Challenges for a shared European countryside of uncertain future. Towards a modern community based landscape perspective

This paper addresses current changes in the highly diverse European landscape, and the way these transitions are being treated in policy and landscape management in the fragmented, heterogeneous and dynamic context of today’s Europe. It appears that intersecting driving forces are increasing the complexity of European landscapes and causing polarising developments in agricultural land use, biodiversity conservation and cultural landscape management. On the one hand, multifunctional rural landscapes, especially in peri-urban regions, provide services and functions that serve the citizens in their demand for identity, support their sense of belonging and offer opportunities for recreation and involvement in practical landscape management. On the other hand, industrial agricultural production on increasingly large farms produces food, feed, fibre and energy to serve expanding international markets with rural live ability and accessibility as a minor issue. The intermediate areas of traditionally dominant small and family farms in Europe seem to be gradually declining in profitability. The paper discusses the potential of a governance approach that can cope with the requirement of optimising land-sharing conditions and community-based landscape development, while adapting to global market conditions.

Community School of São Miguel de Machede: A decade of Learning

the Community School of São Miguel de Machede exists since 1998. A model of Community Education has been developed in this decade of existence, which not being confined to the frequent profiles of the most common approaches in Adult Education, has been the result of a process of symbiosis between a practice that normally precedes the conceptualization and a thought which has always expressed the concern of interpreting and enrich that practice. Setting on a model of learning based on the PADéCA – Program of Helping the Development of the Capacity to Learn, proposed by Berbaum (1988), the Community School of São Miguel de Machede has been developing several activities centred on a fundamental concern: to create easy and qualified accesses, in this community (council of Evora), so that the respective members can learn to exercise their principal rights of citizenship, in the territory where they live and in a circumstance of equality of opportunities in relation to the remaining fellow countrymen. Being a project with a decade of life, it is now possible to speak of a history full of stories and learning experiences, which occurred as a result of a rich interaction between the initial thoughts and impulses of the theoretical approaches and a reality full of unexpectedness, mutability and humanity resulting from the complexity that a living community presents, with a history and a present, but not always with clear and positive idea about the respective future.

The moderating effect of gender on the relationship between coping and suicide risk in a Portuguese community sample of adults

Background and aims(s): The study evaluated the contribution of coping strategies, based on the Toulousiane conceptualization of coping, to the prediction of suicide risk and tested the moderating effect of gender, controlling for depressive symptoms. Method: A two-time data collection design was used. A community sample of 195 adults (91 men and 104 women) ranging in age from 19 to 65 years and living in several Portuguese regions, mostly in Alentejo, participated in this research. Results: Gender, depressive symptoms, control, and withdrawal and conversion significantly predicted suicide risk and gender interacted with control, withdrawal and conversion, and social distraction in the prediction of suicide risk. Coping predicted suicide risk only for women. Conclusions: Results have important implications for assessment and intervention with suicide at-risk individuals. In particular,the evaluation and development of coping skills is indicated as a goal for therapists having suicide at-risk women as clients.