Rural studies: Modernism, postmodernism and the ‘post-rural’

In response to Philo [(1992b), Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies8, 193–207), who calls for rural studies to take the study of ‘others’ more seriously, we argue the need to take postmodernism more seriously. The paper focuses upon the production of knowledge about rural areas by academics. In the narrative that we provide here, the ‘rural’ had a strong presence until Pahl's critique of the rural-urban continuum which both diminished the status of the rural and emphasised the role of class in shaping particular spaces. Newby and his colleagues applied class analysis to agriculture, likewise undermining the significance of the rural. Further applications of general social theory, such as the political economy and restructuring approaches, show how modernist rural studies seem to be fighting a losing battle to posit the indispensability of the significance of the urban-rural division as an explanation; articulating and rearticulating the divide within a whole range of processes: economic, social and cultural. Rural social scientists have woven this modernist narrative, but, as Philo shows, one effect has been the neglect of certain social groups, cultures and identities. However, in contrast to Philo, we argue that a rather fundamental reassessment of social scientific approaches to the rural is required if these ‘neglected others’ are to be satisfactorily considered. We believe a ‘sociology of postmodernism’ would offer a more reflexive perspective on the processes which give rise to ‘the rural’. We thus call for an end to the use of universal or global concepts such as ‘rural’ (or the ‘urban’) and for a concern with the way places are ‘made’. This will entail a focus on ‘power’ as certain actors impose ‘their’ rurality on others. We term this the study of the ‘post-rural’.     

‘How to be a rural man’: Young men's performances and negotiations of rural masculinities

This paper is concerned with young rural men and how they ‘do’ identity politics living in a rural area of Norway. Focusing on how masculinity and rurality are constructed and interrelated in young men's narratives of living in a remote community, it is identified that young rural men reproduce, negotiate and transform local discourses of rural masculinity. First, the article shows that young men living in rural areas believe it is important to express rural masculinity through hunting and outdoor life as well as by exhibiting skills as handymen. Second, it reveals that it is important for young rural men to communicate a particular stance in the ongoing and controversial Norwegian debate over snowmobiles and carnivores, as these topics are related to rural men's sense of loyalty to place. Third, the article shows how rural men negotiate ‘the tough man’ images related to hunting, motors and handyman skills by constructing new and alternative masculinities. The analysis reveals that young rural men enact alternative masculinities, expressed in relation to new working life opportunities in the service sector, through emotional openness and caring, and in relation to traditional ‘masculine spaces’ such as hunting and snowmobiling. It is concluded that, little by little, rural communities are opening up for more flexible masculinities.     

There's more to the picture than meets the eye: Measuring tangible and intangible capital in two marginal communities in rural Denmark

A missing link in economics has been what Veblen in 1908 termed intangible capital. This includes common norms, trust and high levels of cooperative performance. Intangibles are invisible to the eye and not easily measured in quantitative terms. They nevertheless involve visible, socioeconomic outcomes and should therefore rightly be seen as productive, like tangibles. Thus, uneven levels of intangible capital would explain Differential Economic Performance (DEP) between, say, two firms containing exactly the same stock of physical, economic and human capital. Despite this common sense observation, most economists have failed to see that ‘there's more to the picture than meets the eye’, as Neil Young once sang. We use statistical, historical and fieldwork data from two Danish, marginal rural communities both rich on intangible capital. This to show how intangible capital in the form of social, organisational and cultural capital is accumulated and utilised in situ, at the microlevel. We suggest that the difference between these two, very similar communities should be explained in their varying ability to utilise local stocks of tangible and intangible capital. Drawing on seminal ideas from Bourdieu [The forms of capital. In: Richardson, J.G. (Ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Greenwood Press, New York, Westport, CT and London, 1986, pp. 241–58] and the DORA project [Bryden, Differential economic performance in rural areas. In: International Conference on Rural Communities and Identities in the Global Millennium. Malpasino University College, Nainamo, BC, Canada, 2000], we want to develop a ‘total capital’ assessment tool for mapping and measuring socioeconomic development in marginal rural communities. In this way, we hope to count in ‘all’ capital as Schultz [Investment in human capital. In: Kiker, B.F. (Ed.) Investment in Human Capital. Columbia, 1971, pp. 3–21] prophesised. This in order to explain what we term Differential Local Development (DLD), where ‘good’, sustainable development is associated with high economic performance and increase in population.     

