Un nouveau modèle d'analyse des transformations en cours : la diversification-spécialisation de l'espace rural français

Various models were successively developed to describe and measure the rural space transformations in France. This paper relates part of the results of a collective research aiming at testing the «last born » model which is the process of specialisation/diversification of this rural space. Coefficients of specialisation and diversification were first applied to three sectors in their spatial dimension : agriculture, rural employment, rural society. These results were then collated in order to identify specialised and diversified rural spaces. The process of diversification has a larger extent than the process of specialisation in the economic and social landscape of rural France. But interpreting this result, one must pay attention to the ambiguities of the vocabulary and to the difficulties for describing this process with quantitative precision and at different levels.