Entangled Ruralities: Remaking a Portuguese Mountain Hamlet Through Craft and Translocalism

This paper explores the revitalization process of the once-depopulated mountain hamlet of Cerdeira in central Portugal through embeddedness in place and entanglement with broader networks of relations. Drawing on the field of relational geography and multi-sited ethnography, it examines how Cerdeira’s transformation is co-created by (trans)local actors, creative in-migrants, policy frameworks, and global craft networks, particularly those engaging with Japanese-style ceramics wood-firing. The case illustrates how rural places are not static or bounded, but dynamically constituted through embodied practices, utopian reimaginings, and transnational flows of people, materials, and ideas. Emphasis is placed on the role of craft not only as a marker of local identity and ecological engagement but also as a means of cultural improvisation and knowledge exchange that allows for hybrid and cosmopolitan forms of place-making. The analysis highlights the tensions and possibilities within revitalization processes, including the risks of commodification, the politics of memory-making, and uneven access. As a site of both cultural reinvention and experimentation, Cerdeira’s case contributes to broader understandings of how rural futures are being imagined, negotiated, and enacted through embedded and open networks of exchange, care, collaboration, and creative adaptation.