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Handbook of Rural Studies

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Handbook of Rural Studies

Edited byPaul Cloke,Terry Marsden and Patrick Mooney

● ●

SAGE PublicationsLondon Thousand Oaks New Delhi

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Chapter 1 © Terry Marsden 2006Chapter 2 © Paul Cloke 2006Chapter 3 © Stewart Lockie, Geoffrey Lawrence

and Lynda Cheshire 2006Chapter 4 © Keith Halfacree 2006Chapter 5 © Ruth Panelli 2006Chapter 6 © Matteo B. Marini and

Patrick H. Mooney 2006Chapter 7 © Mark B. Lapping 2006Chapter 8 © E. Melanie DuPuis 2006Chapter 9 © Brian Short 2006Chapter 10 © David Bell 2006Chapter 11 © Noel Castree and Bruce Braun 2006Chapter 12 © Jonathan Murdoch 2006Chapter 13 © Owain Jones 2006Chapter 14 © Terry Marsden 2006Chapter 15 © The estate of Frederick H. Buttel 2006Chapter 16 © Paul Milbourne, Lawrence Kitchen

and Kieron Stanley 2006Chapter 17 © Harvey C. Perkins 2006

Chapter 18 © Jan Douwe van der Ploeg 2006Chapter 19 © Christopher Ray 2006Chapter 20 © Thomas A. Lyson 2006Chapter 21 © Mark Goodwin 2006Chapter 22 © Alessandro Bonanno 2006Chapter 23 © Sonya Salamon 2006Chapter 24 © Mara Miele 2006Chapter 25 © David Crouch 2006Chapter 26 © Jo Little 2006Chapter 27 © Paul Cloke 2006Chapter 28 © A.I. (Lex) Chalmers and

Alun E. Joseph 2006Chapter 29 © David Sibley 2006Chapter 30 © Ann R. Tickamyer 2006Chapter 31 © Paul Milbourne 2006Chapter 32 © Paul Cloke 2006Chapter 33 © Michael Woods 2006Chapter 34 © Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán and

Joan Martinez-Alier 2006Chapter 35 © Tim Edensor 2006

Introduction and editorial arrangement © Paul Cloke, Terry Marsden and Patrick Mooney 2006

First published 2006

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism orreview, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publicationmay be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with theprior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction,in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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List of Editors and Contributors ixPreface xiAcknowledgements xiii

PART 1 APPROACHES TO RURAL STUDIES 1

1 Pathways in the sociology of rural knowledge 3Terry Marsden

2 Conceptualizing rurality 18Paul Cloke

3 Reconfiguring rural resource governance: the legacyof neo-liberalism in Australia 29Stewart Lockie, Geoffrey Lawrence and Lynda Cheshire

4 Rural space: constructing a three-fold architecture 44Keith Halfacree

5 Rural society 63Ruth Panelli

6 Rural economies 91Matteo B. Marini and Patrick H. Mooney

7 Rural policy and planning 104Mark B. Lapping

PART 2 RURAL RESEARCH: KEY THEORETICAL COORDINATES 123

A Cultural representation 124

8 Landscapes of desires? 124E. Melanie DuPuis

9 Idyllic ruralities 133Brian Short

10 Variations on the rural idyll 149David Bell

B Nature 161

11 Constructing rural natures 161Noel Castree and Bruce Braun

Contents

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12 Networking rurality: emergent complexity in the countryside 171Jonathan Murdoch

13 Non-human rural studies 185Owain Jones

C Sustainability 201

14 The road towards sustainable rural development: issuesof theory, policy and practice in a European context 201Terry Marsden

15 Sustaining the unsustainable: agro-food systems andenvironment in the modern world 213Frederick H. Buttel

16 Social forestry: exploring the social contexts of forestsand forestry in rural areas 230Paul Milbourne, Lawrence Kitchen and Kieron Stanley

D New economies 243

17 Commodification: re-resourcing rural areas 243Harvey C. Perkins

18 Agricultural production in crisis 258Jan Douwe van der Ploeg

19 Neo-endogenous rural development in the EU 278Christopher Ray

E Power 292

20 Global capital and the transformation of rural communities 292Thomas A. Lyson

21 Regulating rurality? Rural studies and the regulation approach 304Mark Goodwin

22 The state and rural polity 317Alessandro Bonanno

F New consumerism 330

23 The rural household as a consumption site 330Sonya Salamon

24 Consumption culture: the case of food 344Mara Miele

25 Tourism, consumption and rurality 355David Crouch

G Identity 365

26 Gender and sexuality in rural communities 365Jo Little

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27 Rurality and racialized others: out of place in the countryside 379Paul Cloke

28 Rural change and the production of otherness: the elderly in New Zealand 388A.I. (Lex) Chalmers and Alun E. Joseph

H Exclusion 401

29 Inclusions/exclusions in rural space 401David Sibley

30 Rural poverty 411Ann R. Tickamyer

31 Rural housing and homelessness 427Paul Milbourne

PART 3 NEW RURAL RELATIONS 445

32 Rurality and otherness 447Paul Cloke

33 Political articulation: the modalities of new critical politics of rural citizenship 457Michael Woods

34 New rural social movements and agroecology 472Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán and Joan Martinez-Alier

35 Performing rurality 484Tim Edensor

Index 496

CONTENTS vii

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EDITORS

Paul Cloke, Department of Geography, SoGAER, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Terry Marsden, Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

Patrick H. Mooney, Department of Sociology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

CONTRIBUTORS

David Bell, Sociology Department, Manchester Metropolitan University UK

Alessandro Bonanno, Department of Sociology, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, USA

Bruce Braun, Geography Department, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, Minneapolis, USA

Frederick H. Buttel, a leading scholar in rural sociology, died January 2005.

Noel Castree, Geography, School of Environment and Development, The University of Manchester,Manchester, UK

A.I. (Lex) Chalmers, Department of Geography, Tourism and Environmental Planning, Faculty ofArts and Social Sciences, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Lynda Cheshire, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia Qld, Australia

David Crouch, Centre of International Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management Research,Derby, UK

E. Melanie DuPuis, Sociology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, USA

Tim Edensor, Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Manchester MetropolitanUniversity, Manchester, UK

Mark Goodwin, Department of Geography, SoGAER, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Keith Halfacree, Department of Geography, University of Wales Swansea, Swansea, UK

Owain Jones, Department of Geography, SoGAER, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Alun E. Joseph, Department of Geography, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Lawrence Kitchen, Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

List of Editors and Contributors

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Mark B. Lapping, University of Southern Maine, Muskie School, Portland, Maine, USA

Geoffrey Lawrence, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia Qld, Australia

Jo Little, Department of Geography, SoGAER, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Stewart Lockie, Faculty of Arts Health & Sciences School of Psychology & Sociology, CentralQueensland University, Queensland, Australia

Thomas A. Lyson, Polson Institute for Global Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

Matteo B. Marini, Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica, Università degli Studi della Calabria, Italy

Joan Martinez-Alier, Department of Economics and Economic History, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain

Mara Miele, School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

Paul Milbourne, Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

Jonathan Murdoch, Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff

Ruth Panelli, Department of Geography, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Harvey C. Perkins, Environment, Society and Design Division, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Christopher Ray, Centre for Rural Economy, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development,University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Sonya Salamon, Department of Human and Community Development, University of Illinois atUrbana–Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA

Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán, Escuela Tecnica Superior de Inqenieros Agronomos y de Montes de laUniversidad de Cordoba, Cordoba, Spain

Brian Short, Department of Geography, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

David Sibley, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Kieron Stanley, Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

Ann R. Tickamyer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Athens, Ohio, USA

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Until the 1970s, the domain within which contemporary social science was being practisedwas increasingly urban. The role of the city as political and economic hub, and the con-struction of the urban as ostensibly the archetypal site of cultural distinction and socialdeprivation, meant that rural areas were being left behind and often ignored. Since thattime, however, there has been something of a revival in rural studies. Not only has thechanging nature of the rural been comprehensively charted in different contexts, but therehas also been an upsurge in rural theorization and conceptualization. Rurality, we mightargue, has been put back on the map through a revitalized rural studies.

