Sustainability and rural culture: Towards alternative models of rural development. A proposal from Catalonia

This paper has the objective of examining the relationships between rural culture and sustainability taking as an example the case of Catalonia. We argue that these relationships are mediated by particular and antagonic views of nature and society, of cities and the countryside as Strictly separated environments. In our opinion, this separation is critical to understand the problematic relationships that exist between rural culture and environmental conservation. Within Geography there have been various attempts to overcome the dualism nature-society such as systems theory, historical materialism o, more recently, actor-network theory. This last approach offer a relational view of interest for geographers and naturesociety studies in that it dilutes dualisms in network of actors, both natural and social. The end of tensions between rural and urban areas could come through a new social contract admitting the specificities of the rural and offering a guarantee of a rural sustainability not threatening the productive base. The paper draws the basic lines of this contract and ends with a brief methodological account on how to (re)examine the relationships between sustainability and rural culture.