Inventing Agricultural Humanities via Revitalizing New Ruralism Tea-Town in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper examines the most effective ways of engaging citizens to appreciate rural villages and agriculture traditions. Pondering on experiences of rural revitalizations in Asian societies, this paper proposes the concept of "participatory agricultural humanities." Participatory agricultural humanities are tools and processes engaging citizens into eco-friendly farming and land related works or events. Based on action research and qualitative research methods, we have been working with peri-urban and rural communities in Taiwan since 2009. Only embracing agricultural humanities as our values, we could re-establish eco-friendly rural developments with biodiversity and cultural diversity as a whole.Keywords: agricultural humanities; rural revitalization; participation; new ruralism.eISSN 2398-4295 © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21834/ajbes.v3i13.147