Such a picture, however, is only partially accurate. In truth rural studies are often pursuedwithin disciplinary and subdisciplinary boundaries, and the publications of rural researcherstend still to be placed in diverse and dispersed locations. These literatures are also often con-strained within subdisciplinary boundaries, leading to poor dialogue, both practically andintellectually, both amongst rural researchers and between rural specialists and other socialscientists. Indeed, we face a significant challenge not only to articulate and expose ruralresearch to a wider audience, but also to enhance the interdisciplinary ‘stock’ of its creativetheoretical and empirical endeavours over recent years. We have created this Handbook asan attempt to contribute to both of these goals, to progress a true reflection of the vitalityand theoretical innovation displayed in the rural studies of advanced societies.

Our objective for the Handbook then is to encapsulate the intellectual excitement whichhas arisen from the application of new theorizations of rural life, landscape, work andleisure over the past decade. This has involved engagements both with critical politicaleconomy and the ‘cultural turn’ in social sciences, both of which have led to very signifi-cant insights into the assemblages of power, process, practice and change which have(re)produced and (re)encultured rural areas over recent years. The Handbook will reveal,moreover, not just one-way traffic of ideas into rural studies, but also key moments inwhich the theorizations of culture, nature, politics, agency and space in rural settings aretransmitting significant ideas into wider social science debates. The Handbook attempts,then, to deal with both the substantive components of contemporary theorized research inrural areas and the emergent trajectories of theory/research and practice.

In seeking to achieve this objective, it is important to acknowledge the continuing sig-nificance of barriers to truly interdisciplinary and internationally relevant studies of therural. Not all rural areas are the same, even within particular nation-states. Not all ruralresearchers adopt the same theoretical, philosophical and methodological frameworks fortheir work, even within particular disciplinary boundaries. Not all substantive issues crop-ping up in rural areas will show the same face, even where contexts appear similar. In theHandbook we have brought together authors from different national and disciplinary back-grounds but, even so, many of the perspectives offered will appear too narrow and con-strained by their contexts. Any such response to the Handbook represents a welcomeaffirmation of the diversity and differentiated excitement of rural studies, and we hope that

Preface

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the material presented here will act as a springboard for further discussion of those differencesand excitements.

As with other Sage Handbooks, the aim here is to present a retrospective and prospectiveoverview of rural studies that focuses on critical discussions of the role of theory in the devel-opment and contingency of rural research. In order to engage with the interdisciplinary natureof rural studies, the Handbook emphasizes the theoretical and empirical diversity of research inthe field, and the interconnections that may be made between the different movements in thisdiversity. We have attempted to map out and problematize the development of rural studies,exploring the key terrains of coherence and incoherence in the theorizations which have beenbrought to rural studies, and the critical pathways taken by new research that seeks to developa range of theoretical resonances from, and to, wider social sciences. In this sense we hope theHandbook will be read by non-rural researchers as well; those interested in the macro-concernswhich emanate now from environmental, economic, social and political uncertainties.

The Handbook is divided into three parts. The first, ‘Approaches’, presents a retrospec-tive cartography of rural studies. It charts how rural knowledge, and in particular how thenotion of rurality, has been informed by different theoretical strands and impulsesthroughout the latter part of the twentieth century, and through the transitions betweenmodernization and postmodernization. It also deals with key routes into the rural – thespatial, the social, the economic, the resource base and planning problematics. Thesechapters provide a foundation for the systematic accounts that follow, and present a welcomebasis for assessing how far rural studies has progressed over the past three decades.

The second part has been compiled as a series of key theoretical coordinates, each ofwhich is given detailed treatment in three chapters dealing with different forms and foci ofresearch. This is the most extensive part of the Handbook, representing a state-of-the-artsurvey of different facets of rural studies. Each group of chapters presents a critical assess-ment of the different ‘packages’ of theoretical and empirical issues around what we regardas the key research avenues for existing and future development. These are necessarily inter-sectoral, and they highlight key clusters of creative endeavour in rural research, as well aslinking this to wider social science debates – cultural representation, nature, sustainability,new economies, power, new consumerism, identity and exclusion.

The third section, by way of conclusion, attempts to focus on the question of new formula-tions of rural relations. These we suggest are only beginning to be developed in the rural studiesfield and are therefore more tentative treatments of imaginative engagement. Nevertheless, itseems crucial to explore new ways of thinking and practising the rural. We do not regard thefour contributions as an exhaustive treatment of this new agenda; but they are in our viewimportant new traces, ones which require further theoretical and empirical concern.

Rural studies has reached a stage of maturity which deserves to be mapped out andpored over. It is our hope that this Handbook adds to the resources with which such nec-essary tasks are undertaken. However, we also appreciate the urgent need for rural studiesto remain innovative and dynamically critical. This may involve importing the most recenttheoretical and philosophical insights being developed in urban domains, and it may alsomean a patient re-excavation of previous approaches to maximize their potential forinsights into changing rural relations – insights that are sometimes trampled over in therush for the fashionable and the supposed cutting-edge. Mostly, however, we hope thatrural researchers will increasingly be able to export their theoretical insights, rather thanmerely accept urban-centred dictates. Were this to be the case, we would soon be needinganother Handbook to express another exciting period of innovation.

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The Editors want to thank Robert Rojek and David Mainwaring, both for believing in theidea of this Handbook and for their enthusiastic efficiency in dealing with it. The process ofbringing the Handbook to fruition has been complex and iterative. We want to thank theauthors of chapters for their patience and expertise in producing high-quality contributions.Finally, Joek Roex has undertaken very significant editorial support, and has in no smallmeasure been the catalyst for the completion of the manuscript. We are enormously grate-ful to Joek for his efficiency, diligence and general good humour – he is the unsung hero ofthe Handbook of Rural Studies.

Acknowledgements

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Part 1

APPROACHES TO RURAL STUDIES

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INTRODUCTION: FROM VACUUMAND HIATUS TOWARDS ATHEORETICAL MATURITY

The 1970s and 1980s were in some ways ratherfrustrating for the rural studies of advanced soci-eties. Like other areas of social science, therewas a growing recognition of a ‘crisis’, not justof substance but of confidence, in the field and acontinuous struggle both to release the subjectfrom the restrictive (not least institutional)frameworks of the past, and to adopt a more‘holistic’ and renewed focus.

In short, the subject had been significantlyretarded and marginalized by the post-war (agri-cultural) modernization project. This had tended,at its most positive, to render rural spaces as sitesfor the playing out of a particular type of agri-cultural modernization based upon increasinglyintensive methods and scale economies. This wasexpressed by rendering anything that did not fitinto this model (such as upland farming regions)as more of a ‘problem of agricultural adjustment’rather than as a potentially different pathway ofrural development. Rural sociology, for instance,by the early 1980s, was still seen as something of a‘side-show’ with regard to the main social sciencedrift. As Newby sums up:

Rural sociology has still not filled the conceptualvacuum left by the demise of the rural–urban continuum.This is reflected in the paucity of problem formulationwhich continues to afflict the field, and which lies at theheart of rural sociology’s current malaise … To overcomethese problems rural sociology could learn from the exam-ple of its urban counterpart by beginning from a holistictheory of society within which the rural can be satisfacto-rily located, and as a corollary, developing theories whichlink social structure to spatial structure. (1980: 108)

There was a sense at that time that anytheoretical or, indeed, scientific justification theremay have been for delineating ‘the rural’ as a dis-tinctive area of study had largely been ‘hollowedout’, leaving, as Newby believed, ‘the rural’ assimply a physical and social expression ofmodernization, rather than a robust and engagingconceptual and scientific assemblage. As a resultit was not possible to have a theory of ruralsociety without a theory of society tout court;moreover, this demanded a theory that links thespatial with the social, and indeed one that gavethe social primacy.

