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Leadership and local power in European rural development
ARTICLE IN PRESS 260
Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 20 (2004) 257–261
Leadership and local power in European rural development Keith Halfacree, Imre Kovach and Rachel Woodward (Eds.); Ashgate, Aldershot, 279 p., price d42.50, ISBN 075 461 5812 This book is the outcome of an EU COST Action on Rural Innovation. COST Actions finance the meeting of scientists from existing EU member states, applicant countries and include but do not finance Norwegian participation. However, they do not fund research programmes. As such, they are not based on the more formalised research plans and outcomes that are expected of the various numbered EU Framework initiatives and, in spite of the aspirations of coordinators, tend to produce outcomes that are at best semi-structured and interesting and at worst unstructured and chaotic. Fortunately, this book comes into the former rather than the latter category. It aspires to throw light on the ‘local configurations of rural power and local responses to restructuring’ (p. 2) guided by a recognition that broadly common social and economic processes are operating throughout Europe, but that national differences in the governance and political control will shape outcomes, as well as cultural constructions of (the) rural. The editors provide an introductory and concluding chapter, between which there are 10 country chapters, on some of the founder members of the European Community (France, Germany, the Netherlands, some later entrants (Austria, Finland, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom), one applicant state (Hungary, although the German chapter also explores the East German experience) and one resolute non-member (Norway). The lack of wider coverage of applicant states and the rather light Mediterranean country coverage limit the scope for comparative analysis but create a more manageable task for the editors. The different contributors, who come from a range of backgrounds including demography, geography, political science and sociology were asked to respond to a set of five questions, summarised as (i) who sets the agenda in the evolution rural development policy and national level?; (ii) to what extent do established and emerging social divisions or social groups affect the evolution and administration of policies and programmes?; (iii) who benefits from rural development policies at national regional and local levels? (iv) is there any consistency in emerging patterns of leadership and local power?; and (v) is there evidence for discernible discourses or cultural constructions of rurality? The introductory chapter connects to well-known debates among social scientists but rather than provid-
ing a conceptual foundation stone for the rest of the volume, acts as an aperitif for the subsequent chapters by highlighting some of their distinctive elements. The chapter on Ireland is one of the most explicit in its focus on power. It explores the weakening of the traditional rural power structures based on church, business leaders and politicians and the challenge from a new profession of rational development agents, capable of promulgating an agenda of social inclusion, participatory democracy and the animation of local development. It is, however, questionable whether this strategic response to rural development does more than replace one elite with another. The extent to which rural areas can rationally construct viable futures for themselves on the back of quasi-democratic participatory structures is not fully explored. The chapter on the Netherlands exposes the strength of the state in controlling rural outcomes and the slow attrition of a state co-ordinated, sectoral, agriculturally centred modernisation vision for rural areas with one which begins to accommodate pluralism in use and a post-productivist ideas. The UK chapter exposes (as do many other documents) the diversity of rural Britain, notes the important changes in governance and explores the implications of EU and later UK initiatives. The discussion on the rural idyll rather confusingly connects counter-urbanisation with the ‘established idea of social structure based on hierarchies reflecting the hegemony of landed interests’. The Hungarian chapter is a lucid account of postsocialist restructuring. The focus on the interplay between new actors and old power structures might be usefully deployed in some of the other chapters. In such tensions can the title of the book and its explicit challenges be most fully explored. Of the later chapters that on France gets locked into a largely unnecessary debate about the definition of rural and neglects the central questions relating to power, but points out the emergence of a new ‘peasant’ discourse which is seen as partly rural and partly urban in its origins and which the authors argue should be heeded by local politicians, not least because of its strength. Germany provides an interesting case because of the coexistence of old rural values and ideas and new green values and because of the challenges thrown up by reunification. The LEADER Community Initiative provides the setting for a power struggle between new and old forces, but this is not explored as fully as it might be. The chapter on Spain provides a good background on diversity in Spain, but like many other chapters, fails to tease out the connections and continuities between old and new structures, heralding LEADER as the vanguard of the new rural, but at the same time exposing its continued devotion to the agrofood sector.
ARTICLE IN PRESS Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 20 (2004) 257–261
Austria merits attention because of its well developed (if diverse) policies for rural development pre-EU accession and points out the significant contribution of the Austrian Association for Independent (Self-reliant) Development (OAR) in creating the partnership structures which closely parallel the LEADER model. This chapter also points out (as do several others) the dominance of regional over rural discourses of development. The chapter on Finland exposes the major problems of shoe-horning a sectoral administration into a multi-sectoral European approach, but how the village action movement connects to these administrative structures or indeed the new European structures is not clearly exposed. The last country chapter on Norway exposes how a regional policy to address the decline of the periphery has motivated rural development policy, but is rather thin on how local power in rural areas mediates centrally determined party political decisions. The concluding chapter is a disappointment. The comparative task set by the authors in the introductory chapter is left to the reader. To acknowledge diversity is not an especially profound insight, although to connect outcomes to dominant discourses (as well as adminisdoi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2003.08.002
261
trative structures) seems a necessary starting point for understanding that diversity. The tracking of concrete outcomes is a legitimate challenge, especially when the outcomes can be connected to extant or emergent power structures. However, the rather unquestioning adoption of Actor Network Theory as the guiding light to explore leadership and local power in rural development in the future is thrown in as a barely rationalised afterthought. On balance this is a useful if modest contribution to knowledge on comparative rural development. It leaves the reader to draw comparisons, in the hope but by no means certainty that the differences are those of substance rather than determined by disciplinary perspective and personal predilection of the authors. It falls somewhat short of its aims in that the assembled team was perhaps unable to address the issues of power and leadership that constitute the core task it set itself.
