RADICAL NEOLIBERALISM IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: REMAKING RURAL GEOGRAPHIES.

This paper argues that rural regions of British Columbia, Canada, are currently the subject of a radical political-economic experiment dismantling traditional Fordist and Keynesian approaches to economic development and replacing them with neoliberal strategies. This experiment targets both corporate resource economies and local or community-based economies. The paper argues that current reforms aim to enhance flexibility in major resource sectors (particularly in forestry) by "liberating" corporate actors from traditional obligations to environment, labour, and communities. This strategy is buttressed by concurrent reforms to community development policies to promote "entrepreneurial" forms of development that (it is assumed) can be achieved independently of the dominant resource economy. Using field research from several case communities in coastal British Columbia, the paper argues that these developments are having a strong impact on traditional economic structures and practices, as neoliberal reforms seek to disaggregate corporate and community-level economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]