Focusing on the demands of the new innovative, sustainable and inclusive rural development paradigm, the monograph raises the discussion regarding new approaches and success factors that are vital in current rural socio-economic development and policy transformations. The bottom-up policymaking, self-organization, creative use of knowledge in rural areas, and many other rural innovations are aligned in this book with new social movements’ theories, which help disclose, explore and explain the rural development paradigm shift. Rural development forces of the 21^st century center on the agents of change - rural population, and, surprisingly - urban population(!), and the political debate concerning EU Common Agricultural Policy and European Green Deal, illustrated with multiple case studies.  This book will be of interest to a broad audience of readers, keen on scientific, political, and practical issues of innovations in rural areas and their future development pathways.

The monograph is authored by a team of scholars from the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Institute of Economics and Rural Development, Department of Rural Development.

 Dr. Rita Vilkė is a senior researcher and her main research interests are social responsibility in economically viable and sustainable regional and rural development, modern business models.

 Dr. Dalia Vidickienė is a principal researcher and her main interest centers on rural development and regional innovation policy, strategic management and business models, paradigm innovations.

 Dr. Živilė Gedminaitė-Raudonė is a senior researcher and her main research focus is sustainable regional and rural development, circular economy, innovation ecosystems.   

 Dr. Vitalija Simonaitytė is a researcher and her recent research focus is sustainable regional and rural development policy, interest groups, local and regional actors.

 Erika Ribašauskienė is a researcher and her research focus is sustainable regional and rural development practices, local and regional stakeholders, rural crafts, and business models.

“Revolutions are born from the bottom up, growing in a small group of people to explode and change reality. It is the people, their charisma and ideas that change the established paradigms of development, and the role of good researchers is to capture these processes, name and document them, and lead us to consider their effects in the future. This is the case with this book, as it proves that social movements, which have been the subject of research for decades, are still an important part of how economies and societies change and progress. This very timely book is written from the perspective of experienced researchers and sensitive observers of rural change, and it is worth reading because it describes the processes that have brought about the green transformation and are now changing not only rural areas but the entire global economy.” (Dr. Paweł Chmieliński, President of the European Rural Development Network and Professor at the Institute of Rural and AgriculturalDevelopment, Polish Academy of Sciences).

“This monograph is a timely and significant call to take a new look at numbers of already matured and ongoing innovations in rural areas around the world. Authors of the book masterfully use the grounding of the social movements’ theory to the ongoing processes in rural areas, thus proposing a brand-new consideration of the rural paradigm shift. To disclose the reasoning behind the social movements, the monograph takes focus on actors of change and gets deeper into the context of ongoing organized changes in rural areas, distinguishing between the industrial paradigm grounded rural social movements and new post-industrial change-focused rural social movements, putting them into the general context of European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and European Green Deal (EGD) principles. This monograph is based on a holistic approach. Systematic, evolutionary, and actor methodologies were used. Finally, in-depth illustrations of ongoing processes using multiple case studies of rural social movements significantly add to the existing body of knowledge in this field of science.” 

(Prof. Dr. Maria Nijnik, Principal Scientist of The James Hutton Institute, UK, Coordinator of H2020 SIMRA project “Social Innovation in marginalised rural areas").

“The remarkable book, which applying a rich methodological apparatus of qualitative research step by step reveals the role of individual and territorial social capital for the post-industrial transformation of rural territories, it offers more questions than answers. The holistic approach used by authors simply does not allow to formulate unambiguous answers in the context of the investigated causes of genesis and impacts of (new) social movements on innovative, sustainable, and inclusive rural development. There does not exist only one generally valid and accepted model of explanation and assessment for changes induced by spatial redistribution of population, uneven diffusion of new types of knowledge and practical involvement of local actors with different interests and interpretations of rural development. Through tacit and/or explicitly formulated questions, the authors “play an exciting game” that will delight anyone interested in a deeper understanding of the ongoing transformation of the European countryside.” 

(Dr. Vladimír Székely, senior researcher of Institute of Geography, Slovak Academy of Sciences).

Examines the interconnected nature of transf?orming agricultural business and rural communities Uses Lithuania as a lens through which to compare the development of former Communist, and Western, agricultural business Explores how UN regulation and policy is implemented at the local level

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