Information and communication technology adoption in micro and small firms: Can internet access improve labour productivity?

The rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) may increase firms’ productivity with important consequences for job creation and for economic growth. This article contributes to this discussion by analysing the impact of internet adoption on labour productivity and the mechanisms shaping this relationship in Peruvian micro and small manufacturing firms over the period 2011–2013. The article estimates a reduced form where labour productivity is a function of internet adoption and other explanatory factors. Internet adoption is instrumented using a measure of the availability of financial opportunities for micro and small firms in Peru. Findings indicate that internet adoption: (a) increases firms’ labour productivity; (b) reallocates employment away from temporary administrative workers and non‐remunerated workers and expands employment of permanent production workers; (c) leads to the formalization of labour relationships, to the implementation of new organizational practices and to the improvement of training measures. While changes in employment and formalization of workers are linked to labour productivity gains, increases in training measures and organizational changes do not generate any additional productivity increase. Policies oriented to promote the adoption of ICT in micro and small firms can be beneficial to close the productivity gap with larger firms in Peru. Moreover, policies directed to the formalization of the workforce can provide an extra benefit, i.e. additional labour productivity gains in firms adopting the internet. Finally, policies oriented to the development of digital skills are also important to ease the re‐employment of those workers losing their jobs and the achievement of additional productivity gains that new organizational practices can provide.     

Rural small firms’ use of the internet: From global to local

Reporting on a study of internet portals in rural Scotland, the paper examines the discrepancy between the much theorised use of the internet to afford external market reach to small rural firms, and the consistent and prevailing evidence that the rural economy is sustained by locally-oriented trade. The study combines data from portal operators and rural firms that use portals and finds from both that greater importance is placed on maintaining local interest to facilitate local trade than fostering external market orientation. However, both suppliers and users of portals identify that local orientation of the portal also increases the effectiveness of externally-oriented marketing. Thus, rather than a focus on attracting external markets, a balance of local and external orientation is best placed to foster value-adding business activity. From a theoretical perspective the importance of the local when applied to rural small firms’ internet use is largely neglected, but its importance, as observed in the current study, suggests a rationale for developing theory that better explains the role of the internet for rural firms.     

Evaluating ICT Implementations within the Romanian Business Environment

The impact of Internet services in the economic field is huge and has generated new forms of performing typical activities in the new e-way: e-commerce,e-banking, and so on. The paper focuses on the impact of these electronic facilities and, more generally, of ICT (information and communication technology) facilities, upon the activity of some Romanian firms, mainly small and medium enterprises. We sustain our statements by administering and analyzing a questionnaire which enabled us to perform a quantitative and qualitative study in the field we concentrated on. We can generally conclude that Internet services and IT facilities emerge as a new and dynamic way of being profitable on the Romanian market and of building up the “global e-economy”.     

Rural Community and Rural Resilience: What is important to farmers in keeping their country towns alive?

Many studies have highlighted the phenomenon of rural decline in parts of the developed world, summarised as a loss in agricultural employment leading to a decline in the number and size of rural settlements. This study of small towns in part of Australia’s inland rural “heartland” employs the concepts of interactional rural community of place and rural resilience to identify how farmers perceive their interactions with their local town. This study suggests that robust levels of ongoing engagement between farmers and town communities are important in maintaining rural populations and services along with both a strong local economy and environment. Face-to-face interviews with 115 farmers in two rural regions of New South Wales, Australia, highlight the importance of the local economy and jobs, the quality of the local environment and a strong sense of belonging, in contributing to a strong sense of local community and potential for resilience.     

