The Rural and Peripheral in Regional Development

An Alternative Perspective

Peter de Souza

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780415793230
• eBook ISBN: 9781351811910
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The countryside has often been marginalised in discussions of economic and societal development, in favour of the urban. This book aims to stimulate a debate and a re-evaluation of how the concepts of the rural, peripheral and marginal are treated in academia and policy.

Approaching this theme from geographic, demographic and economic perspectives, Peter de Souza makes a compelling case for giving the periphery a prominent role as an integral part of a holistic and balanced society. The book carefully deconstructs the concept of the urban, and critiques the idea of urban-rural or centre-periphery comparisons, and presents an alternative approach to spark future discussions.

Winner of the Regional Studies Association Best Book Award 2020, The Rural and Peripheral in Regional Development will be of interest to those studying and researching in the areas of rural economics, sustainability and development, as well as those involved in rural policymaking.

1
What is this all about?

Introductory positioning

Background and a general problem description

This book concerns the treatment of the periphery, the rural, in scientific and popular contexts. Primarily, it is about stereotyped areas (structures and processes) that have been, are or seem to have clear negative tendencies or profiles. It will be argued that a combined lack of substantiated knowledge and taken-for-granted profiles are hiding potentials and alternatives, beneficial for a future societal development, beyond what is outlined today.

Part of the problem, as will be noted, is the fact that the issues approached are under-researched and, which will be argued, when empirical and theoretical work actually is taking place, seemingly biased. An important ingredient of the picture/image/reality is the way the subject has been and is approached and treated in the academic community. Descriptions in literature and policy documents in universal terms, tend to be neither examined nor explored with regard to the periphery,¹ with the same kind of approach as urban structures and processes. Emanating results cannot, with conviction, discuss the situation in the periphery, compared to the dominating tradition. It will be argued that in many contexts (e.g. primarily within the economic, economic-geographic or political science disciplines), research on the periphery is marginal to the careers of the academic community, its individuals, and treated as of lesser worth in publications, promotions and similar areas. These biases have had and still have far-reaching effects in the political and policy fields. An explanation could be based on inadequate knowledge among policymakers, as already Chambers (1983) suggested, or on more penetrating ideological concerns, defined in dimensions of centre, top-down and macro perspectives. The state of art show that there has been much research and attention paid to the regions in the core of Europe in general, focused especially on cities, city-regions, old industrial areas, border regions and to some of their more important underlying characteristics, but the peripheral/rural is left wanting. The present monograph is not standing at the forefront of this opinion; neither is the argument discovered here. It has already been raised and will continue to be so in the future. Already in the 1970s, Michael Lipton published a book on world development issues: Why Poor People Stay Poor: A Study of Urban Bias in World Development (1977).

There is a special focus today on agglomerations generally and clusters and regional innovation systems in particular. Earlier approaches to agglomeration theory and its more up-to-date appearances includes specific statements, defining it as the good and probably only alternative. This is, however, as will be shown, technically doubtful and often methodologically meaningless. Specific features of geographical and functional peripheral and marginal regions have, in the light of this, been neglected. Peripheral or non-central regions are, by definition not included, or considered superficially or in specified limited roles as, for instance, resource providers (Petrov, 2012).

Focusing on this general state-of-the-art description, it is natural to face the issue whether this book is important. Complementing the basic question whether the development we are looking forward to, in the long run, is sustainable, when fundamental imbalances in society are maintained, primarily in the centre-peripheral dimension. Focusing on these in future development considerations makes that position clear.

When discussing the periphery, the core,² is presented as an absolute role model in a dichotomy carrying categorical flavours of good and bad. The ‘core’ being generalised in such discourses hides the reality of being many things and not all of them beneficial for either growth or mankind.

Focusing at the moment on the agricultural sector, it remains outside of mainline concern for general development processes, as the focus, still, remains on manufacturing, nowadays extended to the service and knowledge sectors.

In other words, the agricultural sector/the periphery/remote regions are being somewhat left behind, and tend to fall outside the scope of the analysis.

(Gruber and Soci, 2010, p. 44)

Further emphasising the point made above, related to the type and quality of information and knowledge flows, raises pertinent questions about aspects of power and interests. A questioning of the flows of resources reflecting negatively on the need for a subsidised countryside while the cities and especially the larger cities are not really under any scrutiny, is not opening all avenues for consideration. The large city coffers foster interest-based corruption and nepotism, not necessarily explicit, but included as ingredients of an urban culture of dominance. National politics and holding on to power is interpreted as keeping the urbanites satisfied/contented

since these communities are invariably better educated, more articulate, organized in trade unions and other groupings, and therefore likely to be a much greater potential threat to economic and political stability than the less educated and less well-organised rural poor.

