SOCIAL AUTOPOIESIS OF SUSTAINABLE RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Although there are scientific advances and epistemological approaches that had prevailed through time, the need remains for theoretical proposals that combine and integrate the different elements present in the sustainable rural development. Until now these elements had been managed as part of natural or social systems, allowing the establishment of some laws whose function can only be warranted under experimental conditions. The aim of this essay is to propose the social autopoiesis of sustainable rural development, as an eclectic and integrative alternative to analyze and understand reality in rural areas. Some approaches in relation to socioeconomic metabolism, which studies the interaction of social and natural systems, the social autopoiesis theory of living systems, and the social system communication theory, are analyzed. The combination of these theoretical approaches leads to the understanding of the agro-ecosystem as an autopoietic unit of higher order, where there is a structural coupling between human beings and environment, there being disturbances in socio-economic materials, and material and energy flows, which will also produce changes in patterns and processes relevant to ecosystems in general. That structural linkage is found in the relationship society-nature; therefore, resource management follows a social model made of communications autopoietically generated by the operation of the social system. in which it is inserted.