Where do i fit in? factors influencing women's participation in rural communities

Participation in community life has been a topic of interest for many researchers and theorists. In rural areas, in particular, women play a major role in their communities, participating in a voluntary network which contributes countless hours to maintain important community services. However, little research has been undertaken which addresses women's social involvement and the factors which may inhibit or facilitate participation. This is of particular interest, owing to the lack of women's participation in committees and boards relating to resource management at state and national levels in Australia. In the present study, women across six rural shires in the south of Western Australia were asked to comment on their participation in personal and community networks and on their individual and family histories. These structured interviews were designed to allow women to define participation in their own terms, and identify factors that limit or facilitate their involvement in their respective communities. Detailed qualitative analysis revealed that in order to determine a woman's degree of involvement in her community, it is inappropriate to focus solely upon formal membership in community organisations. Participation within a rural context is not unidimensional, involving participation in family life, the farm, personal business and the community. Furthermore, participation was influenced by a number of factors which enhanced or inhibited involvement such as family status, lack of privacy, distance and the rural economy. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature on participation and community structure.     

A structural theory of interlocking corporate directorates

A theory is proposed that explains where interlocking corporate directorates should appear between sectors of an economy, where they should not appear, and the profitability of efficient corporate interlocking. Taking the sector of an economy as the unit of analysis, interlocking directorates are cast as strategically created constraints on those sectors of the economy most “problematic” for obtaining profits in a given industry of firms. The extent to which each sector of the American economy is problematic for obtaining profits in two-digit and four-digit manufacturing industries is estimated from research linking industry profits with the form of the pattern of relations defining the industry as a position in the network of dollar flow transactions given in the 1967 Input-Output Study for the United States. A two-stage process is described for sampling firms representative of large corporations involved in American manufacturing. Measures of alternative strategies for interlocking across sectors are described. Two classes of hypotheses are derived: (1) Firms in an industry should interlock with firms in some other sector in proportion to the extent to which the sector constrains the industry's profits. (2) Controlling for production and market differences, the ability of firms in an industry to obtain unusually high profits reflects their success in creating interlocks with those sectors most problematic for their industry's profits.     

Stitching-up the labour market

In mainstream International Political Economy (IPE) writings on globalization, the multinational corporation (MNC) is placed at the centre of the emergence of a global market economy. Allied to this view is the normative position that these firms will have a positive, developmental impact on the states that they invest in. This article presents a gendered political economy perspective on the process of foreign direct investment (FDI), arguing that liberal IPE has failed to understand adequately the impact of the MNC on host states because of its attachment to ideas of rational action and modernization, and its assumption that the market is a gender-neutral space. By contrast, in this article, I argue that by looking at the gendered nature of recruitment practices within an MNC we are forced to confront the way in which firms work with existing inequalities embedded in the economy of the host state in order to secure a supply of low cost labour. The article presents case study research from an MNC operating in Malaysia, focusing on how company recruitment intersects with local social divisions based upon gender, ethnicity as well as age, rural–urban divides, class and education. I suggest that via its recruitment strategies, the firm plays a role in the construction of gendered and racialized inequalities. I argue that the MNC needs to be investigated as a site for the active construction of gendered identities across globalizing production lines, thus moving away from the traditional focus of feminist analysis of East Asian development on the experiences of the workers themselves.     

统筹城乡发展对科技创新的需求分析研究

科技作为促进经济增长的外生力量,其在农村经济发展中的作用至关重要.只有依靠科技进步,在统筹城乡发展中树立起科技创新的观念,以软要素突破硬约束,才能有效地促进农村经济增长.因此,从统筹城乡发展角度对科技创新需求进行分析,探索科技创新对城乡统筹发展的作用具有极其重要的意义.     

Why a fixed workweek?

