Trajetórias do desenvolvimento rural: pesquisa comparativa internacional

this paper contains a critical reflection on a comparative analysis of rural development processes in brazil, the european union and china. it argues that those contextual elements and/or process characteristics that are mostly ignored by a case-study approach (for being more or less invisible and/or for being more or less self-evident) might come to the fore through a comparative approach. simultaneously, the particular nature of single rural development processes might equally be specified through systematically organized comparisons. in this way, current rural development processes are characterized as a set of responses to market failures - a set of responses that requires and involves the active construction of new, nested markets.