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Imprint
Participative development of rural development. Everyday cultural negotiations of the EU LEADER program
Project
Project code: 322783243
Contract period: 01.01.2017
- 31.12.2019
Budget: 415,222 Euro
Purpose of research: Inventory & Assessment
Keywords: regional development, civic participation, ruralism, bottom-up, governance technologies, biodiversity, demographic change, North Rhine-Westphalia
Despite increasing processes of urbanization, a large part of the European Union’s population still lives in rural areas. Subject to pressure, these areas are defined as problematic in EU development programs regarding issues of demographic change, ecological sustainability, social cohesion, or economic growth. EU rural development agendas such as LEADER aim to address these deficits by calling upon local actors to develop rural areas’ endogenous resources, with the aim of enhanced economic competitiveness and a diversification of regional (socio-cultural) economies. In this process, the everyday world becomes an object of regional planning in a twofold manner: 1) The participatory “community-led local development”-approach of LEADER aims to mobilize residents by requesting them to get involved with the drafting and implementation of regional development projects. 2) LEADER policy measures aim to change aspects of everyday life by trying to foster civic engagement, strengthen regional identity and to develop regional networks. From the perspective of Cultural Anthropology, the project analyzes how the LEADER development program is implemented by local actors and in which ways it influences the everyday life of the population in rural areas.The study works with two main hypotheses: 1) The effects and functional principles of LEADER can only be understood if the analysis of institutional frameworks and policy-discourses is supplemented by an analysis of the implementation process and the impacts on the everyday life of local populations. 2) The implementation of LEADER is shaped by processes of appropriation and translation of the development program in everyday culture, which can run counter to the goals of the program. Central questions of the project are how inhabitants participate in the implementation of LEADER-projects, how they translate development measures into their everyday world and which effects these translations can have on everyday life practices, points of views, perceptions as well as cultural expressions.Two comparative ethnographic studies, building on multiple qualitative research methods, form the empirical basis of the project. They analyze local projects in two central policy areas of EU rural development: ecological sustainability on the one and demographic change on the other hand. The studies are carried out in three neighboring LEADER-regions within the same administrative district, so as to ensure comparability of the research findings.The aim is to strengthen a perspective, which integrates the implementation and negotiation of development programs in the culture of everyday life into the analysis of policy. Further, the project aims to contribute to socio-political debates on rural areas and on the democratic potentials of participatory forms of governance in processes of Europeanization.
Section overview
Subjects
- Agricultural Policy
- Agricultural Sociology
