Und das Dorf stirbt doch nicht - es verändert sich : Vom Wandel ländlicher Lebensverhältnisse

Despite the long-term debate on the spatial impacts of overarching demographic change, most villages in Germany are rather vital and the diversity of their development paths is striking. This contribution firstly considers different scientific meanings of and popular ascriptions to the village. No generally accepted definition is available, because the economic preponderance of agriculture – and thus of a formerly distinct characteristic of the village – has long vanished. Due to the ongoing structural changes in agriculture, the primary sector is no longer relevant to the daily lives of most villagers. Rather, spending nights and evenings in the local rural community while working elsewhere is a widespread social practice. Secondly, attention is given to the methodologies of empirical village research during recent decades. Changing rural living conditions are the focus of the third part of this paper, which also sheds light on structural contexts. In the final section, it is argued that villages need more systematic attention by (not only) geographical research to understand and explain their ongoing transformations.