This book reflects on how the economies, social characteristics, ways of life and global relationships of rural areas of Europe have changed in recent years. This reveals a need to refresh the concepts we use to understand, measure, and describe rural communities, and their development potential. This book argues that Europe has "outgrown" many of the stereotypes usually associated with it, with substantial implications for European rural policy.

Andrew K. Copus is an Economic Geographer with the Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences Group at The James Hutton Institute, Scotland, UK.

Philomena de Lima is a Sociologist and the Director of the Centre for Rural and Remote Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands, Inverness College, Scotland, UK.

I. Contemporary Rural Change and the concept of Territorial Cohesion 1. Introduction 2. The New Rural Economy and macro-scale patterns 3. The evolution of European rural policy 4. Parallel Worlds? Comparing the perspectives and rationales of EU Rural Development and Cohesion Policy 5. Territorial Cohesion: US and Canadian Perspectives on the Concept II. The changes taking place in Rural Europe 6. Demographic trends in Rural Europe 7. Reconciling Labour Mobility and Cohesion Policies 8. Business networks and translocal linkages and the way to the NRE 9. Agricultural Restructuring in the EU: An Irish Case Study III. Impacts and Opportunities for Intervention 10. Changing social characteristics, patterns of inequality and exclusion 11. Beyond the New Rural Paradigm: Project state and collective reflexive agency