The Political Economy of Rural Development

Brox, O 2006 ) The Political Economy of Rural Development: Modernisation Without Centralisation? ( Delft : Eburon Academic Publishers ) 133 pages Norwegian rural sociologist Ottar Brox (b. 1932) is one of the most prominent social scientists in Norway and has influenced the country's academic, political and lay discourses on rural development for close to half a century. He has published a large number of academic works on a wide range of sociological issues, of which his outstanding 1966 volume, Hva skjer i Nord-Norge? (‘What happens in northern Norway?’) has attained the status of a classic of Norwegian sociology. From his position as professor at the then newly established ‘frontier’ university in Tromsø, the world's northernmost university, he furthermore played an important role in the 1972 campaign against Norwegian membership of the EEC, which resulted in Norway's no vote on membership. Brox also served one term in the socialist Left party in the Norwegian parliament (1973–1977), since when he has consistently represented a critical voice in Norwegian society, within academia as well as in the political and public debate. However, with a very few exceptions he has not addressed the international academic audience of rural sociology but published his works in Norwegian only. Now a selection of his works in English has finally been gathered in one volume, The Political Economy of Rural Development: Modernisation Without Centralisation? The collection gives an overview of Brox's key works, from his 1964 observations on the state's unsuccessful attempts at rural development in northern Norway to his recent interest in the use of migrant labour in European agribusiness. The book is edited by John Bryden and the late Robert Storey, who have written an introduction presenting Brox's works and arguing for their relevance for present-day rural studies. The articles cover a wide range of topics central to the discipline of rural sociology, focusing on the primary industries, rural economic development and rural out-migration. An underlying issue in Brox's writings is the relationship between central and state planners and rural lay actors. He forcefully demonstrates how centralist attempts to plan for the ‘good rural society’ are doomed to fail, and in Norway have done so consistently ever since the World War II. In the article, ‘Let us now praise dragging feet’ (chapter 3) he makes the case for an ‘amalgam of laissez faire, populism and “statism” ‘ as the key to good rural development, arguing that rural populations have the capacity to create their own futures, based on local resources, and are not dependent on the ideas of the planning bureaucrats located in the capital. The role of the state should be reduced to regulation against what Brox generally conceptualises as the worst enemy of rural life: capitalist actors who attempt to exploit the rich natural resources in the peripheries. State intervention should not be conceived as state subsidies to needy, marginalised and disempowered rural communities to make up for the unwanted but inevitable social costs of modernisation (urbanisation), but rather as the results of the rural regions’ successful claim to their part of the national wealth, to which they have as legitimate a claim as urbanites. As such, Brox's works represents an early, and still relevant, contribution to the literature on endogeneous rural development. On the other hand, Brox's studies of northern Norway illustrates the interdependence between rural and urban areas by showing how national political and economic contexts define the limits of rural communities’ chances to thrive. The institutional rules of the game, for example, in terms of who is permitted to harvest the natural resources (small-scale fishermen or the owners of trawlers?), decide economic development in rural regions. Depopulation of marginal settlements results from the rewriting of these rules; for example, when the state encourages large capital investments in the fisheries which outdistance the traditional fishermen–farmers along the coast. In other words, there are limits to endogeneous rural development when it is not supported by state power. It is not the occasional entrepreneuristic individuals, the fiery souls, but the rural actors’ collective political struggle on the national political scene that decides the future of the countryside. However, Brox's argument goes further. The interdependence between rural and urban areas is not only relevant for understanding rural change but also for understanding the development of the national state, including the urban regions. He neatly argues that the rise of the Norwegian urban labour class that provided the foundation for the Norwegian version of the welfare state was helped by political measures that provided for viable rural primary industries in the post-war period. Rather than flocking to the cities, rural people in Norway were able to establish a reasonable standard of living in the periphery by using political leverage. Thus, a persistent lack of labour was created in the cities in the post-war years, which gave labour the upper hand in negotiations with capital, leading the way to the development of the modern Norwegian social-democratic welfare state. As indicated by the title, Brox therefore conceives of the Norwegian way of modernisation in the twentieth century very much a result of the lack of rapid rural to urban centralisation – modernisation does not presume centralisation. The stated rationale for this book is that the Norwegian case, and Brox's analysis of it, are instructive for analysis in other countries presently undergoing rapid modernisation and urbanisation. Certainly, inspiration may be found. However, one of the strengths of Brox's analysis is his emphasis on the historical and national context in understanding rural development. As a result, it is difficult to transfer the findings in empirical analyses of one region in one historic period (northern Norway in the twentieth century) to other