(Potter, Binns and Smith, 2008, p. 445)

Substantive differences existing between the compositions of labour force and economic status in the core and peripheral industries, is not explained by the labour force composition in itself, but in significant sectoral variations, making comparative ambitions questionable (Beck, Horan and Tolbert II, 1978).

There is also another and enforcing proposition, in regard to the periphery, that indicates us not really knowing what we actually are talking about “a mythic heartland… a zone of otherness… geographies of other people and places become marked as Other – exotic, transgressive, extraordinary, and by no means representative” (Shields, 1991, p. 4).

Whether it comes down to this or ‘just’ a way of presentation is still to be explored. This introductory chapter is, among other things, presenting how this exploration will be organised.

Development perspectives

The proposition of an urban/core preference or bias, in the development process, is valid and needs – even more, demands – much more of qualifications and analytically penetrative ambitions. Perspectives and ideologies where cities, and especially larger ones, are acting as primary brokers for knowledge, societal processes and development, should be scrutinised and questioned. “But this assumption is needed precisely because local institutions do not work properly and cannot reasonably be reformed, due to the entrenched and longstanding self-interests of major urban-political elites” (OECD, 2011a, p. 208). The argument includes a number of taken-for-granted propositions, for instance, the centre-periphery dichotomy. This model or metaphor is continuously criticised as being too simplistic as an explanation for the complexity of differentiated development, whether in Europe or elsewhere. Regions with designations as economically lagging, deprived or peripheral exist in core areas and, simultaneously, economically dynamic, innovative regions are found in geographically peripheral areas (Eskelinen and Fritsch, 2006). An emerging consensus is found where the supposed dichotomy is actually described in terms of a multiplicity of relationships outlined within a scope of different theoretical endeavours, the urban-rural complexity a part of a remaining necessity of interdependence and complementarity. The awareness of global-local, interconnectivity enhanced in policy importance. Accomplished and often spontaneous changes based on a global scale relate, to a large degree, on issues of land-use and, through this directly to the rural. Turning to the examples of improved ecological practices, “rural areas and their contribution to sustainable development have set new issues for both policy making and research” (Dax, 2014, p. 59).

Different results are not competing but complementing, in terms of differentiating the object of study – the term multichotomies – used and the heterogeneity of cores and peripheries highlighted. An unknown number of logics seem to be acting, or taking place, simultaneously. Scale sensitivities with imbalances define different cultures of core/periphery positions “each operating at particular spatial level, but with all levels interconnected” (Petrov, 2012, p. 61).

Furthermore arguments for centralisation and large-scale production, carry illogical rationalities in terms of efficiency, cost reductions, etc., for the provision of welfare, in general terms. The argued relevance for this – in terms of schools, hospitals, universities, the population level of municipalities, the organisation of policy and types of settlement patterns – continuously highlights in positive terms propositions that are not always qualified. Simplified models approach social problems with standardisation severely questioned already by Myrdal (1982, p. 94), comparing them with the then much-criticised Weather Forecast Service.

The periphery is not peripheral only in physical terms, it is also a periphery in conceptual aspects as is ‘the’ rural, remaining in an intellectual periphery. The potential for change is there, and this book wishes to provide some input into this change. The substantiated status of the periphery is, as should be known, far from rigid/static. The transformation and extension of the EU has placed regions, positioned in the periphery of the Soviet empire, in a transitory role, a core position, in the redirection of political, economic and cultural interests of former Central and Eastern Europe (Cooke, 2012).

The picture/image/reality could carry potential scenarios that stand in stark contrast to the present ones. There are many questions mentioned or, partly or hesitantly, answered in this monograph, approached in a more systematic manner than has been the case before. For instance, is the periphery a burden, or a contribution to a larger society? Is the periphery a container for specific groups/kinds of people – the inhabitants of the periphery? Is the periphery the outcome of the centre’s development? Is the periphery the spoils of a special kind of historical and economic/political development? Should the definition of the periphery be, by what it was, what it is or what it is becoming? Could one identify different roles for the periphery in different stages of societal development – what is generalisable within the always unique trajectory? Depending upon the functional pattern and/or place in the geographical space, could something be said about the past, present and future – within the same kind of analytical framework? “What is of interest within these questions and among those questions not put forward? Do we care and for what do we care?” (Danson and de Souza, 2012, p. 4).