The main goal of this article is to explain why the fixed workweek appeared. To this purpose we differentiate between “jobs” and “hours per job”. We consider an economy where hours and number of workers are substitutes in production but in which hiring a worker entails a fixed cost plus a variable cost per hour worked. As a consequence, firms would like workers to work as many hours as possible. In an unregulated economy, workers work more hours that they would like to at the on-going wage rate. This situation characterizes the economy of today’s industrialized countries in the 19th century.     

The city in the country: Growing alternative food networks in Metropolitan areas

Alternative food networks (AFNs) are commonly defined by attributes such as the spatial proximity between farmers and consumers, the existence of retail venues such as farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSA) and a commitment to sustainable food production and consumption. Focusing upon processes rather than attributes, this paper identifies two place-based processes that both promote and constrain the emergence and development of AFNs. Urbanization and rural restructuring are critical to the development of AFNs. AFNs are not a “thing” to be described, but rather emerge from political, cultural and historical processes. The interactions of urbanization and rural restructuring produce AFNs that are differentiated and marked by uneven development that does not necessarily support all farmers participating in the network. This indicates both the fragility and the dynamism inherent in AFNs that are tied to metropolitan development and change. Paradoxically, increasing urban demand for seasonal, and organic produce grown ‘close to home’ and the processes of rural restructuring which emphasize small-scale sustainable family farming and its direct food linkages to cities do not necessarily enable all farmers to consistently make a living from season to season. Evidence for these claims comes from an in-depth, qualitative case study reliant upon participant observation, in-depth interviews and draws from a statewide farmer survey and a regional consumer survey in Washington State.     

Uneven development and the restructuring process in British agriculture: a preliminary exploration

The development of a political economy approach to the understanding of agricultural development still remains in its infancy. This paper explores the significance of uneven development as a central concept with which to unify the approach. In the first part of the paper a set of scales are suggested which provide a framework for coping with uneven development in agriculture, both over space and temporally. Attempts to link theory and evidence are crucial in this process, and in the second part of the paper attention focuses upon the restructuring of British agriculture through an analysis of one such scale of uneven development, that of changes in internal production relations for the period 1970–1985.     

On the historical origins of Chinese underdevelopment

Conclusion The Imperial regime bequeathed to its successors a double heritage and a double handicap: on the one hand, an exceptionally strong population pressure on the area of cultivated land; and on the other, a radical break between interior China (rural bureaucratic, traditional) and coastal China (cosmopolitan, enterprising, open to innovation). The history of the twentieth century only accentuated these contradictions and worsened these handicaps. Rooted in its urban bases, the Guomindang regime of 1927–1949 did virually nothing to transfer technology to the countryside, so that the gap between the two Chinas - coastal and interior - widened, and the regime was condemned to be swept away by peasant revolution. As for the People's Republic, by postponing the adoption of a real birth-control program until 1973, it wiped out a large part of the benefits that a policy of modernization extended for the first time ever to the whole country would have brought, and made economic take-off even more difficult in 1981 than it was in 1949.     

Agrarian Transformation and Rural Diversity in Globalizing East Asia

Abstract: In East Asia the rural society is not a society based upon agricultural industry anymore and the peasant society with its long history has been disappearing. The occupation and income sources of rural inhabitants have diversified and among them those who specialized in farming are the minority. There is a shortage of rural labor, which used to be abundant in the past, and presently it is not as easy to hire the farm workers. The reason for the diversification of the rural occupations is, to put it simply, because people cannot live merely on farm income. Indeed the farm operation costs have become more expensive due to labor saving techniques, but the livelihood costs have become more expensive due the new uniform lifestyle standards from globalization. Electric machines and education are the typical of these increased costs. The background of this rural change is industrialization and urbanization in the context of globalization and its strong impact is penetrating into the rural society through the regional urban center as the relay point of the global mechanism. This change is different based upon the location of each rural society. Generally, rural societies around a big urban center enjoy opportunities for the younger generation, but remote areas have serious problems with few employment opportunities and a smaller youth population. To reproduce and sustain the regional society as a whole, it is necessary to attract younger people and make them stay. We should plan to develop a variety of industries and the resultant diversified work opportunities in the broader region beyond the narrowly demarcated village and community. Subsistence and commercial agriculture might merely be a part of such diversity.     

