Rural changes: Their types and effects on rural capital

Abstract

"Rural areas are changing" is the favorite quote of rural studies in the last few decades. Although this is the fact, current dynamics in rural areas have become the challenging research topic. The diversity and uniqueness of rural areas, the difficulty to define and classify them due to the last transformations occurred, have led researchers to focus on case-study specific changes. This new dynamism in rural areas can be caused by internal factors (e.i. assets of a given rural region), external factors (e.i. national politics) or their combination. It is certain that the dominant indicators and their impacts on the rural change differ according to the unique features of rural areas.. Nevertheless, it is worthy to define common points which have already created great shifts or are able to create further that give new role to rural areas in the global scene. Therefore, in this study, we try to classify the rural changes and we offer a typology of this regeneration which is followed with a SWOT analysis on the basis of the possible and current effects of these changes on rural capital