locations in other periods of time. Brox, for example, suggest that present-day changes in Eastern Europe may share traits with the Norwegian case of the twentieth century. The rapid upheaval of the rural economies in these nations following the enlargement of the EU have resulted in increased industrialisation of the primary industries, followed by depopulation of the countryside. These developments are in many ways similar to those discussed by Brox. While the overall logic of his analysis may be inspirational in understanding these processes, it is doubtful that the more empirically based works are directly applicable to the Eastern European countries. For example, Brox's analysis of rural Norway in the last century presumes the absence of foreign migrant labour in the national economy, which by and large was the case in Norway until recently. However, this is definitely not the true for the new Eastern European EU member states, where both inbound and outbound labour migration streams are inherent features of the rural economy. In fact, Brox delivers a strong argument against labour migration, which in his view has no other beneficiaries than the capitalists’ interest. Starting with anecdotal evidence from Spanish agribusiness, which often relies on cheap and docile imported labour from Africa, he advocates closed national state borders to enhance the negotiating power of the national labour force vis-à-vis capital interests (chapter 11). Brox deserves credit for approaching the issue from an alternative perspective that is rarely advanced in today's debate on labour migration in Europe, and he manages to identify and problematise key features of the economic logic underlying the phenomenon. However, the analysis seems stronger in its rhetoric than in its scientific approach. For example, his discussion of the benefits for sending countries (both at micro and macro levels) is somewhat one-sided, and he mainly disregards the positive effects of migrant work on their economies. His alternative is to allow these countries to develop their own labour-intensive economies rather than exporting cheap labour to more advanced economies. However, given the present political climate where closing borders for migrant labour does not seem very likely, neither in the short nor the long run, I would expect few rural sociologists to engage in Brox's debate on alternatives to the deregulated European labour market. Due to the character of the book, a collection sampling more than 40 years of work, the articles included are not very up to date with regard to contemporary theoretical developments in rural sociology. This criticism also applies to the most recent of the works in the collection. Brox quotes other scientists only sparsely, and he seldom relates his arguments directly to that of other academics in the field of rural studies. Brox has never attempted to write for an international scientific audience but it seems he has also not attempted to situate his writings more within the international body of literature in the field of rural sociology. This is unfortunate. To be sure, Brox has never taken part in the cultural turn in rural studies, nor in the subsequent re-theorisation of the concept of ‘rurality’. In his analysis, the rural regions’ economic base is still dominated by primary production, and he does not pay much attention to what recent theorists in the field label the post-productivist, or the consumer-based, countryside. Nevertheless, his works provide important criticisms on the relevance of explanations that focus on ‘soft’ cultural factors. For example, he strongly and convincingly critiques the idea, popular in contemporary rural research, that rural-to-urban migration primarily reflects the urban values of individuals. Instead, Brox demonstrates how an analysis of local economies far better explains why some youngsters leave the countryside and others do not. It is not the fancy cappuccino bars in the cities, but rural youths’ lack of rural sources of income, which force them to abandon the periphery. Brox's writings are also illustrative of the need for class-sensitive perspectives to understand social processes in rural regions. Though never explicitly elaborating on the concept of class, he shows how rural actors’ differentiated access to resources (such as land and other productive capital) influences their strategies, actions and outcomes. For example, he argues that it is primarily the unpropertied rural youth who are attracted by low-skilled wage labour in urban industries. Propertied rural actors may also out-migrate; however, Brox explains this by their ability to transfer rural capital resources into investments in urban economies and thus to join the urban middle class. It would have been interesting to see Brox present a more explicit critique of the new ‘post-modern’ features of the field of rural sociology. He definitely provides engaging criticisms of contemporary streams in the discipline but leaves it to the reader to identify the implications of these in relation to the existing body of knowledge. Brox's role in Norwegian academic debate, and his parallel success in gaining attention in the wider public debate, is not only a matter of substance but just as much due to his style of presentation. He engages in the important debates, in which he manages to identify some key issues of the matters in question, and then to provide an innovative as well as provocative analysis in a clear and no-nonsense writing style. This is also the case with this volume in English. Soundly based on his own empirical research from northern Norway over half a century, the volume outlines important lessons of relevance to rural development. The collection may not provide up-to-date answers to key issues in contemporary rural sociology, but nonetheless, Brox's contributions most definitely help to stimulate rural sociological thought

Centralisation · Modernization theory · Norwegian · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Public Administration · Rural development and sustainability