Rural change and farming resilience ‘on the ground’: approaching a relational perspective to strengthen local governance in the Brazilian countryside

Abstract

Globalisation in a rural context has commonly focused on large-scale structural changes, transnational commodity chains or dramatic examples of rapid spatial transformations. The challenges for rural areas in the early twenty-first century such as local governance and resilience of communities to macro-scalar lock-in effects have also received more attention. This article argues that processes of rural change and farming resilience should be investigated ‘on the ground’ where it will lead to tangible changes in the social community interactions and local micro-politics. Different types of knowledge, organisations, innovations and cross-scale linkages are part of this relational process in which rural actors (e.g. small-scale farmers and their farming communities) are proactive in the face of rural change. The article highlights theoretical patterns and processes of resilience and local governance, bringing in examples from the rural periphery of Greater Rio de Janeiro, where farming communities have adapted to new scenarios that have arisen over the past decades in the context of urbanisation and industrialisation in Brazil.