It is interesting that a decade later – a periodwhich brought considerable vibrancy to a large-scale and creative reaction to these circum-stances in the form of a new political economy ofrural space and agriculture – a similar concern wasstill prescient. I myself, and colleagues, argued in1990 that despite the progress made:

The problems associated with the transformation ofrural areas thus need to be rescued from the conceptualhiatus to which they are increasingly assigned … Anappropriate starting point would be to reverse therespective telescopes of agrarian political economy andrural economic restructuring. In other words, to locatethe contemporary predicament of rural areas at theintersection of the two major forces transforming them,the reorganisation of the international food system andthe social and economic restructuring of rural regionsunder the pressure of capitalist recombination. (Marsdenet al., 1990: 12)

I want to suggest in this chapter, and in intro-ducing this volume as a whole, that considerableprogress has been made since this scientific ‘callfor arms’, both in recognizing the need fordiverse sociological and spatial theoretical devel-opments, on the one hand, and in bridging the

1Pathways in the sociology of rural knowledge

Terry Marsden


conceptual hiatus potentially created by thebifurcation of effort, vertically along the agro-foodsupply chain and laterally by addressing thediversity of economic and social restructuringprocesses affecting rural areas of advancedeconomies, on the other. I will argue, however,that, despite the deepening and growing pluralityof theoretical and conceptual endeavour experi-enced over the past decade, this still requires aneed to consider a revised political economy ofrural space. One which foregrounds the distinc-tive features of rural life, but does so not at theexpense of conceptually isolating it from broadersocial science theoretical and conceptual trendsand interpretations. Indeed, one of the features ofthe most recent decade of research effort, as thisHandbook clearly expresses, has been to signifi-cantly build a more interdisciplinary critical ruralsocial science and to link this directly to broadersocietal and restructuring trends. Taking the con-tinued major themes of (the vertical) agro-foodregulation and (the lateral process of) regional/rural restructuring, it will be argued here that ruralstudies (itself now much more of an amalgam ofsocial science disciplines) has now reached a newand more complex terrain, a terrain which can jus-tify a much more confident and mature theoreticaland scientific positioning, and which also needs tobe anchored at the juxtaposition of the agro-foodand rural and regional restructuring dynamics.

In studying how these two bodies of ruralknowledge have developed recently and, more-over, how they now contribute to a much moremalleable and robust political economy of ruralspace, it is necessary to identify some key macrofeatures which seem to have stimulated thesescholarly trends. Indeed, I tend to consider these,on reflection, as a series of contextual paradoxes.Three seem here to be most pertinent.

Paradox 1 More intense and diversifiedsocial science rural research despite the contin-ual urban cosmopolitanism and globalism ofadvanced societies and the ‘urbanization’ of thecountryside. Advanced economies over the pasttwo decades have both urbanized and suburban-ized, with traditional rural societies and ‘ways oflife’ being increasingly marginalized.

There has been undoubtedly a growth in the‘consumption countryside’ and the highly mobi-lized networked society. Moreover, traditionalrural sectoral interests have given way to morecomplex environmental and other issue-basedconcerns (like food quality and animal welfare).Interestingly, however, this has not diminishedthe needs and priorities for rural-based research.Rather, it has re-invigorated a broader culturaland social understanding of what Keil (2000), in

a US context, has called the ‘suburban frontier’.This has created a fertile ground for not so mucha geographically legitimating social definitionof the ‘rural’, as a true and more diverse andeclectic ‘sociology of the rural’. As Mormont ina seminal paper outlining this new intellectualempowerment argued:

The benefit of a history of rural sociology – yet to beestablished on an international scale – would be to startfrom the hypothesis that the rural–urban opposition issocially constructed and that the rural exists primarily asa representation serving to analyse both the social andspace–or rather to analyse the social while definingspace–borne and interpreted by social agents. The factthat it is a constructed representation and not an ascer-tained reality does not deplete a sociology of the rural ofsubject. Its subject may be defined as the set of processesthrough which agents construct a vision of the rural suitedto their circumstances, define themselves in relation toprevailing social cleavages, and thereby find identity, andthrough identity, make common cause. (1990: 41)

Hence the sociology of the rural now holds abroader ‘terrain, map and compass’ both in thepublic’s imagination and in the social scientist’srepertoire, because of, rather than despite, theonset of global cosmopolitanism.

Paradox 2 More intense and diversifiedsocial science research despite the application ofneo-liberal projects and the further de-institu-tionalization of critical rural (and especiallyagricultural) research and development. Thesocial science of the rural has grown as an activeinterdisciplinary area despite the institutionalconstraints placed upon disciplinary researchinstitutes and academic departments. While the‘land-grant college’ system has remained in theUS, budgetary cuts in staffing, reorganizationand partial privatization of research have gener-ally failed to reduce the vibrancy of critical ruralresearch. In Europe, the onset of the bio-sciencerevolution in research universities has been a majorinvestment priority, which far outweighs the formersupport for conventional agricultural research,development and extension. Nevertheless, we wit-ness the growth in critical rural studies. Indeed,as seen in the case of the UK, the point hasbeen long made (see Crow et al., 1990) that thevery vibrancy of interdisciplinary rural socialscience has been facilitated by not having astable disciplinary home. Indeed, the disciplinary‘home’, which may have once been recognized,of agricultural economic faculties, have eitherclosed or have been forced to adopt a broaderinterdisciplinary focus. Rural researchers arefound populating geography, sociology, planningand political science schools whilst the traditional

APPROACHES TO RURAL STUDIES4


(disciplinary) agricultural economics departmentshave become isolated and moribund places forcritical and theoretical rural conversation betweenthe social science disciplines.

Paradox 3 New processes of modernity andtechnology are attempting to deny local ruralnature and communities, at the same time as bothrural actors and researchers identify new, alter-native socio-ecological paradigms of local ruraldevelopment. Conventional agro-food technolo-gies in particular (not least GM), as well as cor-porate retail strategies, are currently being appliedin ways that attempt to prolong the ‘sustainabilityof the unsustainable’ (see Buttel, in this volume).That is, they are continuing to largely deny theembeddedness of rural nature, and reinforce thetechnological ‘treadmill’ of production and scaleeconomies of standardization in agro-food.However, much of rural social science is nowunderstanding the significant reactions and con-tingencies in this process and, in some cases, theemergence of an alternative rural developmentparadigm (see Marsden, Chapter 14 in thisvolume). There is, therefore, a widening vectorand critical research agenda associated with thesocial and political development and applicationof technologies in and through rural space, asso-ciated with both GM developments in agro-foodand ICT developments in shaping rural develop-ment (see Andersson, 2003).

I shall return to the continuity and endurance ofthese apparent paradoxes in conclusion, after giv-ing some treatment to two major themes in therevised political economy of rural space: theonset of the ‘risk society’ and new regulation inthe conventional food supply chain, and the emer-gence of diverse regionalized ruralities, within aEuropean context. In both cases, we see con-tradictory governance and regulatory arrange-ments between these dynamic forces which arereshaping, in combination, the revised politicaleconomies of rural space and society. As such, itis argued that they provide quite rich comparativetheoretical and empirical pathways with which tofurther progress the critical political economy ofrural change. In addition, in both of these spheres,we can begin to track what we might regard as a‘postmodernization’ tendency, that is, a contex-tual and political redefinition of rurality whichgoes beyond the conventional agricultural andindustrial modernization process (a ‘growthmachine’) so prevalent in the advanced societiesof the late twentieth century. Both cases alsodemonstrate the growing political and culturalinfluence of the wider (cosmopolitan) public andconsumer realm for the reconstitution of thesenew critical ruralities.

THE REVISED FOOD CHAINDIMENSION: REGULATINGFOOD RISK AND REGULATINGTHE DANGEROUS

Governments are continually having to deviseinnovative strategies to deal with the innumerablerisks to health and well-being. The ‘successes’ oflate twentieth century modernization have beenmarked by new social and environmental risksthat are capable of manifesting deleterious impactsat indeterminate points in the future and overindefinite spatial realms. The significant differ-ences, in characteristics and impacts, betweencontemporary risk and ‘age-old’ risk have been afeature of recent sociological writing, associatedwith the ‘risk society’ (Beck, 1992; see alsoGiddens, 1994; Cohen, 1997).

