Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the case of neo-rurality in southern Italy, focusing on how farmers propose a new combination of economic practices and value production in an alternative food system. Neo-rurality is a narrative-based brand that represents various ideals, values and marketing behaviors.

Paper long abstract:

Agriculture and rural life have changed their role in post-modern society. This study aims to picture how neo-rurality as a narrative-based brand represents various ideals, values and marketing behaviors, collecting in a common narrative different ways in which farmers create a mediatic space. There, producers meet consumers, they measure and communicate the value of local quality food products in a different way, bridging the gap between supply and demand in the market in a collaborative dimension. The new approach of neo-rurality exponents (Ferraresi, 2013) promotes a new relationship between production and consumption. They are not only anti-consumerist: they articulate in a different way sustainability, visions of market relations, values and practices (Sassatelli, 2015).

After 26 interviews, undertaken in Campania region during summer 2015, our preliminary results point out that, through the common narrative, farmers are constructing a “neo-rurality” brand that works as platform for action (Arvidsson, 2005). Their purpose is the re-appropriation of material, cultural and social factors in the production of local high-quality food. Their innovation process follows a strategy that recalls the creation of new organizational forms, while contributing to set a higher standard for quality and authenticity of local food and its economic value.

According to the findings we conclude that neo-rural farmers are promoting a collective narrative of neo-rurality as brand trough which they construct an ethical and disintermediated approach to the food market, where products' value is not defined only by economic aspects, but is also founded on human and social components (Arvidsson, Peitersen, 2013).