Looking back to development processes in historical times is not only a nostalgic trip. The idea of the rural creating a foundation for the centre/urban should be inspiring. The historical background where the agricultural surplus created markets and potentials for urban agglomerations is not only a historical fact. Industrialisation did not appear out of the blue. Agricultural innovation and rural productivity – where a fundamental precondition of early development, released capital and surplus labour necessary for the establishment of industrial activities and the urbanities – is a historical absolute:

[A]n economy from “one that is dominantly rural and agricultural to one that is dominantly urban, industrial and service-oriented in composition.”

(Potter, Binns and Smith, 2008, p. 444)

Driven by the rural, development was capitalised when the farmer bought the technology. In the Swedish case:

[T]he milk machines and separators came from Alfa Laval, stoves from AGA, housewares from Kockums, sewing machines from HUSQVARNA and electrical engines from ASEA. Electric motors that drove harvesters were from Thermaenius that later came to be acquired by Bolinder-Munk-tell, that accompanied Volvo. Almost all of the successful Swedish export companies have their roots deeply buried in the Swedish agricultural soil and the forest topsoil.

(Sylwan, 2011, p. 13, my translation)

The present progress remains dependent, in absolute terms, for foodstuffs, raw materials of diverse kinds and energy. The outline inspires thoughts that have to do with the properties of development in more general terms, where explanations as to changes range through the whole ideological field, from Marxism to Liberalism, although, naturally in different appearances. A latter day, surprisingly late, contribution to this we find with Paul Krugman, introducing spatial dimensions into traditional macroeconomic theoretical modelling. He identifies emergent properties, in terms of self-organisation, as spontaneous summations of micro-behavioural activities and interactions.

[T]he spatio-temporal manifestation of powerful self-organising tendencies [are] driven by emergent properties and mechanisms.… The geographical forms that make up that landscape – cities, industrial districts, clusters, centre-periphery patterns of development, and the like – are not usually imminent in the motives of economic agents (firms, workers and consumers).

(Martin and Sunley, 2012, p. 339)

The scope will widen further, looking from the general process as such in a chapter of its own, at its creation of the ‘urban’, in some of its differentiated substances, including the fragmented and kaleidoscopic nature of the counter-urbanisation tendencies, always there as an undercurrent, changing in nature and outcome. The latter tendencies have had a surprisingly low analytical attraction, in spite of being clearly identified manifestations. New developments in ICT, for instance, create locational independence appropriate for rural frameworks. Spontaneous survival and quality of life (QOL) issues specific to the countryside, the dynamics of private initiative and special dimensions of the public sector are of basic interest as well. Which of these trends are counter-tendencies and by what properties?

Another approach, another generalised logic, is a substantial share of EU territory is rural. What does it mean, what does it really mean!? What implications should be considered in the supposed responsibility for the delivery of foodstuffs, etc., in the coming decades and the substantial contribution to the solution of upholding biodiversity, positively influencing climate change and keeping the urbanites alive and thriving in future terms? Evolutionary, even revolutionary changes in society should place the rural, peripheral areas geographically and functionally at the nexus of our attention.

The very idea of development implies a dynamic of change over time. But when development dynamics are not conceptualized in terms of the systemic logics of the capitalist growth machine… we are able to imagine many other dynamics that operate and could be purposefully stimulated.

(Gibson-Graham, 2011, p. 229)

Climate change and long-term sustainability, relating primarily to land-use dynamics and extended rural development processes, needs not only attention, it also needs systemic approaches for research geared to a much higher level and changing directions, founding consecutive policy changes and implementation with clear quality concerns, including “ecological practices, the economic viability of rural areas and their contribution to sustainable development” (Dax, 2014, p. 59). Attention should be shifted from the traditional concern for agriculture and forestry and their futures to a much larger scope concerning these economic functions in the biosphere in a multitude of its complexities. A dimension of the modern rural, in the special variants of entrepreneurial and innovative activities, the special conditions and therefore processes for economic life and survival in economic terms, is seldom interpreted in terms of peripheral and marginal structures. It is taken for granted that there is another way about life out there, a sparsely populated one, etc., one that, in general is unique, but ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 What is this all about? Introductory positioning
• 2 The periphery, the marginal and the rural: conceptual discussion
• 3 Theory: limits and potentials
• 4 Measure what, with what and what does it represent?
• 5 The urban deconstructed
• 6 Geographic and demographic structures and processes
• 7 Extended definitions: an alternative way to re-analyse
• 8 Peripheral economics: some alternative approaches
• 9 Economic structures and structural changes
• 10 Policy frameworks
• References
• Index