations are conveyed (e.g. internet, computer games, newspapers, television programs, tourism promotional materials, political discourses, consumption practices, etc);
• To analyze the content of those imaginaries and consumptions on ruralities (e.g. symbols, objects, images, etc);
• To address the materialization of discourses, images and consumptions on rural territories and their processes of reinvention.

Proposals

Proposals are invited that offer both conceptual reflections on these (or related) topics as well as empirically derived insights. We kindly request authors to submit online their abstracts no later than 15th January 2012 according to the IRSA requests (http://irsa2012.com/event/irsa-2012/proposals/). Abstracts should be written in English and cannot exceed 150 words.