Ce qui tient un village

Marta Kovács carried out fieldwork in six European villages that are gaining inhabitants, against the announced decline. She looks for concrete mechanisms, not stories of hope: a school reopened, a café taken over, fibre installed, a land policy that lets a young household stay. The sociologist proceeds by comparison, measures what repeats from one case to the next, and separates cause from coincidence. Kovács offers no single model; she establishes a list of conditions, patiently verified on the ground. What remakes the common, she shows, holds by a few things held together — a place to cross paths, a service that stays, a reason to come. The book restores the weight of local decisions usually judged minor. A sober inquiry into what, very concretely, keeps people and remakes an inhabited place.