According to Beck (1992), postmodern societyis facing a new state of human insecurity, char-acterized not by the desire to satisfy basic andmaterial needs, but by fear of the ‘dark side ofprogress’, that is, the tangible and intangible by-products of industrial development. Confidence,therefore, that progress in human development hasbeen synonymous with greater security is chal-lenged by the recognition that modern day ‘manu-factured dragons’, such as bovine spongiformencephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, are actually aproduct of science and technology, and cannoteasily be mitigated by it.

The crisis surrounding BSE (discovered first inBritish cattle during the mid-1980s) and its linkswith new variants of the Creutzfeldt–Jakob dis-ease (vCJD) in humans in 1996, has been cited inthe food risk literature as a classic illustration of‘manufactured risks’. This image of moderniza-tion undermining feelings of confidence and secu-rity represents a formidable challenge to politicians,policy-makers, scientists, producers and others tofind new ways of not only minimizing these newthreats, but to do so without creating hindrancesto the conventional modernization process andproject itself. In other words, this postmoderniza-tion era requires that economic and social devel-opment continue within a conventional economicmodel (Smith, 2002). In the context of exposureto new types of food risks, public concernhas extended beyond the mere occurrences offood-borne diseases due to periodic microbialcontamination. What has become significantlymore important has been the increasing incidenceof these microbial episodes, the emergence of newfood pathogens, as well as infectious strains offamiliar pathogens that bring resistance to custom-ary anti-microbial treatments; E. coli 0157 is a

THE SOCIOLOGY OF RURAL KNOWLEDGE 5


notable example. In the case of non-infectious, food-borne diseases, public concern surrounds the uncer-tain effects of a range of synthetic food additives,pesticide residues, nitrate residues, dioxins, heavymetals, hormones in beef, genetically modifiedorganisms and so on (see Lang et al., 2001; WHO,1999). Public confidence in food is consequentlyundermined by the belief that chemical residues andgenetic modification may harbour deleteriousconsequences for human health, such as mutagenic,carcinogenic and teratogenic effects (WHO, 1999).

However, to attribute the erosion of public confi-dence in food (especially in the UK) during the1980s and 1990s merely to a steady catalogue offood scares would be to ignore broader societaldevelopments. These gave greater importance toexpressions of public disaffection with how thepublic responsibilities of the state were being dis-charged. For instance, during the 1980s and into the1990s the UK experienced a period of pressure forgreater openness and transparency in dealingsbetween the public and public institutions. Thesebegan to challenge the pre-existing ethos of author-ity between the executive state and the client public.The ensuing transition from public administrationthrough virtually closed policy avenues of govern-ment (such as in the Ministry of Agriculture) to themore socially inclusive notion of governance grad-ually provided useful political space for new partic-ipants, such as environmental and socialnon-governmental organizations (NGOs), to con-tribute to the definition of problems of public sig-nificance as well as in devising likely solutionoptions. Consequently, where old-style paternalisticstatements concerning the diligence of regulators toreduce the range and number of breaches in foodsafety, for instance, may have ameliorated publicconcern previously, this became increasingly inad-equate. Hence, issues of accountability within thefood chain (particularly of producers) and effective-ness of mechanisms of food safety regulation,began to take on greater importance.

This wider process of food governance, partic-ularly in relation to its contribution to the con-struction of a new regulatory context for food,has been positively influenced by the paralleldemand for participative democracy acrossEurope. Of particular importance has been theinstitutionalization of greater openness in mattersof public affairs that has been facilitated by thepassage of key pieces of EU legislation such as90/313/EEC,1 93/730/EC2 and 95/46/EC,3 as wellas the Treaty of the European Union itself. These,together with legislation requiring the releaseof archived information, have opened the way forthe public (often through the media) to gainknowledge of the workings of the state, knowledge

that previously would have been known only togovernments, their advisers and to privilegedinsider individuals and groups. This change in how,when and what types of information becomespublic knowledge meant that issues of publicinterest, such as food safety and farming practicesspecifically, began to be reported in the electronicand printed media much more readily, and inmuch greater detail, than in the past. Easier accessto information of public interest has also facili-tated NGO campaigning activities in areas suchas animal welfare, application of the ‘precaution-ary principle’ to matters of food safety, as well asto environmental concerns generally.

Consequently, it is not sufficient to relateattempts at devising new strategies for assuringfood safety in the UK and across the EU simplyto a raft of recent food scares. Important thoughthis has been, the process has nevertheless beensignificantly influenced by the wider social, polit-ical and economic considerations shown inFigure 1.1.

There is now wider recognition that the factorsin Figure 1.1 have been guiding how the publicperceive food risks and the rural/farm sector.This has seriously challenged conventional foodregulatory practices with their reliance on a com-bination of science, technology and expert adviceto allay public fears. Governments across theEU began to acknowledge that the conventionalapproach dealt poorly with the crucial issue ofscientific uncertainty. And, whilst absolute guar-antees about the safety of foods cannot be givenor, indeed, may not be expected by the public, thefear that lives and well-being are being exposedto ‘manufactured risks’ has raised public expec-tations for improvements in food regulation andparticularly the competence of the farm sector.The question for governments becomes: how cannew food safety and quality assurances be estab-lished given these new food-governance pres-sures in ways that support the agro-industrialcomplex?

Beck’s (1992) risk society thesis elucidatesthis contemporary risk/governance concern.Scientific research is not always able to providea full and clear picture of what effects, forinstance, widespread consumption of foods con-taining genetically modified organisms will haveon human health. In view of this deficiency inscience-based decision-making, states such asthe UK have become less resistant to ethical,value and culture-based advice infusing theconventional process of food safety regulation.This has served to pluralize the political contextwithin which the EU’s policies of food regulationare being constructed.



WHAT ARE SOME OF THEFEATURES OF THIS EMERGENT EUFOOD REGIME? THE MATURINGEUROPEANIZATION OF UK FOODPOLICY

In earlier work (see Marsden et al., 2000), webegan to show, through both the design andimplementation of European food hygienedirectives, how corporate retailer-led supplyregulation became empowered, and the useof quality control and risk management tech-niques, such as hazard and critical control point(HACCP), tended to empower the corporateretailer-led forms of food regulation. The failurein reducing food risks and legitimacy concernssince the mid-1990s, and, indeed, their diversi-fication and differential spatial spread acrossmember states (like swine fever in theNetherlands, dioxins in Belgium), tended to fur-ther press the EU to develop wider powers andambitions. This was embodied in the 2000 Food

Safety White Paper, which addressed suchcorporate/public tensions:

Consumers should be offered a wide range of safe andhigh quality products coming from all Member States.This is the essential role of the Internal Market. An effec-tive food safety policy must recognise the inter-linkednature of food production. It requires assessment andmonitoring of the risks to consumer health associated withraw materials, farming practices and food processingactivities; it requires effective regulatory action to managerisk; and it requires the establishment and operation ofcontrol systems to monitor and enforce the operation ofthese regulations … Historically, these measures havemainly been developed on a sectoral basis. However, theincreasing integration of national economies within theSingle Market, developments in farming and food pro-cessing, and new handling and distribution patternsrequire the new approach. (CEC, 2000: 6–7)

After a decade of economic integration in theEuropean Single Market, the crucial priority ofthe White Paper was to establish an independentEuropean Food Safety Authority to provide:


Food scaresand dramaticadvances inscientific andtechnologicalcapabilities indetectingproblems anddiseases relatedto foodproduction andconsumption

Increasedawareness andinstitutionalizationof key notions ofcitizen rights, e.g.EU access toinformationregulation, causing earlierand more detailedmedia coverageof public interestevents

Rise inparticipativedemocracyacross WesternEurope leadingto increasedNGO and specialinterestparticipation inraising the profileof environmentaland food safetyissues; trendtowards govern-ance ratherthan government

Increasingeconomic affluenceleading to moresophisticatedconsumer choices,e.g. finer notionsof quality in foodsversus cheapand plenty

Increasing politicaland economicrisks associatedwith failure of thestate to satisfyrising publicexpectationsregarding foodquality

Contemporary perceptions of food risks and the inadequacy of conventional regulatory and accountability mechanisms

New food safetyassurance strategies

Implications for the cost–price income squeeze and structureof rural food farms and the diversity of farming practices

Figure 1.1 Factors contributing to contemporary perceptions of food risk andnew regulatory approaches


scientific advice on all aspects relating to food safety,operation of rapid alert systems, communication anddialogue with consumers on food safety and healthissues, as well as networking with national agencies andscientific bodies. (CEC, 2000: 3)

And, while the White Paper prepared the under-lying aims of this more comprehensive Europeanapproach to monitoring and enforcing foodsafety and assurance, a further challenge is thebuilding of multi-interest support for the processof implementing and institutionalizing this newEU-led food safety regime.

