Diverging sociocultural visions of the rural and land use conflicts in times of crisis. Solar farm development and farmland dispossession

The countryside has now become a field of complex and diverse cultural and economic reconstructions, directly related to the development of non-agricultural activities and, more broadly, the tertiary sectorization of rural areas. The various socio-economic transformations observed at the local or regional level highlight the multifunctional character of the countryside and the end of the single-productive role of agriculture in the economic and social restructuring of rural areas. In the context of this constantly changing social reality, the dynamics of practices related to the appropriation and management of natural resources and the consequent claims of rural spaces by social actors with conflicting interests, different cultural representations of the "rural," and divergent valuations of "nature" and agricultural land are of particular interest. Under these conditions, this article, drawing on empirical data from a peri-urban rural area in Boeotia, focuses on: a) the study and highlighting of the social, economic, cultural, and productive relationships that arise from conflicting processes of appropriation and exploitation of agricultural land (preservation or grabbing), b) the re-signification of land resources and heritage under the involvement of stereotypical perceptions of social actors, c) the ways in which different strategies for productive restructuring of the countryside are formed, and d) the role that cultural parameters play in the processes of meaning-making of the natural environment and rural lifestyles.