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In recent years, the endogenous development ( ED) approach has gained influence within the rhetoric of European rural development policies ( RP). This paper provides a fundamental critique of the approach and shows that neither the economic elements of RP in general nor ED in particular are targeted towards the specific economic needs and capabilities of rural areas. The second part of this paper consists of the search for possible alternative concepts for a more targeted and effective RP. Based on a synopsis of existing theories, an integrated approach is proposed that builds upon the different coordination mechanisms for economic activity suggested by different theories. The new, integrated perspective enables an economic characterisation of rural areas and indicates that the successful support of local coordination of economic activity is determined by specific local conditions. It also makes evident that localised approaches usually cannot compensate rural areas for the lack of agglomeration advantages. Therefore, programmes for the economic development of rural areas which support the local coordination of economic activity remain a second-best policy. As such, they do not free the state from policies of spatial redistribution if the political aim is the creation of comparable living conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural areas in Europe have increasingly become cast as places of nature, and so consideration of sustainable rural development is preoccupied with the management and protection of environmental and natural resources. Yet rural areas are also places of business, commerce and living. This paper examines the character and treatment of rural economies in England over the past decade. It sets out some of the challenges for the socio-economic development of rural areas, and explains how concerns about sustainable rural economies have come to be eclipsed within central government by those of ‘greening farming’ on the one hand and urban policy on the other. The paper concludes by discussing how the role of rural areas and rural economies might be creatively rethought in the context of regional and sub-regional territorial development strategies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the XXI Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology. Through European policies and regulations rural development the here and the there are unavoidably connected. From this perspective it is interesting to explore how agricultural and other economic activities are re-allocated in rural Europe. The XXIst Congress in Keszthely takes an important current event the one-year anniversary of the European enlargement as starting point for engaging in the ongoing questions around change and continuity, diversity and cohesion in rural Europe.

This paper examines some recent analyses of alternative agro-food networks (AAFNs) and claims that these innovative modes of food provisioning are emblematic of a new rural development paradigm in Western Europe. A political-economic critique of the territorialised, farm-centric value added strategies underlying these claims suggests that this characterisation is overdrawn and premature. The neglect of the consumption side of the rural development equation also argues for a more modest assessment of AAFNs and their paradigmatic potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Rapid transformations offer new challenges for rural regions to invent new pathways for development. For many, an obvious choice is to set out on the path towards economic growth and to compete with other regions for global, mobile capital and labor. There is however an increasing awareness that in the long run regions should anticipate a more sustainable development based on regional qualities. Across Europe new and fascinating forms of shared, value-driven leadership for such sustainable regional development can be observed. This leadership cannot be explained with traditional leadership models derived from management and business literature. In this paper a new leadership model is developed that is both empirically and theoretically informed. The model is shaped along two axes: an 'individual-collective' and an 'inner-outer' axis. Four leadership dimensions are discerned and described: 'the X-factor' (personal qualities, feelings, motives and values), 'vital space' (stimulating favorable behavior by flexible roles and building vital coalitions), 'shared leadership'(working across organizational boundaries) and 'bricolage' (connecting networks in institutional arrangements). We have applied this model in eight cases of rural regional development in the Netherlands. The cases show that sustainable regional development benefits from shared leadership where collective values, feelings, trust, commitment and energy form the basis for mobilizing private and public actors around a joint agenda in regional networks. Leaders can in this sense contribute to new regional agendas and the exploration of new pathways to sustainability. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lack of data or empirical information, insecurity about scientific knowledge, and disputes on how to manage knowledge emerge as central concerns when we study changes in rural development under the influence of sustainability discourses. In this synthesis we summarise and interpret results from the CORASON project for sustainable resource management, both within policy discourses and the local realities of rural development projects. We identify a range of operational variants for sustainable development in these projects. The understanding of sustainable development found in rural development practice is more diverse and pluralistic and less standardised than in the policy programmes that guide it, and practitioners are also critical of some premises of these programmes. From the knowledge forms and ideas entering rural development practices emerges a model of sustainable rural development that is less hierarchical and hegemonic than those in policy programmes and comes more from the target groups, beneficiaries and local populations than the actors in the policy process and scientific discourses. It requires more in-depth study of knowledge interaction in resource management. To describe the emerging ideas of knowledge practices we use the concepts of situated and relational knowledge, formulated in recent epistemological studies but not yet systematically introduced in the analysis of rural development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the "Sociologia Ruralis" issue of January 2004, David Goodman elaborates a series of critical reflections on rural development processes in Europe and, more specifically, on the emergence of new Alternative Food Networks. In this, Goodman questions the position that, both in theory and in practice, a paradigm shift is being created. A ten point rejoinder is presented. Central to the current practices of rural development is that the creation of new wealth, the rise of new institutional patterns and identities, and the shift in power balances, are increasingly being intertwined. This strengthens the autonomous momentum of rural development processes. Whether the process of rural development will unfold further is unsure. It basically depends on the social and political struggles that are currently taking place on different levels.

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