Collaboration between DGs inthe formation of food safety policies

Although the major elements of food productionwithin the EU still fall within the remit of DGAgriculture, it is DG SANCO (Health andConsumer Affairs) that now has the principalresponsibility for overseeing the EU’s progres-sion to the new food safety regime that wasdescribed in the White Paper. In fact,

SANCO itself was born out of food crises – the big onebeing BSE which has a political dimension … manyorders of magnitude greater than its public health dimen-sion. The crises and repeated crises that the politicalmachinery responds to, creates [sic] a paradox for aspolicy starts to tighten up at all levels – rules, rule-making,enforcement – you actually discover more and new prob-lems [see Figure 1.1]. Responses [therefore] reflect theconflicts between remediation and party-political objec-tives and their relationship to economic and private inter-est concerns. (Interview with DG SANCO senior official)

Despite the new leadership position heldby DG SANCO, the view from DG Agricultureis that ‘good communication exists betweenCommissioners David Byrne [DG SANCO] andFranz Fischler [DG Agriculture] because theirjobs overlap a lot and they have common views’(interview with DG Agriculture senior official).Similarly, DG Trade, which is primarily respon-sible for the EU’s compliance with World TradeOrganization (WTO) rules and in particular theSanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS), issatisfied with the opportunities to contribute tothe development of the new food safety regime.

In reference to the establishment of the EFSA(European Food Safety Agency) – the centrepieceof the new Commission’s new food safety regime –DG Trade is also satisfied that its somewhat long-distance relationship with DG SANCO does notprevent its key concerns from being taken into con-sideration. According to DG Trade, ‘our interest inthe EFSA is in ensuring that the right questions areasked, and that third countries have access to it’

(interview with DG Trade senior official). This isvery important as, despite advocating ‘health beforetrade’, the key operating principle of the SPSAgreement is that measures designed to protecthealth (and the environment) ‘have to be based inscience’. This science-based approach to food/tradepolicy is one of the key features of the new foodsafety regime emerging from Brussels, and is cur-rently being significantly tested with the onset ofGMOs through the World Trade Organization.

We can see here how the new, or at leastrevised processes of Europeanization, consumer-ization and institution-building are developing inboth a contingent and dynamic way. This involvesthe (differential) empowerment of a wider rangeof interest groups and consultation proceduresin food policy-making. These become more fluidthan before in that they are networks basedaround significant issues rather than simplygroup- or sector-led. For instance, we see new,issue-based alliances being formed around issueslike GM by consumer, environmental, animal-welfare and corporate retailing groups. This actsas a significant counterweight to the ‘industry-led’, manufacturers and producer interests andalliances.

Also, we see the boundaries between thetraditional ‘insider-groups’ and outside groupsbecoming much more blurred, with DG SANCOand the EFSA establishing new clientelistic rela-tionships with some key consumer organisations.Indeed, there is significant fluidity both in themeans of networking and the content of inter-mediation, on the one hand, and in terms of vari-able ‘state-capture’ and influence on the other.

The second regulatory trend concerns thecontemporaneous and co-evolving model of pri-vate interest food regulation. At the same time aswe see a more complex, fluid and networkedpolicy process operating at the EU level, interest-ingly we also see a re-affirmation of a more com-plex, yet authoritative private interest model offood regulation embedding itself in the conven-tional food supply chains in Europe. In otherwords, the stronghold that, for instance, majorfood retailers in the UK have over their supplychains is being diffused throughout the Union andbeyond (see van der Grijp et al., 2005).

The growing, if contested, legitimacy andauthority of the more complex private interestmodel of food regulation

Over time, the private interest model of foodregulation in the UK has had to both adjust andEuropeanize to rapidly changing circumstances.This has not reduced its relevance, but its character



has been modified. It now has to engage withstronger public sector agencies and actions, anda stronger reliance upon independent ‘scientific’mitigation and assessment of food risks. Hence,having originally developed out of the limitationsof the state, the private interest food regulatorymodel is now about to be re-engaged by stateintervention. In addition, it now has to projectitself as an effective, market-based and efficientsystem for policing the global food chains ina more complex and, as we have seen above,more networked, participatory and fluid policy-making community; one in which some privatesector interests – particularly farmers and foodmanufacturers – have been increasingly questionedas the rightful custodians of the European foodsystem. In doing this it would seem that Britishretailer practices have been to the fore.

The British influence in shaping the Europeanfood safety agenda has thus not only been asso-ciated with it being the unique source of BSEand foot and mouth disease. Rather, the now-established practices of the concentrated Britishretail sector in policing their food chains througharm’s-length control mechanisms and developinginnovative baskets of own-brand goods has ledto this being seen as a preferred model at theEuropean level. Issues of traceability, labelling,implementing a precautionary approach, and thespecific debates about the regulation of GMproducts, are all tending to reinforce the privateinterest model of food regulation that has beenprojected and implemented by these retailers.The trick, therefore, becomes how to dovetail theexisting private interest model within the newlyenhanced public interest regime that is beingprojected by the EU, and outlined above.

Private interest umbrella organizations, suchas Eurocommerce and the Confederation of theFood and Drink Industries (CIAA) at the EUlevel and the British Retail Consortium in theUK, see and project these public interest devel-opments as a positive European step as long asthey remain focused upon assuring the stabilityof European food markets and allowing the fulloperation of the European, and indeed the globalfood market, to operate as freely as possible underthese circumstances.

Private interest representative groups at theEuropean level have equipped themselves wellto influence the new food policy regime. Bydemonstrating their technical competence in mat-ters of food safety, the evolving policy for thembecomes one of mutual co-evolution of bothpublic and private systems with the belief that itis for the public sector to set in place minimumguarantees and risk assessment and assurancemechanisms, and for the private sector, given this

more stable risk environment, to compete for theattentions of the more risk-averse and selectiveEuropean food consumer. Moreover, the costs ofcompliance in this mutually reinforcing systemwill tend to always fall more heavily upon theupstream sectors (manufacturers and farmers), forit is they – for instance, in the case of traceabilityof GM grains – who will have to find the neces-sary hardware and software to ensure compliancewith the private and public systems of regulation.

But, whilst the EU’s emerging food safetyregime is clearly increasing the grip of retailer-ledregulation, these mutually reinforcing private andpublic interest mechanisms must also ensure thatincreased globalized and liberalized trade in foodscontinues as freely as possible. This could createincreasingly difficult headaches for the retailerswith regard to traceability and quality regulation.

The main aim of this section of the chapter hasbeen to begin to re-conceptualize European foodregulation during a continuing period of food riskand insecurity (see Figure 1.1). We can identifysome of the key parameters of change at theEuropean level, including: (i) the gradual but sig-nificant Europeanization of policy, through, notleast, the implementation of the recommenda-tions of the European Food Safety White Paper,and the overall commitment to a stronger ‘top-down’ and standard European approach to boththe assessment and the management of risks;(ii) the growing consumerization and institution-alization of these policies and the empowermentof a wider set of interest groups; and (iii) theincreasing use and legitimacy of a more complexprivate interest model of food regulation. Thelatter tendency is acting to further entrench retailerand commercially led regulation in and throughsupply chains at the same time as the publicauthorities are attempting to further guaranteeminimum standards of food safety and quality,and take the bulk of the responsibility as and whenmajor food scares occur.

Hence, we can begin to see, perhaps with hind-sight, how the somewhat peculiarly British dualmodel of food regulation depicted in ConsumingInterests in the late 1990s (what we termed thesecond phase of food regulation) has beenmutated at the European level (to the thirdphase), both as European food markets havebecome more integrated and developed, and asthe diversity and intensity of food risks havetended to grow.

