Abstract

ACOSTA-NARANJO, Rufino  and  RODRIGUEZ-FRANCO, Ramón. Cultivating biodiversity: Stakeholders and strategies in the context of the new rural life in Spain. Agrociencia [online]. 2014, vol.48, n.1, pp.115-130. ISSN 2521-9766.

The recovery of local varieties is an area of growing interest, in which different social actors and institutions with various interests and motivations are present. The initiatives consist of a process of building a new status of social relevance by introducing native varieties as biodiversity, a concept and a problem associated with it and assumed as crucial worldwide. Similarly, local varieties are subject to a process of patrimonialization and as image of the territory, like other elements of popular culture and history related to the idiosyncratic, the vernacular and the natural. All this is related to the specific ways of producing rurality and redefining territories in contemporary societies and fleshing out the political agendas. To analyze the interests and actions of different groups involved in this process is the main objective of this study, resulting from two research projects carried out in southern Spain through anthropological fieldwork, including participant observation and interviews. The recovery process of local varieties is a manifestation of the various ways in which the rural context undergoes a process of reconfiguration, of resignification of its culture and appreciation of its potential, which until recent times remained discredited and invisible. This research shows how it may be possible to create alliances between different stakeholders to defend the rural environment, having biodiversity as the field of dispute and negotiation; and conceived as a key factor for the survival of life and one of the main assets of rural society for a new social contract with the rural sector.

Keywords : local varieties; biodiversity; new rurality; ecological anthropology.

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