Multifunctional ‘quality’ and rural community resilience

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute towards emergent debates on the ‘quality’ of multifunctional trajectories in rural development. The focus will be placed on the local rural community level, as it is at this level that multifunctionality is most often implemented. There has been an identified need for a new concept of multifunctionality that is conceptually and theoretically better anchored in current debates on agricultural/rural change, and for a globally applicable model that draws on existing holistic debates. The paper will suggest a conceptual framework for understanding rural community trajectories based on economic, social and environmental resilience and vulnerability of rural areas. The notion of multifunctional quality will emerge not only as a conceptual model for understanding rural pathways of change, but also as an explanatory tool and as a normative ideal for rural development. The paper builds on debates on multifunctionality extensively shaped by human geographers with the aim to extend the conceptual boundaries of the notion of multifunctionality, to further refine existing understandings of multifunctional transitions in rural communities, and to critically interrogate the components for strong multifunctionality. The paper concludes with a discussion of the complex policy implications associated with a transition from weak to strong multifunctionality.