| Summary: |
Over the last decades, Portuguese society has been marked by important and substantive social changes and recompositions, in spatial, demographical, economic, social, political and symbolical terms, which portray an unquestionable structural change. The specificities of these change result from the fact that Portugal is a complex social formation that, in terms of intermediate development occupies a semi-peripheral position in the modern world-system, in which several social dimensions pull the country away from the more advanced and modern countries and others drive it closer. Considering the problems associated to modernization and development, we are led to conclude that social changes express themselves in different territorial dynamics, and that in national context we find contradictory situations of greater or smaller imbalances and homogeneities. The project aims to develop a sociological analysis of the processes of social change and social recomposition that occurred in northern Portugal over the last two decades, within a broader framework of the national space transformations in recent history. The project seeks to contribute to an in-depth understanding of the processes, permanencies and transformations that have occurred and the emergence of new social dynamics and new actors in the region. The project will improve the sociological understanding of the region and its relationship with national and European spaces, providing an original contribution to the lack of an integrated and global scientific view of the region. |