日本社会は、近年人口減少型社会へと変質していっている。農村では、食と農の安全性の問題や農地荒廃、そして後継者不足問題など、集落の維持・存続と深く関わっている様々な問題が近年指摘されてきている。しかし、農村の存続問題に関するアプローチは人口増加をベースとした交流人口論によるものであり、現実的にはほとんど効果がみられていない。そこで、現実に適した枠組みの中で、人口減少を意識しながら生活・生産的な側面で存続できる集落像を考える必要がある。本論文は、人口減少時代における農村社会の維持・存続問題を縮小論的な側面から分析している。

　本論文では、順に、批判的な立場から近年の集落再生論が議論され、集落の問題を最も身近で抱えている集落内の人々は多くの場合は関心の範囲外に置かれてきた高齢者や他出子のその役割や可能性が分析されている。

　そして最後に、よりマクロな視点から農村の存続問題が取り上げられ、その中で、従来の農村の存続問題に関するパースペクティブそのものを変える必要性が言及されている。具体的には、人口および世帯の減少を前提にし、縮小しながらも存続できる社会経済システムを考えるという、より現実に適する方向で農村の将来を考えることが提案される。その際、近年行政やメディアによって注目をあびている「限界集落論」が批判的に検討され、今後農村社会を分析していくのに、より現実的な分析枠組みのモデルが提案されている。

　Up to present, Japanese rural society has been experiencing many social problems such as aging, decrease on fertility rates, succession of household, etc., which based on demographic changes. And also some problems such as food security, ruin of agricultural lands, which are related with rural society, have been discussed up to now. In order to solve these problems and create a new future for rural society, many policies and activities have been carried out in Japan. Most of these policies and/or activities mainly focused on an economical development by increasing rural population with external sources such as urban dwellers, which are totally irrelevant to daily life and future of rural society. It is of course deniable that rural society has been declining its ability in order to resolve internal problems and sustain itself within depopulation and aging without effective social policies. However, it doesn't mean that rural society will be maintained and promoted only by economical policies and/or activities, which are based on the population exchanging such as "Urban-Rural Interchanges" and/or "Green Tourism".

　It is certain that both total and rural population of Japan has started to decrease and there will not be any population increase in the future. Therefore, it is not difficult to say that those development policies and/or projects will not be able to be the main method to make the rural society better. As a result, we can say that creating a new perspective for rural society is getting more important. Since 90`s, future of rural society has been considered from the viewpoint of "Marginal Hamlet Theory", which analyze the extinction process of hamlet by basing demographic indicator which is aging rate of hamlet. Demographic indicators are very important to consider the future of rural, however it is not the only one. There are also some economical and social indicators that help us to consider rural future.

　So that, in this study, a new perspective concerning the future/revival of rural that contains not only demographic indicator, but also economic and social indicators such as income, relationship structure and present situation of successor for each household of village have been composed.