O capital social dos territórios: repensando o desenvolvimento rural

Abstract

Rural development can be rethought on the basis of two main intellectual lines. One of them stresses the concept of social capital, defined as a set of resources destined to promote a better use of economic assets by individuals and by entreprises; the other enphasizes the territorial dimension of development and insists that competitivity is a caracteristic of the "milieu" and not only of each firm. The convergence between these two lines ofthought can enlarge the reflexion about the countryside: rural areas are notjust the physical basis of an economic sector nor are they the residual of what doesn't belong to cities.