The Changing Faces of Rural Spain.

Press, Irwin; Aceves, Joseph B.; Douglass, William A.

doi:10.2307/2065021

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Also in Catalonia, groups of young people left the city in search of an alternative lifestyle, away from the crowded city, rampant consumerism, and what they perceived as alienated lives (Martínez Illa, 1987;Nogué, 1988). Even if it could not be described as a mass phenomenon, it was powerful enough to leave behind a footprint of the first lifestyle migrants to rural areas, countering the dominant emigration in the opposite direction (Aceves & Douglass, 1976).…”

Section: The Commons As a Utopiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Reimagining modern politics in the European mountains: confronting the traditional commons with the neo-rural conception of the common good

Vaccaro,

Beltran,

Del Mármol

2023

Theor Soc

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Since at least the 1970s, the countryside of Western Europe has been the site of a myriad of “new” communal initiatives. Rural areas that were abandoned during the last century have witnessed the arrival of new inhabitants. These newcomers often flock to the mountains escaping urban lifestyles characterized by individualism, mass-oriented livelihoods, and isolation. Many of these individuals move to areas like the Catalan Pyrenees, where common property and communal institutions have had a strong historical presence. In embracing rural life, these new inhabitants are looking for a more integrated social life in which the commons are, on the one hand, a form of collective private property, and, on the other, represent a more egalitarian way of life in which contributing to the collective effort is not only an efficient way of dealing with particularly harsh ecological conditions, but also an ideological statement that defines the community as something different: an alternative to urban capitalism. Two definitions of the commons are colliding in these mountains; two longstanding lines of political thought are converging and establishing a dialogue that is not always easy: (1) traditional ideologies of land ownership that defined common property over the centuries, not based on economic equality, but on private property and locally shared responsibility on the economic base of the community; and (2) utopian anti-capitalism that views the commons as an alternative mode of social organization and ownership based on egalitarianism.

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Section: The Commons As a Utopiamentioning

confidence: 99%