Rural Geography
Code: 101580 ECTS Credits: 6| Degree | Type | Year | Semester |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2501002 Geography and Spatial Planning | OB | 2 | 2 |
Contact
- Name:
- Ricard Morén Alegret
- Email:
- Ricard.Moren@uab.cat
Use of Languages
- Principal working language:
- catalan (cat)
- Some groups entirely in English:
- Yes
- Some groups entirely in Catalan:
- Yes
- Some groups entirely in Spanish:
- Yes
Other comments on languages
In this course the lecturer can communicate with students in English, Catalan and Spanish. Along the term, some reading in other languages might be suggested.Teachers
- Ricard Morén Alegret
Prerequisites
Students must have passed all the subjects related to the first academic year and the first semester of the second year in their graduate degree studies as well as must keep eagerness to learn.
This is a second semester course that will be generally developed through the UAB virtual campus (Moodle). Thus a very good Internet connection is required along the term. Furthermore, physical participation in some face-to-face activities will also be required, e.g. practical exercise and exams.
A minimum good command of Catalan, Spanish and English languages is required, particularly for reading a variety of academic texts.
Objectives and Contextualisation
Analysing, understanding and reflecting on the situation in contemporary rural areas at World level, with Europe, Spain and Catalonia as main places of reference.
Concretely, the objectives of the subject include analysing, understanding and reflecting on the main dynamics, processes and transformations at social, cultural, economic, territorial, population and environmental levels that one can find in rural areas.
Competences
- Analysing and explaining today's world events from a geographical point of view.
- Mastering the necessary theoretical knowledge in order to pose geographical problems in an integrated way and combining a generalist approach with a specialised analysis.
- Students must be capable of applying their knowledge to their work or vocation in a professional way and they should have building arguments and problem resolution skills within their area of study.
- Students must be capable of collecting and interpreting relevant data (usually within their area of study) in order to make statements that reflect social, scientific or ethical relevant issues.
Learning Outcomes
- Analysing the main dynamics of today's world from a geographical point of view.
- Contrasting and comparing relevant geographical data.
- Interpreting today's main events from physical, economic, social and cultural diversity.
- Posing problems about world inequality, population distribution, urbanisation, etc.
- Summarising acquired knowledge about the origin and transformations experienced in its several fields of study.
Content
- Rurality as geographical category of analysis
- Configuration and organisation of the contemporary agro-food system
- Agrarian activities: recent territorial transformations, dynamics and problems
- Agrarian Policy: intervention logics, instruments, institutions and agents
- Forestry spaces: recent territorial transformations, dynamics and problems
- Demo-geographic and gender dynamics and trends in rural areas: a variety of population movements
- Diversification and tertiarisation in rural areas: tourism or not tourism, that is a question
Methodology
-The evaluation will be continuous and most activities will be on-line via the virtual campus (Moodle). However, there will also be on-site physical activities too, e.g. in-class practical exercises/assignments, written exams. etc.
-The student will have a ‘no evaluable’ as a final grade if s/he hands in 0% of the course tasks. In other words, if the student does more than a 0% of the tasks s/he will be assessed.
-All activities have a deadline that must be met strictly, according to the proposed schedule.
-The student must take into account the news and information published on the Virtual Campus / Moodle. Usually, the two days devoted to on-line activities will be Tuesdays and Thursdays.
-To pass the subject students need a 5 (minimum) as a global final mark.
- In the event that tests or exams cannot be taken onsite, they will be adapted to an online format made available through the UAB’s virtual tools (original weighting will be maintained). Homework, activities and class participation will be carried out through forums, wikis and/or discussion on Teams, etc. Lecturers will ensure that students are able to access these virtual tools, or will offer them feasible alternatives.
QUALIFICATION:
- Individual practical exercises: 20% of the final mark
- Introduction to the course essay: 5% of the final mark
- Final course essay: 25% of the final mark
- Participation in on-line forums and other activities: 10%
- Presential written exams A & B: 40% of the final mark (20% each exam).
RESIT:
Resit will be offered to those students who did a continuous work along the course and failed or did not hand a few of the assignments or failed the exams. Some of the tasks cannot be re-evaluated (e.g. participation).
ATTENTION: In the event of astudent committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity, regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject.
Activities
| Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type: Directed | |||
| Directed exercises | 5 | 0.2 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| Oral presentations of students | 1 | 0.04 | 1, 3, 5 |
| Solving practical cases | 7 | 0.28 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| Theoretical classes | 28 | 1.12 | 1, 3, 4, 5 |
| Type: Supervised | |||
| Course essay | 18 | 0.72 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| Tutorials | 5 | 0.2 | 1, 3, 4, 5 |
| Type: Autonomous | |||
| Personal study on rural issues | 30 | 1.2 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| Reading | 30 | 1.2 | 1, 3, 4, 5 |
| Search for information | 15 | 0.6 | 2 |
Assessment
-The evaluation will be continuous, most activities are on-line (via Moodle) but some activities require physical presence on Bellaterra campus. For instance, there will be in-class practical exercises/assignments, written exams and an oral presentation in the classroom.
-The student will have a ‘no evaluable’ as a final grade if s/he hands in 0% of the course tasks. In other words, if the student does more than a 0% of the tasks s/he will be assessed.
-All activities have a deadline that must be met strictly, according to the proposed schedule. For all the activities, the working language is English.
-The student must take into account the news and information published on the Virtual Campus (Moodle) at least on a weekly basis. Usually, the two days devoted to on-line activities will be Tuesdays and Thursdays.
-To pass the subject students need a 5 (minimum) as a global final mark.
