Governing Rural Development: Discourses and Practices of Self-help in Australian Rural Policy (Perspectives on Rural Policy and Planning) - Hardcover

Cheshire, Lynda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754640248 ISBN 13: 9780754640240

Publisher: Routledge, 2006

Synopsis

In recent decades, the responsibility for initiating regeneration programmes has been placed firmly in the hands of rural communities, with the rationale being that local people are best placed to know their own problems and, consequently, to develop their own solutions. Despite the popularity of this approach, the self-help approach has its own problems and can be seen as an attempt by governments to reduce public spending. This book provides a critical account of the discourses and practices of self-help in contemporary rural development policies of Australia and other western nations. Although it examines the problems of the self-help approach, it moves beyond a straightforward exposition of the impediments to self-help. Instead, taking a Foucauldian governmentality perspective, it puts forward a theoretical analysis of the self-help concept, assessing it as a means of governing rural development in an advanced liberal manner. It argues that self-help should not be regarded as either the empowerment or the abandonment of rural citizens by a shrinking state, but rather the application of new ways of thinking about and acting upon rural development.

About this title

About the Author

Lynda Cheshire is Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Australia. She undertakes research in the areas of rural governance, rural protest and other forms of resistance to rural restructuring, and the involvement of private corporations, such as property developers and mining companies, in processes of community development. She has published her work in a number of books, book chapters and journal articles.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0754640248
• ISBN 13: 9780754640240
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184