ABSTRACT Rural areas are rapidly becoming the focal points of green transition and its associated political conflicts. The resulting ‘green discontent’ is currently fuelling a broader ‘rural discontent’. However, little is known about how people living in rural areas interpret green policies. In this study, we analyse interview data and examine focus groups with participants from two rural, peripheralised research areas in eastern Germany. Results reveal that questions of justice lie at the heart of green discontent and clarify how these questions align with people's experiences and conceptions of rural life. Based on Fraser's three dimensions of social justice and concepts of spatial justice, we examine green discontent as a multifaceted issue. Consequently, we emphasise the importance of attenuating, recognising and representing the profound (but sometimes mundane) changes caused by green policies to everyday rural realities.
ABSTRACT This article examines shame as a mechanism of control and resistance suppression among migrant women subjected to caporalato, an illegal system of labour intermediation and exploitation in Italian agriculture. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 28 women from nine African countries, the analysis shows how internalised and externally imposed shame reinforces compliance, constrains agency and sustains exploitative labour arrangements. Shame operates through linked mechanisms that include gendered obligations of caregiving and endurance, collective pressure that frames silence as loyalty and moral blackmail through which caporali present domination as protection. Within participants’ accounts, resistance becomes associated with dishonour and submission with survival, making refusal, reporting and exit socially and emotionally costly. Effective responses therefore require attention to the economic, legal, emotional and relational conditions that restrict migrant women's labour rights and capacity for resistance.
ABSTRACT Culture‐led village revitalisation is an emerging development concept and practice in contemporary China. Culture‐led village revitalisation is a form of endogenous rural development (ERD). We explore how the planned process of culture‐led village revitalisation mobilises local cultural resources, practices and identities to support place‐based development in villages. By analysing government policy documents and undertaking two case studies, Nandong Art Valley (in Xinjian Village on Zhoushan Island, Zhejiang Province) and Dahe Social Work Village (in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province), this paper investigates how culture‐led village revitalisation is conceptualised and enacted at the village level. We found that culture‐led village revitalisation can take diverse forms, ranging from tourism‐oriented cultural development to community‐based practices. While our example villages were largely consistent with ERD, they were shaped by contextual conditions and mediated through national policy frameworks. We highlight the opportunities and challenges of culture‐led approaches for local development, and we contribute to debates on the applicability of ERD beyond its European origins.
ABSTRACT In early 2024, Italian farmers launched large‐scale protests in response to a combination of economic pressures, regulatory burdens, market competition and EU agricultural and environmental policies, including measures associated with the European Green Deal. The protests brought to the fore a longstanding and multidimensional socio‐environmental cleavage, in which economic demands, environmental goals and the distribution of the costs of the green transition became increasingly intertwined. This article examines the controversy surrounding these protests, employing a combined methodological framework of agenda‐building theory and controversy mapping. The article traces the socio‐political dynamics behind the mobilisation, linking them to wider European and transnational tensions and showing how the common agricultural policy (CAP) became a contested battleground in the struggle over European green transition measures. Drawing on a comparative analysis of Italian newspaper coverage ( la Repubblica , Corriere della Sera and Il Giornale ) and activity on X (formerly Twitter) over a 6‐week period, we trace the discursive configurations of the protest across both legacy and social media, examining how the controversy unfolded in terms of actors, relationships, issues and frames. Our findings reveal that both arenas were dominated by conflict‐oriented frames, with traditional media closely following political cues, while social media provided faster and more polarised engagement, showing greater sensitivity and suitability for mobilisation. Across both, scientific and environmentalist perspectives were marginalised. The controversy ultimately reinforced Eurosceptic narratives and foregrounded short‐term economic and distributive concerns, contributing to a reframing of the sustainability agenda and narrowing the public space for green advocacy.
ABSTRACT This article examines the gendered pathways of rural housing among working‐class women who have left patriarchal family relations (through divorce or escape from violence) while remaining in the local worlds of traditional villages. The impact of these pioneering housing pathways on the transformation of rural gender relations is explored. The analysis is based on qualitative research conducted in eastern Poland, one of the most conservative and religious regions. Between 2018 and 2022, ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in post‐agricultural, Catholic and remote rural communities (16 villages). A total of 30 autobiographical interviews were conducted; three of these were selected for in‐depth analysis as cases illustrating typical patterns in the study. The concept of ‘gendered rural housing pathways’ is introduced to demonstrate that even in the most conservative, post‐agrarian and religious remote areas, working‐class women constitute a diverse group who, drawing on rural location‐specific capital and social networks, pursue their own paths of emancipation and contribute to the transformation of their communities.