We are now more firmly in a ‘post-BSE’ phaseof European food regulation; one that has estab-lished new ‘independent’ food institutions inwhich to assess and manage these risks, and onethat divests considerable power to selected com-mercial and consumer organizations in delivering



food through more accountable supply chains.This is very much then a state–private sectorhybrid model of food regulation, a particulartype of public and private sector response to thefive pressures on food regulation (as identifiedin Figure 1.1). It is important to see this morecomplex, multi-level system as a response tothese pressures in ways that preserve particularnotions of the internal (and ‘free’) market andexchange in food goods within and beyondEurope, at the same time as expressing new con-trols in the name of the consumer and publicinterest. In this sense it is also consistent withother branches of the ‘European project’ whichstress supply chain double-dividends and con-sumerization of public policy (see, for instance,Folkerts and Koehorst, 1998; Skogerbo, 1997).Thus, food regulation is now far more embeddedand integrated into the European political pro-ject. It carries a far bigger political punch thanits actual economic weight in Europe; and per-haps like agriculture and the CAP were viewedover 50 years ago, now food policy is again seenas a major plank for the further overall integra-tion of the European project.

It follows then that as productivist agricul-tural corporatism has declined in its political andeconomic power in many of the member states(Murdoch et al., 2003), as well as in Europeanpolicy-making, this has not weakened the politicaland economic significance of food in Europe as amajor and dynamic regulatory activity. Rather, ithas laid a basis for a more comprehensive andcommercially led regulatory system – a hybridmodel – based upon appeasing consumer andprivate sector concerns. It is increasingly systemic,scientific and standardized, global as well as localin reach, as well as inter-sectoral. And, as we haveseen in this analysis, it has emerged out of, andwill be maintained by, the interaction of a largernumber of actors and policy networks. This nowmakes the evolution of public policy all the morecomplex and contingent.

More specifically, these influences and shiftsreflect a reconstituted and multi-dimensional set ofrelationships between private interests, policy andregulatory interests and consumer and social inter-ests. This is illustrated in Figure 1.2, moving fromwhat might be called a formal or corporatist foodpolicy network to a more fluid and participatory


DG Environment

DGTrade

DGSANCO

DG Enterprise

DGAgriculture

DGInternalMarket Policy and

regulatoryinterests

CIAA

EFLA

Freshfel

Copa-Cogeca

Tesco et al.

Greenpeace

BEUC

Eurogroup forAnimal Welfare

Eurocoop

EUFIC

Consumerand socialinterests

Eurocommerce

Privateinterests

Figure 1.2 The emergent and more fluid food policy-formation networkat EU level


model, in which, for instance, key Directoratesseek as much themselves to influence what privateand consumer groups think as being the focus oftheir lobbying activities.

This new policy-making landscape and the newand differentiated influences have arisen partly dueto the more challenging and complex food riskenvironment outlined here. In addition, they pro-vide a central challenge or test for the widerEuropean Project in attempting to incorporate con-sumer and public concerns (that is, uncertainty andrisk), at the same time as fostering an integrated anda globally competitive European food market. This,after a decade of operating the European SingleMarket, makes the requirements for effectivetransnational regulation and food assurance sys-tems much more pressing than a decade ago. Foodrisks are now both more mobilized and internation-alized; so too are their governance frameworks.

However, from the perspective of the widerEuropean project, major questions remain not onlyabout what types of regulation are required but alsohow those types of regulation should be formulatedand then implemented. In this sense, a focus uponthe contemporary evolutionary governance andregulation of food tends to expose some of thebroader contradictory tendencies of EU policy-making, whereby more regulatory and policy-making fluidity becomes partly a response toregulating uncertainty in a more Europe-wide way.

The very fact that EU policy-making is a collec-tive exercise, involving large numbers of partici-pants, often in intermittent and unpredictable‘relationships’, is likely to reinforce both theprocesses by which national autonomy is beingeroded and the capacity for consistent EU-levelpolitical leadership. The likelihood of any one gov-ernment or any one national system of policyactors (for example, governments and interestgroups combined) imposing their will on the rest islow. National governments know this. We can,therefore, expect to see the emergence of twoapparently contradictory trends. First, the needto construct complex transnational coalitions ofactors which will force all actors to become lessfocused on the nation-states as the ‘venue’ forpolicy-making. Just as many large firms have longsince abandoned the notion of the nation-state, sowill other policy actors. They will seek to createand participate in a multi-layered system oftransnational coalitions. Second, the continued‘politics of uncertainty’ will lead national govern-ments and national interest groups to try to coordi-nate their Euro-strategies (for example, DTI, 1993,1994). In that sense, European policy-making maybring them closer together (Richardson, 2001: 21).

Therefore, food regulation, in this more fluidcontext, becomes a key ‘battlefield of knowledge’

and power in the fulcrum of Europe, on the onehand, and in the re-orientation of member statesand pan-European policy-making and imple-menting relationships on the other. The overalltendency, it appears, is for uncertainty and risk togenerate more complexity, as well as to re-arrange the power relations between differentfood supply chain actors (that is, particularly thebuying and selling power of corporate retailersand the weakening of farmer unions). This, in apreliminary and more formal manner, is leadingto a more complex institutional and policy-making structure which is now both multi-leveland multi-interest. The drive to minimize foodrisks for European consumers without creatinghindrances to corporate firms and the internalmarket is resulting in significant standardizationin practice and philosophy across the entire agro-food chain. And, although the new relationshipsbetween the state, corporate and non-corporateprivate and public interests promise a more viableand accountable food system, such public foodsafety benefits will be accompanied by importantspatial diversity costs, such as a threat to regionaldiversity in food production and preparation.These are food quality concerns which, also, willneed to infuse the food policy-making domain.Indeed, the question of diversity, the sanctity andvibrancy of local and short supply chains, and thegrowing political concerns over ethical and animalwelfare issues (see Lucus et al., 2002) are likely tocontinue to pressure this newly established policycommunity, which is outlined and conceptualizedhere. As we see below there are key tensionsbetween a revamped regulatory standardization ofthe conventional agro-industrial complex and theemergence of greater regional/rural and agro-fooddiversity. Thus, the new model of European foodregulation traced out here holds significantdynamic and contingent features.

REVISING THE POLITICALECONOMY OF RURAL SPACE:THE EMERGENCE OFREGIONAL RURALITIES

In contrast to the somewhat ‘virtual’ European viewtaken by recent Brussels food policy developments,we can illustrate a different conception of ruralEurope emanating from the EU with regard to localrural development. In an introduction to the recentLiving Countrysides volume (edited by van derPloeg et al., 2002), Romano Prodi, the current EUCommissioner, paints quite a different portrait ofrural Europe to that referred to above:



The countrysides of Europe and the diversity andrichness of their agricultural systems represent an unde-niable social, cultural, ecological and economic patri-mony of European society as a whole. In a scenariodominated by the negotiations of the WTO and theenlargement of the Union, rural development consti-tutes a key defence mechanism for protecting this patri-mony. It is therefore highly important to sustain theseongoing rural development processes and to stimulatenew ones. (2002: 3)

So far, the analysis and discussion above hasconcerned itself with the changes in the govern-mentality of conventional food regulation in theEuropean context. Much of this operates atvariable distances from the rural spaces it inevitablyaffects. Yet such regulatory dynamics are criticalfor the future trajectory of local and regional foodproduction systems. We have seen that, far fromthe regulatory state being ‘hollowed out’, at leastin a macro-European context, the past decade haswitnessed a significant process of re-regulation,especially at the supra-national level; a process thatintends to significantly re-regulate and policehygienic conventional farming systems such thatthey can service the increasingly integratedEuropean food market, on the one hand, and con-tinue to at least appease the more risk-averseEuropean consumer on the other (Marsden et al.,2001). Overall (and this will be focused upon inmore detail in Chapter 14, which deals with ruralsustainability), one effect of this re-juvenation inthe governance of conventional agro-food is theattempt to continue to justify and legitimate theexisting agro-industrial complex in a period ofconsiderable legitimation crisis. This macro-project, a project to maintain the conventionalagro-modernization process through its crisis oflegitimacy, is, however, what we might see asonly half of the story associated with the macro-regulation and political economy of Europeanrural space and resources. For, if we take a morelateral approach, associated with aspects of ruralrestructuring (as indeed Prodi rhetorically doesabove), we see equally profound changes andcontingencies at hand. These are associated with,first, a process of uneven multi-level governance,and second, a process of regional differentiation.I will deal with these issues here in turn.

