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Accounting for more than half of the European Union's (EU) territory, agriculture ensures food production, manages important natural resources and supports socio-economic development of rural areas. Moreover, it is estimated that 50% of all plant and animal species (including some of that are listed in the EU Habitat Directive) depend on agricultural practices. The continuation of appropriate agricultural land management is essential to ensure these primary functions. Avoidance of farmland abandonment is therefore an important rationale for the EU's Common Agricultural Policy which requires improved knowledge of this phenomenon at the European level. This study assesses the risk of farmland abandonment in the 27 EU Member States. It summarizes the work performed by an expert panel of European scientists and national representatives which aimed to identify the main drivers of farmland abandonment in Europe, to define indicators for assessing its risk of occurrence and to test the value of European-wide data sources to achieve these aims. Drivers were identified under two rationales: low farm stability and viability, and negative regional context. Indicators were defined using recent socio-economic farm data and geospatial datasets. Some indicators were then combined to make a composite risk indicator. Regions with higher risk of farmland abandonment are located in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Ireland. This paper demonstrates the challenges of performing a European-wide assessment of a phenomenon influenced by drivers whose effects vary at local levels. Other problems encountered are data heterogeneity in terms of spatial resolution and quality, as well as access to micro-data (local level data). High spatial resolution European datasets measuring farmland abandonment are needed to validate the defined indicators as well as to benchmark the methodology. Furthermore, such data could be used to establish a weighting system for the drivers

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Social innovation is attracting increasing attention in research and policy, heightened by continuing austerity across Europe. Therefore, this paper examines earlier research into community-led local development (CLLD) initiatives in rural areas of Europe to develop our understanding of the meaning and scope of rural social innovation. We draw on a Schumpeterian view where innovations emerge from new combinations of resources that bring about positive changes and create value in society. A Schumpeterian social innovation framework is derived as the basis for re-analysing data from previous evaluations of LEADER policy in five different national contexts. This elicits a clearer understanding of social innovation in a rural development context, identifying different processes and outcomes that create social value. As the CLLD agenda and the demand for innovation in Europe gather pace, our aspirations are to inform future research and other initiatives on how to integrate social innovation into the design and evaluation of new rural development policies and programmes.

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In order to synthesize the extensively studied place identities and their meanings, this paper reviews how researchers have conceived and deconstructed place identity. CiteSpace, a scientometric tool for visualizing and analyzing trends and patterns in scientific literature, is used to identify the active topics and new developments of publications in place identity. The data set input into CiteSpace consists of 1,011 bibliographic records retrieved from the core database of Web of Science with a title search of the articles published between 1985 and July 2019. The scientometric review reveals the extensive applications of place identity in various topics. Studies in this field experienced an active exploration in plural disciplines after 2000, and the hot area gradually concentrated on the discipline of humanities and social sciences after 2010 and shifted toward place marketing until now. A network of co-cited references identified seven dominant research clusters, of which the research on the influence of place identity on social actors' attitudes and behaviors is most prominent and the research on the effects of physical environment change on place identity captures the latest emerging area. Versatile meanings of place identity are witnessed in different clusters and articles of a cluster. These meanings are intertwined in shaping the knowledge base of thematic concentrations. To supplement the scientometric analysis, a deep survey on measuring methods and roles of place identity in the contents of academic articles was done to trace knowledge connections between different empirical understandings of place identity. Finally, this paper summarizes the meanings of place identity in four dimensions and in turn offers some suggestions for further research directions.

Based on four illustrative case studies from the Netherlands, this article discusses learning experiences gained from rural broadband initiatives. As an example of 'the big society ' (or 'participatiesamenleving' in Dutch), initiatives try to step in where the market and the government fail. The main struggle seems to be negotiating between market and government interests, while simultaneously safeguarding local interests. Many challenges and frustrations arise from counter-tactics on the part of national market players, and governmentality-inspired actions of regional and local authorities. Local capacitysuch as social, intellectual, and financial capital -proves to be crucial in negotiating external influences, but it is easily overburdened. Case studies show that volunteer burnout is a risk that potentially has a high impact. Despite neoliberal agendas and community-led development schemes that promote citizen initiatives, it remains challenging for communities to reclaim control over their digital futures. Members of the initiatives have to learn and professionalise in order to stand their ground in a competitive and complex broadband market, but this learning element seems to be only a byproduct of the process towards achieving the tangible result for rural development, that is, high-speed broadband access.