Animating "bottom-up" sustainable strategies in village settings

Purpose – The key purpose of the paper is to consider the challenges facing local authorities in supporting sustainable rural settlements in their efforts to be enterprising and sustainable in confronted with increasingly severe downward pressure on local authority finances due to the recession; the long-term trend of increased adult social care costs linked to a challenging demographic profile across rural England; and increasing expectations around service delivery arising from more discerning “e-enabled” users of public services. Design/methodology/approach – This paper offers a structured reflection on the responses of a qualitative study of village sustainability, based on case studies of the inhabitants of three villages in Lincolnshire, England. The paper draws on responses by 70 voices to a series of workshops held in village halls and pubs. Findings – Significant work needs to be done at the local level, to support the transition from long-standing, organic practice within communities to the crea...

[1]  K. Morgan.  The Learning Region: Institutions, Innovation and Regional Renewal , 1997 .

[2]  M. P. Follett.  Community is a process , 1919 .

[3]  D. Smallbone,et al.  Developing entrepreneurship and enterprise in Europe's peripheral rural areas: Some issues facing policy-makers , 2006 .

[4]  C. Kalantaridis,et al.  Making garments in Southern Europe: Entrepreneurship and labour in rural Greece , 1996 .

[5]  C. Kalantaridis,et al.  Local Embeddedness and Rural Entrepreneurship: Case-Study Evidence from Cumbria, England , 2006 .

[6]  Dimitris Skuras,et al.  Rural Entrepreneurship in Europe: A Research Framework and Agenda , 2004 .

[7]  Raymond M. Lee.  Unobtrusive Methods in Social Research , 2000 .

[8]  Neil Ward,et al.  England's Rural Futures: A Socio-Geographical Approach to Scenarios Analysis , 2009 .

[9]  Employment,et al.  Opportunity for all in a world of change , 2001 .

[10]  Cornelia Butler Flora,et al.  ENTREPRENEURIAL SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND LOCALLY INITIATED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE NONMETROPOLITAN UNITED STATES , 1997 .

[11]  Gerard McElwee.  FARMERS AS ENTREPRENEURS: DEVELOPING COMPETITIVE SKILLS , 2006 .

[12]  Bengt-Åke Lundvall,et al.  National Systems of Innovation: towards a theory of innovation and interactive learning London: Pint , 1995 .

[13]  Neil Ward,et al.  Placing the Rural in Regional Development , 2009 .

[14]  How small firms forecast short-term employment: some survey evidence , 1996 .

[15]  Jean Hartley,et al.  Case study research , 2004 .

[16]  C. Kalantaridis,et al.  Rural Entrepreneurs in Russia and the Ukraine: Origins, Motivations, and Institutional Change , 2004 .

[17]  D. Keeble,et al.  New Firms, Small Firms and Dead Firms: Spatial Patterns and Determinants in the United Kingdom , 1994 .

[18]  Robert Smith.  Developing and animating enterprising individuals and communities: A case study from rural Aberdeenshire, Scotland. , 2012 .

[19]  P. Lowe,et al.  Providing advice and information in support of rural microbusinesses , 2000 .

[20]  J. Little,et al.  Women and the rural idyll , 1996 .

[21]  Zzzz.....Some reflections on the dynamics of village entrepreneurship , 2008 .

[22]  P. Cooke,et al.  The Associational Economy: Firms, Regions, and Innovation , 2000 .

[23]  Gerard McElwee,et al.  Confronting Social Constructions of Rural Criminality: A Case Story on ‘Illegal Pluriactivity’ in the Farming Community , 2013 .

[24]  Ivan Annibal,et al.  Business support for farmers: an evaluation of the Farm Cornwall project , 2010 .

[25]  R. Putnam.  The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life , 1993 .

[26]  J. Diamond,et al.  Management of Regeneration: Choices, Challenges and Dilemmas , 2005 .

[27]  J. Friedmann.  Basic needs, agropolitan development, and planning from below , 1979 .

[28]  Jesse Heley.  On the Potential of Being a Village Boy: An Argument for Local Rural Ethnography , 2011 .

[29]  Robert D. Putnam,et al.  Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community , 2000, CSCW '00.

[30]  M. Moseley,et al.  The future of services in rural England: The drivers of change and a scenario for 2015 , 2008 .

[31]  Michael Winter,et al.  New Policies and New Skills: Agricultural Change and Technology Transfer , 1997 .

[32]  D. Mackinnon,et al.  Learning, innovation and regional development: a critical appraisal of recent debates , 2002 .

[33]  Cornelia Butler Flora,et al.  Entrepreneurial Social Infrastructure: A Necessary Ingredient , 1993 .

[34]  M. Storper.  Regional ‘Worlds’ of Production: Learning and Innovation in the Technology Districts of France, Italy and the USA , 1993 .