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Since the mid-1980s, rural areas and populations have become an important part of the political agenda, and the term rural has become associated with the issue of development. As «development» refers to the future, the resulting combination, rural development, reveals a certain uncertainty and preoccupation regarding the present. Rural, today, means difficulties, continual social change and, also, continued political, economic and social intervention.

This book is intended to be part of current reflections on the present and future of rural areas and, more concretely, on the populations that reside in them. The transition from industrial economies to post-industrial, the growth of the information society and the new framework for economic and social relations in a context of globalisation are different expressions of the social changes taking place. Changes which are affecting rural areas as they increasingly participate in them with greater intensity.