RURALITIC at the 16th World Congress of Rural Sociology
What can people’s daily lives tell us about rural Europe?
At the 16th World Congress of Rural Sociology, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from 19 to 23 July 2026, RURALITIC researchers explored how work, travel and social relationships are changing rural areas.
Organised by the International Rural Sociology Association and hosted by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul alongside the 64th Congress of the Brazilian Society of Rural Economics, Management and Sociology, the event brought together 1,553 participants. Its theme, “Policies for Nature, Food and Nutrition in Times of Uncertainty and Climate Change”, prompted discussions about rural life, agriculture, food systems, the environment and public policy.
The RURALITIC team took part in the panel “Beyond urban and rural sociology: towards a spatialised and circulatory analysis of social structure”. Discussions looked beyond the idea of the countryside as separate from the city, asking how relationships, inequalities and movement between places shape rural life.
Understanding rural Europe through social relationships
RURALITIC researchers Virgílio Borges Pereira, Gilles Laferté and Troels Schultz Larsen presented “A Social Space Approach to Investigate Rural Europe: An Outline of a State of the Art”. Their paper explored how Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas about resources, dispositions and social positions can help explain changes in rural life. Drawing on both established and more recent rural sociology research, it examined how people’s place in society relates to where they live, and how these relationships shape inequalities between places.
This work contributes to RURALITIC’s framework for studying rural Europe. Sharing it at the congress gave the researchers a chance to discuss their ideas with colleagues and consider how to develop the approach further.
How work and travel are changing rural life
Virgílio Borges Pereira and João Queirós presented a second paper, “Towards a Spatialised and Circulatory Analysis of Rural Social Structures: Evidence from a Sociological Revisit in North-West Portugal”. Based on a long-term research programme at the University of Porto, the study used surveys, statistical analysis, maps, in-depth interviews and fieldwork to follow changes in rural communities over time.
Returning to places studied in earlier research, the team examined how people’s homes, jobs and social positions had changed. They found a growing reliance on wage work, a smaller role for agriculture and more commuting, alongside changes in how places are used and perceived. These findings show why a simple rural–urban divide cannot fully explain people’s lives: connections between places matter too.
Why this matters for RURALITIC
The two papers brought together ideas about rural society and evidence of how it is changing. For RURALITIC, this means looking at where people live alongside their jobs, resources and relationships, and following the connections between rural and urban areas.
The congress was also a chance to exchange ideas with researchers from the wider rural sociology community. Those discussions will help the team develop its approach as RURALITIC’s comparative research continues.
“Rural life does not stop at a boundary on a map. To understand it, we need to look at how people live, where they work and how they move between places. Our research in north-west Portugal helps us follow these changes over time. Discussing this work with colleagues at the congress gave us a chance to rethink our questions and consider what they mean for RURALITIC.” Virgílio Borges Pereira, researcher at the University of Porto
The team will draw on these discussions as it develops RURALITIC’s framework for understanding rural life and change across Europe.
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