Housing tactics: Searching for community resilience in depopulated rural contexts (Huertas, South West Spain)

• Published in: Sociologia ruralis 2022-01, Vol.62 (1), p.24-43
• Main Authors: Hernández‐Ramírez, Macarena, Cáceres‐Feria, Rafael, Ruiz‐Ballesteros, Esteban
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Case studies; Community; Continuity; Deterioration; Housing; local‐based tourism; Mountains; Population decline; Resilience; Rural housing; Tactics; tourism
• ISSN: 0038-0199; 1467-9523
• DOI: 10.1111/soru.12367

Depopulation of the rural world jeopardises the continuity of many communities and the socioecosystems they support. In response to this situation, diverse strategies are activated to ensure the continuity of these socioecosystems. All these initiatives seek, directly or indirectly, to strengthen community resilience, with a view to making the changes required to reverse the population trend. One of the most obvious, but least studied, effects of depopulation is the abandonment of housing, which initially implies urban deterioration and collapse but which can also become an opportunity if these abandoned houses are turned into a resource at different levels and in different arenas. An ethnographic case study conducted in the Sierra de Aracena Mountains (South West Spain) allows us to explore the link between housing and community resilience, helping us understand how the use and management of redundant housing can be a fundamental component of resilience in rural settings marked by depopulation.