RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIOLOGY

Course unit code: 312E204
Mode of completion and ECTS credits allocated: Exam (3 credits)

Objectives and learning outcomes of the course unit:
 The main aim of the course is to introduce the contemporary countryside as a sociologically interesting space and to explain the principles and concepts of the the modern rural development. The course also characterizes the agriculture and farming as social acitivities and it points out the milestones in social change of countryside and agriculture in the 20th century. Satisfactory completion of the course enables the student (i) to understand the rural space and agriculture in a wider societal cultural historical context and (ii) to analyze them using the social sciences research methods and techniques.

Course contents:
The origin, the content and the development of rural and agricultural sociology stressing the Czechoslovak institutions, personalities and its scholarly orientations. The sociological interpretation of rural and urban. Indicators of the rural, the functions of countryside in the contemporary society, problems of rural communities and municipalities. Basic theses of the rural development strategy. The impacts and outcomes of the modernization, globalization and transformation on the rural space. Agriculture and farming as the social activities whith multidimensional functions. The development of the agrarian structure and social consequences of the agrarian transformation in Slovakia.