Small farmers and new rural living in western Mexico [Pequeños agricultores y nueva ruralidad en el occidente de México]

Abstract

Small farmers in Zapotlán El Grande, Mexico, are living through important changes in their production and consuming practises, as a result of the structural modification of Mexican economy and its impact on agriculture, as well as Ciudad Guzmán's urban growth. The present paper shows how these changes are of such a different nature that they reveal a rural world which was completely different from the model which took shape in rural sociology. Thus, the concept of new rural living is a pertinent one, as it underlines the fact that rural-agricultural dichotomy, as opposed to urban-industrial dichotomy, reflects, more than ever, real life in small communities, or their relationship with cities and the global world.