Building bridges across the plurality of rural development research

Résumé En

This short introduction, and the collection of contributions that follows, underlines the duality of the world we live in and experience everyday, and the way scholars and practitioners from different regions and disciplines attempt to reveal and make sense of this world. The entanglement of intangible and tangible dimensions produces consequences for both the material and imaginative opportunities available for rural places to find meaningful current and future pathways to their desired futures. The tangible dimension, which deals with the materiality of the world, concretely impacts lives. The outcomes of the actions we implement in everyday life can contribute to or subtract from one’s happiness, feelings of satisfaction, completion, and attainment. In this perspective, the autonomy and capacity of decision-makers are connected to the genuine use of resources to reach goals, generate income, cope with change, respond to threats... Those actions stem from belief and value systems which underly decision-making processes. Experience, successes, and errors contribute to updating held beliefs, strengthening what works, and modifying what does not. The interactions among tangible and intangible dimensions are well illustrated in this special issue of The Annals of Regional Science and appear in discussions on the appearance and the essence of agritourism, the tangible and intangible assets used to capture value, the connection between identity and the physical environment, the material and immaterial resources engaged in an innovation process, as well as the philosophies underlying multi-level governance.