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Rural spaces are relevant to several topics which are currently subject of public debate. Climate change, ecological disasters, reproduction technologies and live-stock breeding, environmental and animal protection movements confront technological feasibility with ethical principles. Rural spaces are thus important arenas in which concepts for the future are negotiated. And here history comes in: the countryside, nature, landscapes, and province formed places and spaces where historical change became perceptible in the past and where the challenges of the future will become visible. The special issue reflects on how to connect these challenges to empirical studies on rurality. It brings together the results of an international and interdisciplinary research group which discussed the potential of three theoretical concepts regarding the meanings of rurality: space, media/translation, and materiality. The empirical studies focus on rural societies in East Central Europe from the early modern times to contemporary developments. By this we break with the frequent tendency to test new research approaches primarily on examples in the "global West" or in metropolitan areas.
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Dietlind Hüchtker is a Professor of Historical Transregional Studies at the University of Vienna. She focuses on the history of rurality, knowledge, and sciences in European and East European History.
Claudia Kraft is a Professor at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. She specializes in 20th century comparative European and particularly Central and Eastern European History.
Margareth Lanzinger is Professor of Social and Economic History from the 16th to the 19th Century at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses mainly on marriage, family and kinship as well as wealth, inequality, social and local organization.