Bill Slee Countryside and Community Research Unit, University of Gloucestershire, UK
Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 20 (2004) 257–261
Leadership and local power in European rural development Keith Halfacree, Imre Kovach and Rachel Woodward (Eds.); Ashgate, Aldershot, 279 p., price d42.50, ISBN 075 461 5812 This book is the outcome of an EU COST Action on Rural Innovation. COST Actions finance the meeting of scientists from existing EU member states, applicant countries and include but do not finance Norwegian participation. However, they do not fund research programmes. As such, they are not based on the more formalised research plans and outcomes that are expected of the various numbered EU Framework initiatives and, in spite of the aspirations of coordinators, tend to produce outcomes that are at best semi-structured and interesting and at worst unstructured and chaotic. Fortunately, this book comes into the former rather than the latter category. It aspires to throw light on the ‘local configurations of rural power and local responses to restructuring’ (p. 2) guided by a recognition that broadly common social and economic processes are operating throughout Europe, but that national differences in the governance and political control will shape outcomes, as well as cultural constructions of (the) rural. The editors provide an introductory and concluding chapter, between which there are 10 country chapters, on some of the founder members of the European Community (France, Germany, the Netherlands, some later entrants (Austria, Finland, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom), one applicant state (Hungary, although the German chapter also explores the East German experience) and one resolute non-member (Norway). The lack of wider coverage of applicant states and the rather light Mediterranean country coverage limit the scope for comparative analysis but create a more manageable task for the editors. The different contributors, who come from a range of backgrounds including demography, geography, political science and sociology were asked to respond to a set of five questions, summarised as (i) who sets the agenda in the evolution rural development policy and national level?; (ii) to what extent do established and emerging social divisions or social groups affect the evolution and administration of policies and programmes?; (iii) who benefits from rural development policies at national regional and local levels? (iv) is there any consistency in emerging patterns of leadership and local power?; and (v) is there evidence for discernible discourses or cultural constructions of rurality? The introductory chapter connects to well-known debates among social scientists but rather than provid-
ing a conceptual foundation stone for the rest of the volume, acts as an aperitif for the subsequent chapters by highlighting some of their distinctive elements. The chapter on Ireland is one of the most explicit in its focus on power. It explores the weakening of the traditional rural power structures based on church, business leaders and politicians and the challenge from a new profession of rational development agents, capable of promulgating an agenda of social inclusion, participatory democracy and the animation of local development. It is, however, questionable whether this strategic response to rural development does more than replace one elite with another. The extent to which rural areas can rationally construct viable futures for themselves on the back of quasi-democratic participatory structures is not fully explored. The chapter on the Netherlands exposes the strength of the state in controlling rural outcomes and the slow attrition of a state co-ordinated, sectoral, agriculturally centred modernisation vision for rural areas with one which begins to accommodate pluralism in use and a post-productivist ideas. The UK chapter exposes (as do many other documents) the diversity of rural Britain, notes the important changes in governance and explores the implications of EU and later UK initiatives. The discussion on the rural idyll rather confusingly connects counter-urbanisation with the ‘established idea of social structure based on hierarchies reflecting the hegemony of landed interests’. The Hungarian chapter is a lucid account of postsocialist restructuring. The focus on the interplay between new actors and old power structures might be usefully deployed in some of the other chapters. In such tensions can the title of the book and its explicit challenges be most fully explored. Of the later chapters that on France gets locked into a largely unnecessary debate about the definition of rural and neglects the central questions relating to power, but points out the emergence of a new ‘peasant’ discourse which is seen as partly rural and partly urban in its origins and which the authors argue should be heeded by local politicians, not least because of its strength. Germany provides an interesting case because of the coexistence of old rural values and ideas and new green values and because of the challenges thrown up by reunification. The LEADER Community Initiative provides the setting for a power struggle between new and old forces, but this is not explored as fully as it might be. The chapter on Spain provides a good background on diversity in Spain, but like many other chapters, fails to tease out the connections and continuities between old and new structures, heralding LEADER as the vanguard of the new rural, but at the same time exposing its continued devotion to the agrofood sector.
ARTICLE IN PRESS Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 20 (2004) 257–261
Austria merits attention because of its well developed (if diverse) policies for rural development pre-EU accession and points out the significant contribution of the Austrian Association for Independent (Self-reliant) Development (OAR) in creating the partnership structures which closely parallel the LEADER model. This chapter also points out (as do several others) the dominance of regional over rural discourses of development. The chapter on Finland exposes the major problems of shoe-horning a sectoral administration into a multi-sectoral European approach, but how the village action movement connects to these administrative structures or indeed the new European structures is not clearly exposed. The last country chapter on Norway exposes how a regional policy to address the decline of the periphery has motivated rural development policy, but is rather thin on how local power in rural areas mediates centrally determined party political decisions. The concluding chapter is a disappointment. The comparative task set by the authors in the introductory chapter is left to the reader. To acknowledge diversity is not an especially profound insight, although to connect outcomes to dominant discourses (as well as adminisdoi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2003.08.002
261
trative structures) seems a necessary starting point for understanding that diversity. The tracking of concrete outcomes is a legitimate challenge, especially when the outcomes can be connected to extant or emergent power structures. However, the rather unquestioning adoption of Actor Network Theory as the guiding light to explore leadership and local power in rural development in the future is thrown in as a barely rationalised afterthought. On balance this is a useful if modest contribution to knowledge on comparative rural development. It leaves the reader to draw comparisons, in the hope but by no means certainty that the differences are those of substance rather than determined by disciplinary perspective and personal predilection of the authors. It falls somewhat short of its aims in that the assembled team was perhaps unable to address the issues of power and leadership that constitute the core task it set itself.
Bill Slee Countryside and Community Research Unit, University of Gloucestershire, UK