At this inception of the 21st century, here in Quebec, research in social work addressing poverty seems to be typically stuck on urbanity. This paper presents the outcomes of two qualitative exploratory studies in rural areas using a participatory action research approach. The project relates to poverty reduction interventions through a cross perspective drawn by those we’ve called life-experience-experts and professionally-based-experts. An analysis of interviews highlights the fact that social intervention in rurality is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. Through two theoretical frameworks, the data analysis has revealed that social intervention in rural context consisted in a “social tension zone” marked by two main logics: the logic of actors and the logic of environments (economic, political, and ideological). Within the first logic, defining the situation is a major issue as the actions to be undertaken are influenced by the capability of all stakeholders to define a shared vision of the matter. Within the second logic, two environments are critical in determining the outcome of social intervention: the political environment, in particular the social policy environment set up by the government of Quebec and the territorial environment made up of rurality. To sum up, this exploratory social investigation has allowed us to establish, based on the method of the merging knowledge in rural ecology, that both expert groups were facing institutional constraints that have big impact in undermining the overall intervention process.