Hanne Wittorff Tanvig's keynote speech

Rural development – what happened to the good old ‘bottom up’? 

The last few years have featured major crises and massive challenges that are deeply affecting development in rural areas. Alongside the highly industrialized agriculture, attempts at solutions to climate problems with green technology and declining biodiversity with an increased focus on access to land and land use, and it is even openly written and spoken about that countryside and village life may be changed beyond recognition. Central decision-making and external stakeholders are rolling off, and the central voices regarding the importance of village culture and life have become silent or find that conflicts can be avoided by small compensations. Some of the local politicians do, vaguely, argument for the opportunity for new local business areas, but generally the local communities are not heard from and about, except that many join the growing rightwing movement. Quite opposite to the rise of local rural policy, that have been practiced through many years with local territorial development based on local community activities in the core and a huge impact on local development, the new agenda seems to ignore and deprioritize local efforts and is not about territorial development at all.  

We are of course in a different place now, where the entire foundation and premises for locally driven development have changed, and the room and opportunities for local civic societal operations have changed. Also, you may admit that the approach to local led development is driven by normative thinking and the belief in the effects of ‘bottom up’ approaches in response to the usual top-down approaches based on economies of scale and structural prerequisites. During a span of years rural development practitioners did learn, however, and therefore recognized a shift from the mere ‘endogenously’ based thinking and concepts to the ‘neo-endogenously’ involving external power and resources and even ‘nexogenous’ approaches bridging local/non-local operations. These approaches still depend on the viability of the local civic societies, and this may be a leaping prerequisite nowadays. 

Her speak will draw up these lines and some overlooked premises regarding capabilities of local civic societies from several studies during the years will be appointed, be limits because of the general societal constitution or limits because of the local capacities. In particular, the fact that local capacities did differ from community to community despite matters of sizes and distances but due to people/culture, practises and learning are important. Some did cease to act, some were reacting and doing efforts to secure the last bits, but a few and even small communities also did succeed to pave a way to new local economic development activities on their own despite all obstacles.

What have we learned, and what can be brought forward?