The arrival of a problematic rural policymulti-level governance system: strategies beyondthe Foucauldian governmentality of Brussels?

Despite the general shifts in the consumerizationand Europeanization of food policy outlinedabove at the EU level, the last decade has also

witnessed the re-orientation of agriculturalproductivist policy through a process of gradualreform and diversification of purpose. Indeed, thegradual reform of the CAP, the development ofenhanced regional structural funding, and theuneven growth of regional development agenciesin adopting and adapting to rural developmentobjectives, has given growing salience to the con-cept of multi-level governance of the Europeanrural domain at the same time as, as we see above,the declining powers of agricultural productivistcorporatism. The aim of giving more regional andmember state subsidiarity with regard to settingrural development objectives has been embodied inthe development of the new rural developmentplans and ‘second pillar’ of CAP – the rural devel-opment regulation. ‘Pillar Two’ signals more sup-port for sustainable agriculture (see Chapter 14),rural development and other public goods; butas well as a greener CAP, it also signals a moredevolved CAP, in the sense that it creates theopportunities whereby regions could design strate-gies attuned to their own needs. These trends arecreating considerable excitement among both therural academic and policy-making community. Butthey have yet to fully come to fruition; and it has tobe said that funding represents still only a smallproportion of the foreseeable CAP total spend.Also, a considerable inert influence remains for themany farmer and producer organizations acrossEurope, as these tend to see these trends, especiallyin the context of European enlargement, as a finan-cial zero-sum game; that is, a further threat to andretreat from their traditional sectoral powers atnational and EU level, and their abilities to drawdown funds for agricultural production per se.

Nevertheless, the introduction of ‘Pillar Two’at the EU level, the reorientation of Pillar Onetowards single farm payments based on a varietyof food quality and environmental conditions,combined, for instance, with the advent of moredevolved regional administrations in the UK(Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament, EnglishRegional Development Agencies), is creating anew multi-level policy-making process in thecontext of a reformed agricultural and ruraldevelopment policy. And these trends reinforcewhat Keating (1997) defines as three majorregionalization trends which are currently occur-ring in Europe: ‘functional integration’, ‘institu-tional re-structuring’ and ‘political mobilization’.In short, in a variety of ways and for a varietyof different reasons, political movements seekgreater regional autonomy within or from thesupra-national and nation-states:

there are integrative regionalisms, seeking the fullintegration of their territories into the nation and the



destruction of obstacles to their participation in nationalpublic life. There are autonomous regionalisms seekinga space for independent action, and there are disintegra-tive regionalisms, seeking autonomy or separation.(Keating, 1997: 389)

Meanwhile:

modern developmental policies put more emphasisupon indigenous growth, or the attraction of investmentby qualities linked to the region such as environment,the quality of life or trained labour force, rather than oninvestment incentives provided by the central state.(Keating, 1997: 384)

For Jessop this is leading to a general struc-tural trend towards the ‘de-statization’ of politics,whereby:

the overall weight of government and governance hasbeen altered within the overall political system in favourof governance on all levels and, major trans-territorialand inter-local governance mechanisms have also beeninstituted at regional and local level. Among otherphenomena, this is reflected in a growing emphasis on‘partnerships’ between governmental, para-governmentaland non-governmental organizations in which the stateapparatus is often, formally at least, little more thanprimus inter pares. (1997: 304–5)

The steady reform of the CAP (1992–2003) isbeginning to stimulate further rural regionaliza-tion. This is particularly the case in the UK, whereit has developed alongside a process of regionaldevolution; something which has been a local andregional reaction to the centrist neo-liberalThatcher years (1979–1997). Ongoing researchshows this to be a rich area for comparativerural policy research (see also Chapter 3 in thisvolume). In very general terms, there aresignificant differences across rural regions inEurope, as to how this is playing out with regardto governance, philosophy and policy delivery.For instance, the rural policy-making process inWales has now at its heart the National AssemblyGovernment and a network of Assembly-sponsored bodies. In English regions such as theSouth-West, the responsibility for agricultural,environmental and rural development issues islargely divided between UK Ministry DEFRA,the Regional Development Agencies and the gov-ernment Regional Offices. In Italy, by contrast,the regions are historically more autonomousfrom the central government in the design andimplementation of agro-food policy and areresponsible for designing regional policy as wellas delivery of financial resources. Rather para-doxically, then, just as we witness a strongermove towards levels of European harmonizationand integration in areas of food safety and quality

policy, almost the opposite is happening withregard to rural and regional spatial policy. Thelatter is now having to take the notion of theregionally differentiated countryside (Murdochet al., 2003) seriously as a basis for policy deliv-ery, while the former still clings to a more top-down Euro-centric approach. These new regionalmobilizations are becoming important bases forthe emergence of alternative agro-food initiativesas a basis for new forms of innovation. This isin many ways despite rather than because of thegrowing Europeanization of much policy-makingand the reliance upon member state nationalstructures to mediate these policies.

The arrival of this more malleable lateral multi-level governance framework for European ruraldevelopment in some respects becomes more prob-lematic for both central state and corporate interests.The latter become increasingly committed to theadvantages of a centralized Brussels bureaucracychannelling legislation which lubricates and ensuresthe workings of the transnational European internalfood market. Agro-food and large retailers supportEU food regulations which can transgress the for-mer uneven national forms of regulation; and, as wesee with issues of food labelling and the commer-cialization of GM crops, the corporate interests pre-fer to articulate with central European agencies (likeDG SANCO and Trade), so as to force a commonpolicy which supports their globally competitiveambitions. However, as we see here, this is increas-ingly problematic, given the emerging differentialdegrees of subsidiarity unleashed both from thecentre, through CAP reform and regional qualitylabelling etc., and, regionally, by increasinglyregionalized politics and new institutional forms. Itbecomes increasingly unlikely, for instance, that allregions will accept the commercialization of GMcrops even if they do not seem to have a choice withregard to the threshold levels being set in Brusselswith regard to GM in animal feedstuffs and a rangeof food products (Carson and Lee, 2005). Hence, thearrival of a more multi-level governance system givessome potential agency to regions, despite the coun-tervailing centrist and harmonizing pressure. But thecontradictory centralizing tendencies in other spheresof agro-food EU policy- making make this a highlycomplex and contingent picture.

The economic and social bases of ruralregionalization and differentiation

Rural and regional spatial differentiation is,however, far from simply a matter of politics andthe political. As Amin and Thrift (1994) and other‘new regionalists’ have recognized, the differenti-ation in the fortunes of territorial areas in the



context of an increasingly globalized economystems from the emergence of a ‘post-Fordist’regime of flexible specialization and accumula-tion, in which high levels of economic growthderive from clusters of small and medium-sizedfirms strongly linked to regional institutions(Amin, 1999). Such clusters, it is argued, canachieve rapid growth because they can moreeasily facilitate learning and innovation than themore traditional hierarchical or atomized produc-tion structures. As firms cluster more closelytogether through rich arrays of network linkages,so the economic region comes into view.