- In the event that tests or exams cannot be taken onsite, they will be adapted to an online format made available through the UAB’s virtual tools (original weighting will be maintained). Homework, activities and class participation will be carried out through forums, wikis and/or discussion on Teams, etc. Lecturers will ensure that students are able to access these virtual tools, or will offer them feasible alternatives.
VERY IMPORTANT: Partial or total plagiarising will immediately result in a FAIL (0) for the plagiarised exercise (first-year subjects) or the WHOLE SUBJECT (second-, third- and fourth-year subjects). PLAGIARISING consists of copying text from unacknowledged sources -whether this is part of a sentence ora whole text- with the intention of passing it off as the student's own production. It includes cutting and pasting fromInternet sources, presented unmodified in the student's own text. Plagiarising is a SERIOUS OFFENCE. Students must respect authors' intellectual property, always identifyingthe sources they may use; they must also be responsible for the originality and authenticity of their own texts.
In the event of a student committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity, regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject.
RESIT:
-Resit will be offered to those students who did a continuous and on-site course and failed or did not hand just a few of the assignments or failed one of the exams. Some of the tasks cannot be re-evaluated (e.g. participation).
-Resit will consist in a written exam, which will contain all the content given throughout the course, as wellas other exercises, essays, reports, etc. that were wrong or were not submitted during the evaluation period.
Assessment Activities
| Title | Weighting | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Course essay | 30% | 5 | 0.2 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| Exam 1 | 20% | 1.5 | 0.06 | 1, 3, 5 |
| Exam 2 | 20% | 1.5 | 0.06 | 1, 3, 4, 5 |
| Participation, debates, presentations | 10% | 1 | 0.04 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| Practical exercises, reports | 20% | 2 | 0.08 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
Bibliography
Bibliography and websites
a) Some rural publications:
Abbots, Emma-Jayne; Lavis, Anna (2013), Why we eat, how we eat. Contemporary encounters between foods and bodies, Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate.
Aldomà, Ignasi (2015) (dir.) Atles de la nova ruralitat, Lleida: FMR. (http://www.fmr.cat/atles/descarrega 2015.htm ).
Amor, Concepción S. (1934) La escuela rural activa, Madrid: Publicaciones de la Revista de Pedagogía.
Brown, David L. & Schafft, Kai A. (2019) Rural People and Communities in the 21st Century. Resilience and Transformation, Cambridge, UK / Medford, US: Polity Press.
Camarero, Luis (2009), La població rural a Espanya. Dels desequilibris a la sostenibilitat social, Barcelona: Fundació “la Caixa”.
Cloke, Paul; Marsden, Terry; Mooney, Patrick (2006), Handbook of rural studies, London: Sage.
Corchón, Eudaldo (2000) La escuela rural: Pasado, presente y perspectivas de futuro, Vilassar de Mar (Barcelona): Oikos-Tau.
Delgado, María del Mar (2004), La política rural europea en la encrucijada, Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura Pesca y Alimentación.
Essex, Stephen et al. (eds.) (2005), Rural change and sustainability : agriculture, the environment and communities ,Wallingford; Cambridge : CABI Publishing.
Etxezarreta, Miren (Coord.) (2006), La agricultura española en la era de la globalización, Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura Pesca y Alimentación.
FAO (2016), La alimentación y la agricultura: claves para la ejecución de laAgenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible, Roma: FAO (http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5499s.pdf).
Guirado, Carles; Valldeperas, Natàlia, Tulla, Antoni F. (2017), L'agricultura social a Catalunya. Desenvolupament local i ocupació per a col.lectius en risc d'exclusió social, Barcelona: Cossetània.
Jean, Yves; Périgord, Michel (2009) Géographie Rurale. La ruralité en France, París: Armand Colin.
Kordel, Stefan et al. (eds.) (2018) Processes of Immigration in Rural Europe, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK:Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Lamo de Espinosa, Jaime (2009), El nuevo sistema agroalimentario en una crisis global, Almería: Fundación Cajamar.
McAreavey, Ruth (2017) New Immigration Destinations. Migrating to Rural and Peripheral Areas, London: Routledge.
Morén-Alegret, Ricard & Wladyka, Dawid (2019) International Immigration, Integration and Sustainability in Small Towns and Villages. Socio-Territorial Challenges in Rural and Semi-Rural Europe, London: Palgrave Macmillan / Springer.
Moreno, Luís; Sánchez, Maria Mercedes; Simões, Orlando (2009) Cultura, Inovação e Territorio. O Agroalimentar e o Rural, Lisboa: SPER.
Munton, Richard (2008), The Rural. Critical Essays in Human Geography, Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Population, Space and Place (2008), núm. monogràfic “International Migration to Non-Metropolitan Areas”, 14(6), Wiley, Interscience.
Reguant, Francesc (coord.) (2016), Estructures productives i cadena alimentària. Lleida: Agroforum.
Robinson, Jo (2016) Theatre & the Rural, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ruiz Pulpón, A. Raúl; Serrano de la Cruz, Manuel A.; Plaza Tabasco, Julio (eds.) (2016), Treinta años de la PAC enEspaña. Agricultura y multifuncionalidad en el contextode la nueva ruralidad, Ciudad Real: Óptima Ediciones.
Woods, Michael (2005), Rural geography : processes, responses and experiences in ruralrestructuring, London : SAGE.
Woods, Michael (2010), Rural, London, Routledge.
b) Some academic journals devoted to rural issues:
Ager-Revista de Estudios Sobre Despoblación y Desarrollo Rural
Études Rurales
Journal of Rural Studies
Journal of Peasant Studies
Rur@lités
Rural Sociology
Sociologia Ruralis