| Abstract: | Self help has increasingly become a popular policy option in the search for solutions to the problems of deprivation in rural Britain, although there is little evidence to suggest that this approach has ever been the subject of vigorous analysis or evaluation.Although a number of arguments have been advanced in support of self-help policies, such justifications often owe more to popular imagery than to any objective or robust evaluation of a range of policy alternatives. Indeed, this paper suggests that many of these supporting arguments are based on false images of the structure of rural society and of the real causes of rural deprivation.Despite a growing volume of objective evidence which emphasises the limitations of self help policies, however, the paper argues that they will continue to proliferate because they have now become a powerful factor on the legitimation of the social and economic policies of central and local government in Britain. They have also become a powerful legitimising force for a growing number of rural statutory and non-statutory agencies whose existence depends to varying degrees on the political and financial support of central and local Government. |
