Abstract

VAN DER PLOEG, Jan Douwe. Rural development trajectories: international comparative research. Sociologias [online]. 2011, vol.13, n.27, pp. 114-140. ISSN 1517-4522.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1517-45222011000200006.

This paper contains a critical reflection on a comparative analysis of rural development processes in Brazil, the European Union and China. It argues that those contextual elements and/or process characteristics that are mostly ignored by a case-study approach (for being more or less invisible and/or for being more or less self-evident) might come to the fore through a comparative approach. Simultaneously, the particular nature of single rural development processes might equally be specified through systematically organized comparisons. In this way, current rural development processes are characterized as a set of responses to market failures - a set of responses that requires and involves the active construction of new, nested markets.

Keywords : Rural development; Nested markets; Comparative analysis; Brazil; China; European Union.