First published in 1999, this volume features articles from 19 contributors on local responses to global integration, with a focus on rural areas and their adoption of new functions as both producers and consumers. It responds to a crisis in the regulatory framework and reconsiders globality, revealing new forms of production and consumption developing in diverse ways amongst these global rural communities. Authors from Australia, Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Venezuela are represented.

1. Introduction: Local Boundaries or Embeddedness in the Global? Charalambos Kasimis and Apostolos G. Papadopoulos. Part 1. Globalization, Diversity and Rural Space. 2. Modernity, Globalization and the Rural World. Göran Therborn. 3. Towards a Theoretical Understanding of the Generation of Diversity in Rural Areas. Gaston Remmers. 4. Changing Spaces: the Effects of Macro-Social Forces on Regional Australia. Geoffrey Lawrence, Ian Gray and Daniela Stehlik. Part 2. Farmers and Farming Women. 5. Grounding Gloablization Theory: Local Responses to Global Processes in the Light of the Global-Local Links Debate in Rural Sociology. Luis Llambi, Eliézer Arias and Germán Freire. 6. Between Global and Local: State Mediation of Gender Relations in Farming. Sally Shortall. Part 3. Communities and Households. 7. Social Identification with Local Communities and the Globalization Process in Rural Areas of Eastern Europe. Pawel Starosta and Mariana Draganova. 8. Global Changes and Individual Responses in Rural Areas: The Dynamics of Low Income and Household Economic Status. Esperanza Vera-Toscano and Pollyanna Chapman. Part 4. Local and Regional Development. 9. Globalization and Rural Development: Demographic Revitalization, Entrepreneurs and Small Business Formation in the West of Ireland. Perpetua McDonagh and Patrick Commins. 10. Seeking Local Citizenship: Towards a New Sense of the Local? Nicholas Mack. 11. Rural Development Policy in Finland in the 1990s: Towards Flexible Specialization or Spatial Taylorism? Petri Ruuskanen. 12. Revisiting the Rural: A Southern Response to European Integration and Globalization. Apostolos G. Papadopoulos.