Petra Derkzen

Partnership and Role Perception, Three Case Studies on the Meaning of Being a Representative in Rural Partnerships

We focus on the governance instrument of partnerships for rural areas, because these have become important for the implementation of rural development policy in Britain. Emergent forms of governance are often assumed to enhance participatory democracy as they facilitate the involvement of nongovernmental actors and citizens. However, governmental policies about partnerships often use ‘representation’ to democratically legitimise these new forms. Partnership members themselves also use these concepts in their everyday language—they too say that they represent and participate. We explore the different meanings of both being a representative and being a participant, based on a qualitative study of three local rural partnerships in Wales. Our analysis reveals important nuances in how four types of representatives (from the public, private, community, and voluntary sectors) differ in their perceived duties and attitudes towards their constituencies. But, above all, most partnership members see themselves rather as participants than as representatives. However, partnership members can also hide behind being participants in two ways. First, they can downplay their organisational membership and their organisations self-interest. Partnership members who most actively participate in ‘driving the partnership forward’ are also those who have the most self-interest in doing so. And, second, they do not have to worry about accountability mechanisms because their individualised participation has been decoupled from responsiveness to ‘others’. The neoliberal notions of participation obscure the political nature of working in partnership where decisions over rural development have to be made among members with different and possibly conflicting interests.

Emic perspectives on quality of life: the case of the Danish Wadden Sea Festival

This paper sets out to probe how a cultural festival can enhance quality of life (QoL) and identifies possible drivers in the process. The Wadden Sea Festival in Denmark is based on the idea of integrating the coastal environment in the presentation of contemporary art. Specifically, unique tidal differences are utilised to stage a range of performances. The Wadden Sea Festival was designed to create regional, national and international liaisons between artists and cultural institutions and to enhance local residentssense of place and collective identity while also attracting visitors to the region. Recognising the articulated aims of the festival, we explore how a cultural festival, and more specifically contemporary art, may positively influence the QoL of participants, residents and visitors alike. Participant-observation and in-depth interviews formed the basis for this exploratory research. We elicit and illustrate how the festival generated feelings of positive energy and integrity among individual artists and discuss these elements in relation to theoretical conceptualisations of QoL. Adopting a highly contextualised and qualitative approach, we argue that emic perspectives are needed to understand the immaterial elements of QoL. Further, an emic approach allows for deep narratives and opens up for multidimensional perspectives that could be applied in different cultural settings.

Integrated Rural Policy in Context: A Case Study on the Meaning of ‘Integration’ and the Politics of ‘Sectoring’

Partnerships for rural development are often presented as powerful ways of promoting ‘integration’. This paper examines the reality of this claim, first by analysing what ‘integration’ means and then presenting a case study of a Dutch rural partnership that shows how ‘integration’ was diluted by the ‘politics of sectoring’. In this case study, ‘integration’ was taken to mean harmonizing sectoral policies for the physical environment and to imply the integration of competing land-use claims. Representatives of different policy sectors sought to safeguard and advance their sectoral objectives through a number of strategies, including expanding conflicts to other playing fields and containing conflicts through private settlement. The interplay of these interests created a paradoxical outcome. The existing sectoral policies were maintained and ‘integration’ was achieved through the spatial separation of the most conflicting land uses, those of intensive husbandry farming and protecting nature. The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture sees such partnerships as a good example of ‘integrated rural policy’ but the example shows that the integration of existing sectoral policies for the physical environment has little to do with the achievement of wider socio-economic objectives.

Rural partnerships in europe — a differentiated view from a country perspective: The Netherlands and Wales

In recent years partnership has become an established aspect of rural development across rural Europe. Both Wales and the Netherlands have seen similar trends towards more decentralized and territorial modes of rural governance in which policy networks of governmental and societal actors work together at a local or regional level to further rural development. Such networks are called ‘partnerships’ in English and ‘gebiedscommissies’ in Dutch. This paper addresses differences in the composition and organization of rural partnerships in these two countries and attributes the differences between them to the policy context in each country. Four policy factors are identified as contributing to the specific approach to partnership adopted in the two countries.The review sustains the presumption that in Dutch rural partnerships the integration discourse is more important than the participation discourse, which is more prominent in Wales.

Barriers to Women's Participation in Rural Policy Making

The governance of rural areas has undergone considerable changes over the past decades. Its scope has broadened to incorporate a range of issues beyond, the once dominant, agricultural interests. At the same time, the process of policy making has changed from one of government to one of governance: from centralist and state-led policy initiatives to policy formation and delivery by a combination of public and private stakeholders with a growing role for the local and regional levels (Winter, 2002; Goodwin, 1998; Storey, 1999; Rhodes, 1996). The European Union has fuelled the emphasis on the regional and local level through its regulations for the delivery of structural funds (Geddes, 2000). The ECs White Paper on European Governance states that working in partnership is one of the leading principles of ‘good governance’ (CEC, 2001). In several countries national governments have embraced multi-sector partnership working, or area-based policy making with the objective of enhancing efficient and inclusive policy delivery.Area based programmes are frequently presented as a means of addressing civic exclusion, both through the inclusive nature of the partnership structure, and through the local nature of the partnership, which is perceived to allow greater access to excluded groups than centralised policy. (Shortall, 2004, p. 113)

Shopping Versus Growing:Food Acquisition Habits of Dutch Urban Gardeners

In this article, we explore how urban food growing gets interwoven with other areas of life and show how this differs between people actively engaged in gardening and people not or only limitedly involved. We compare four urban food-growing initiatives: two allotments and two Alternative Food Networks (AFNs); the AFNs do not require active participation. Using the theory of practice, we show that allotment gardeners are mainly involved in the practice of gardening. Having responsibility over a garden stimulates them to perform the gardening practice, turning it into a routine that has its place in everyday life. As a result, the harvest is easily integrated in the daily meal. Members of the AFNs studied engage in the practice of shopping. These AFNs therefore remain in competition with more convenient food acquisition venues such as supermarkets and members have difficulty eating from them regularly. We conclude that whether members are involved in shopping or growing impacts the degree to which they manage to eat urban-grown food. This also implies that motivations to change the current food system “only go so far”; such motivations are embedded in the context of everyday life, in which routines may forego conscious choices.