Entrepreneurs in the rural environment

Change in rural activities is frequently seen as: (1) reaction to changes in other areas and sectors, and (2) negative. This downplays the role and importance of entrepreneurs, both farm and non-farm, in sustaining the vitality of rural areas. The notion of entrepreneur can be extended to entrepreneurial activity by other people, e.g. local government activity, which is an integral part of rural community economic development. Both the entrepreneur and the quasi-entrepreneur in local government are critical leaders in urban fringes and other rural areas alike. Their activity in an area is partly dependent upon the broader political, social and economic environment which influences: (1) the need to change and (2) whether any “benefit” can be derived from entrepreneurial activity. A framework is presented in this paper to place entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial activity into the context first, of decision-taking generally in the rural environment, and second, of the broader “enabling” environment. It is argued that constraints originating in this broader environment are often necessary, but they may have unforeseen side-effects in discouraging innovation. Changes in such constraints or in the manner in which they are implemented may be a necessary ingredient to maintain rural vitality through encouraging entrepreneurial activity.     

Rural Women Knowing All: Globalization and Rural Women's Organizing in China

Rural women in China are located on the periphery of that country's processes of globalization and modernization. They also, in the 1990s, acquired a voice of their own through the magazine Rural Women Knowing All. This magazine, founded through the intersection of Chinese and transnational feminisms, provided rural women with connections, knowledge and a venue for their own aspirations. Through examining the dichotomies presented by urbanization, the ‘global economy’, ‘culture’ and education, and activism and organizing, this article discusses the ways that Rural Women Knowing All transformed the meanings of globalization for contemporary Chinese rural women, and in the process granted them agency to shape rural identities and existences in alternative ways.     

The Business Environment Perceived by Foreign Investors in the Region Transylvania,Romania

The paper provides an overview of the perception of the business environment by foreign investors in Transylvania (Romania) as a result of a survey conducted on firms with foreign capital in this region. The first part of our study considers general information about the companies in the sample, regarding size, type of contribution, domain of activity, market, and other aspects. The second part of the study deals with factors concerning the location decision: the factors that influenced the success of operations and impediments and barriers encountered. The fact that despite several obstacles, the business environment is perceived by the majority of investors as a good one, allows the conclusion that the transformation process of the economy is moving in the right direction.      

The Extended Metropolitan Area in a New EU Member State: Implications for a Rural Development Approach

I examine the role of rural development strategies in a new member state (Romania) of the European Union and, in particular, analyse the case of the metropolitan area of the Bucharest-Ilfov region. The analysis concerns the selected strategies for rural development in the programming period 2007–2013. It must be noted that Romania is divided into nonadministrative development regions and that the process of land privatisation is not yet concluded. These factors could have a negative influence on the implementation of the interventions. The analysed region is situated in the Southern part of the country and in the central part of the Romanian Plan. The total surface is about 1.8 square kilometres, of which 12.5% are occupied by the town of Bucharest and 87.5% by Ilfov County; however, approximately 88% of the population is concentrated in the urban center and only 12% in Ilfov County. The case study is characterised on the one hand by a high growth rate of the gross domestic product, a relatively low unemployment rate, and increasing consumer good sales (mainly food and beverages); on the other, by some marked disparities in macroeconomic indicators among regions and between rural and urban areas and an enormous lack of infrastructures. The case study thus calls for a local approach in order to identify the strategies required to improve the quality of life of the regional inhabitants (both in rural and urban areas) and to prevent pressure from the urban centre from compromising the rich rural heritage