In rural regions, combinations of new privateand public sector service industries, many of themtied to the growth in the ‘consumption’ or ‘post-productivist countryside’, sit adjacent to moreexternally managed and traditionally Fordist agro-food processing firms. Nevertheless, regionalauthorities adopt this logic of new regionalism andincreasingly support innovation and R&D on aregional basis. This is perhaps most evident in thehighly technologically driven regional policies ofSweden and Finland, but it is also now prevalentacross much of North and Western Europe. AsSaraceno identifies, this process is reducing thesalience of a classic post-war urban–rural spatialdivision of labour:

more recently, with diffused industrialization or otherforms of decentralization, the rural/urban division oflabour did not work in the classical pattern: differentkinds of exchange – of labour, entrepreneurial capaci-ties, capital, goods and services – between differentsectors of activity, including agriculture, took place inthe same geographical space, occasionally concentrat-ing non-agricultural activities in urban centres, but notnecessarily doing so. (1993: 451)

In a series of research monographs over thepast decade, colleagues and I have researchedthis process of rural differentiation in theUK (see Marsden et al., 1993; Murdochand Marsden, 1995; Murdoch et al., 2003).Comparing rural regions like North-EastEngland (Northumberland), South-East England(Buckinghamshire) and South-West England(Devon), this long-term research programme hassought to combine a new regionalist perspectivewith the more sociological perspectives onregionalism (see Paasi, 1991). This highlightsthe more historically embedded and contingentnature of regulation, conventions and networksin the shaping of rural regions. What is clearfrom this research (see Murdoch, Chapter 12in this volume) is the growing confluence ofregional governance, economic and socialprocesses which are mobilizing more differenti-ated and spatially uneven forms of development.

Indeed, regional and intra-regional disparitiesare growing in the UK generally, and locationbecomes more important with regard to the‘bundles of rights’ rural residents can expect tohold and utilize. Regional authorities also have toincreasingly deal with intra-regional variations.In South-West England, for instance, theGovernment Office of the South-West and theRegional Development Agency are developingagricultural, rural and broader economic devel-opment strategies in attempting to connect theinternal geographies of the region. Winter (2003)(Figure 1.3) now illustrates this deeper complexand multi-sectoral process of new regional build-ing with regard to agriculture and rural develop-ment. New layers of stakeholder complexity areemerging and raising profound questions as tothe role of the central UK state in aspects of ruraldevelopment (see Haskins, 2003).

In this contemporary context, the regional anddifferentiated countryside is now a contingentcountryside; one which is unevenly dealing withcombinations of internal and external socio-politi-cal factors, which in turn affect their ability to com-pete and perform within the wider national andEuropean governance frameworks. The regional-ized ruralities also represent different compromisesbetween forms of mobility (see Murdoch, Chapter12 in this volume) associated with different formsof production and consumption equations. Forexample, transportation, residential migration,tourism, flexible industrial and service sectorstrategies, and the socio-natural ‘endowments’ ofgiven rural spaces (workforces, community build-ings, ecological features, reconstituted craft andartisanal skills). These compromises affect the dif-ferential performances of rural places acrossEurope as they combine both reflexive and tradi-tional practices and compete for economic activity.

For instance, in parts of the English country-side the modernizing impulses associated withagricultural developments of the second halfof the twentieth century have now given way to amuch more pragmatic and market-orientedapproach which combines agriculture withbroader notions of the diversified regional econ-omy. Economic modernization now increasinglyapplies to rural and regional, rather than agricul-tural economies. At the same time today’s differ-entiated countrysides are an expression of theseemingly relentless decentralization of (cash-and asset-rich) mobile middle-class populationswhich are socially as well as economicallyfuelled by the postmodern and post-urban desireto escape the seeming anomie of urban life (bycreating ‘new localisms’), even if they still relyupon it in cultural and career terms. As Murdochet al. conclude with reference to the UK:



A major driving force in the contemporary processes ofchange thus concerns the quest on the part of many indi-viduals and families for the rural, both as an experience (inthe form of countryside tourism) and as a ‘refuge’ frommodernity (in the form of a house in the country). In thissense the cultural significance of the traditional ‘urban–rural dichotomy’ is alive and well. However, this broadspatial distinction is also being regionalized. Thus, the dif-ferential and multiple imposition of diverse values, codesand conventions in differing social and economic spaces istaking place within new regional contexts. (2003: 152)

Hence there are social, economic as well aspolitical drivers to the recomposition of thediverse regionally based countrysides. As such,there are multitudes of differentiated country-sides all of which show contingent as well aspath-dependent developmental features. Thesebecome less easy to govern in the traditionalFoucauldian sense in that they are less ‘regimelike’ and less prone to classic notions of nation-ally or internationally based ‘governmentality’,whereby central control acts at a distance toshape borders and problemizations. Today, inmuch of Europe’s postmodern countryside the

social and economic fabrics of rural places arejust too fluid and mobile for this to hold. As wehave seen above, this does not stop central statesor their corporate supporters trying. And so oneof the key macro-governance tensions rural areasin Europe face continually lies in the territorybetween centralist Foucauldian government ofconventional agro-food and more regionalist‘consumption countryside’ contingencies.

CONCLUSIONS: CONVERGINGAND DIVERGING PATHWAYSIN RURAL STUDIES

The sociology of rural knowledge, as illustratedhere by these two brief examples, now incorpo-rates a much broader social science agenda. It isas associated with the social science of risk (as inthe case of food regulation) as it is with under-standing the new social, spatial and economicanatomy of regions and localities caught up in a


SF&F strategy delivery group

Regional assembly

DEFRA/GOSW

SW RA Forum

CORE

Devon CountyCouncil

Devon strategicpartnership

Market & Coastal Town Initiative

MCTIForum

Devon economic Partnership

MCTI Partnership

NGOs(NFU, RSPB, etc.)

ProposedDevon ruralpartnership

Community strategies

Central Government

Nationalagencies: Co Ag,

EN, EA, FCRDA

Local regen. companies

DistrictCouncils

Misc. local projects

DSP RuralStrategyGroup

Local strategic partnerships

T of West

Misc. local initiatives, e.g. Culm Grassland Land Management Strategy;

SW Forest, etc.

Figure 1.3 Sustainable farming and rural regeneration: a partial representationof the governance network in Devon (Source:Winter, 2003)


postmodern world. This is being achieved in thecontext of several broader paradoxes (as des-cribed above), particularly if one takes a retro-spective perspective with regard to the earlierconcerns in rural studies. A refreshing compo-nent of these recent developments has been thatcontemporary rural research has become far more‘de-coupled’ from the past institutional, conceptualand empirical rigidities, and now has a confidenceto both incorporate and develop broader socialscience conceptualizations and political andeconomic frameworks which were hithertodeemed to be outside the ambit of the ruralresearcher’s concern (for example, like foodgovernance), the political economy of risk andthe sociology and geographies of consumption.

However, while the earlier three paradoxes sug-gested in the introduction stand as important driversfor this more empowering re-orientation of ruralstudies, we can also posit that the two criticaldimensions outlined here are influencing the socio-logical and institutional framing of new ruralresearch questions. In many ways, for instance,we might consider one fulcrum of critical ruralstudies lying at the very intersection between themacro and geo-political regulation of food systems,on the one hand, and the more spatialized andregionalized regulation of local rural space on theother. This conceptual location – that is, one whichcritically observes the playing out of complex andoften contradictory regulatory tendencies which arere-shaping the very nature of ruralities and ruralidentities – provides at least one important space fordeveloping further both the critically interpretive aswell as normative aspects of the field (see Marsden,2004). Moreover, with regard to the latter, we beginto see many rural researchers adopting a more crit-ical and more programmatic stance to the questionof not only understanding ‘what is’ but also ‘whatmight be’, given the opportunities for continencyand potential autonomous social and economicdevelopment such a location often suggests.

I have here, however, only related thesedevelopments and tendencies to the Europeancontext. And we have to recognize that this isincreasingly a somewhat partial exercise. NorthAmerican political economy, as many of the suc-ceeding chapters in this Handbook testify, providesa significantly diverging neo-liberalist formation(for instance, with regard to agricultural, environ-mental and alternative rural development policy).Increasingly, it will be necessary to conduct geo-political as well as regional and local comparativeanalyses in order to capture the divergent projectsassociated with these neo-liberal and neo-regulationist geographies. More divergent pathways

of rural development will require further externalengagement within and beyond the social sciences.

NOTES

1 Council Directive on public access to environmentalinformation (90/313/EEC, OJ L 158, 26 June 1990,pp. 56–8).

2 Code of Conduct concerning public access to Counciland Commission documents (93/730/EC, OJ L 340,31 December 1993, pp. 41–2).

3 Directive of the European Parliament and of theCouncil on the protection of individuals with regard tothe processing of personal Data and on the free move-ment of such data (95/46/EC, OJ L 281, 23 November1995, pp. 31–50).

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