Theatre and sustainable territorial communities: A case study in Northern Portugal

To consider culture as the fourth pillar of sustainability implies new intellectual and political debate at both the theoretical and the empirical level, revisiting knowledge already established within economics and the sociology of development on the centrality of culture as a framework, a resource and a strategy for local and community development. When considered in the context of rural sustainability, rural territories pose specific problems. On the one hand, demographic and socioeconomic imbalances represent hard restrictions on the ways that resources and agents can be mobilized as part of development processes. On the other hand, the richness of material and non-material heritage, the vividness of oral traditions, a strong sense of community and cultural identity, are important local assets that can be transformed into effective instruments for development via appropriate policies and programs.