Christopher Ray: Centre for Rural Economy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne,

Published by Blackwell Publishers, European Society for Rural Sociology Cowley Road, Oxford , Sociologia Ruralis . , , Main Street, Malden, , -

Towards a Meta-Framework ofEndogenous Development: Reper-toires, Paths, Democracy and Rights

Christopher Ray

he endogenous or ‘bottom-up’ approach seems to have established itselffirmly in the vocabulary of rural development. Throughout the European

Union, policy makers at the state and supra-state levels are increasingly incor-porating the terms ‘bottom-up,’ ‘participative’ and ‘local’ in order to signal newstyles of intervention in their search for answers to the problems of rural society(for example, Objective b programmes and the Community Initiative).

This has excited much interest in academic and practitioner literature. In thecase of alone, this has included analytical and prescriptive studies of thetools of endogenous development (for example, Observatory ;Moseley ), empirical case studies (for example, Black and Conway ;Midmore et al. ; Kearney et al. ), and empirically-based critical studies(for example, Barke and Newton ; Pepper ). However, what is stillabsent is a coherent, overall conceptual framework for endogenous develop-ment in a contemporary, Western context. Two recent papers, in particular,have sought to provide such a framework. Kearney et al. () in their evalua-tion of the Initiative in the Republic of Ireland extrapolated from theirempirical study to propose a model of ‘integrated rural development.’ For them,development should be conceptualized as a process of animating indigenous ca-pacities which, once activated, would lead to a self-sustaining development dy-namic. The main concepts in the Kearney study‘partnerships,’ ‘communityinvolvement,’ ‘social animation/facilitation’ and ‘capacity-building’reflect therising new orthodoxy of development practitioners on the ground, in urban re-generation as well as rural situations. Shortall and Shucksmith (), however,used their knowledge particularly of in Scotland to argue that our con-ceptualization of ‘integrated rural/territorial development’ remains inadequate,and implying that there is a danger of using concepts such as those espoused in

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Kearney et al. without further reflection on the practical experience of :the advocation of ‘capacity-building’ (‘social capital’), they argue, says nothingabout the ultimate objectives of a development initiative; ‘partnerships,’ althoughpart of the new rhetoric of governance, completely avoids the issue of ‘legiti-macy’; and evaluations of individual intervention programmes rarely recognizethe crucial impact of a ‘pre-development phase’ (in which individuals and or-ganizations are prepared for the new, integrated development ethos).

Both Kearney et al. and Shortall and Shucksmith have made valuable contri-butions to the understanding of endogenous rural development and it is not theaim of this essay to criticize either piece of work. Rather, the aim here is toconstruct a meta-framework for the understanding of endogenous development;that is, to explore the conceptual layer that lies above that occupied by the twostudies just mentioned. The case for further abstraction is made by the necessityfor endogenous development fully to take into account the dynamics of global-ization and the implications of reflexive modernity (Ray a). Endogeneity isnot confined to rural development policy-making; it is assuming a greater rele-vance and currency in many aspects of public intervention, reflecting generaltransformations that are at work in society. In order for the endogenous ap-proach to work, a new theoretical framework is needed. Such a frameworkwould need to demonstrate how the promise of local agency implicit in en-dogeneity could be operationalized by local interests whilst also addressing di-rectly the relationships between local territories and the dynamic complexityof extralocal institutions in a globalizing world.

This essay begins with a brief introduction to the dynamics of globalizationand their reflection within rural development. Following this, the three mainconcepts in the proposed framework are introduced in turn: development rep-ertoires and paths, modes of democratic politics, and development rights. The con-cepts are then brought together in the penultimate section to consider theirinterrelationships in a meta-framework of endogenous development. Finally,the discussion returns briefly to reflect on the nature of territorial agency inthe era of globalization and ‘risk society.’

Globalization and territorial development

At the time of writing this essay, Anthony Giddens, sociologist and Director ofthe London School of Economics and Political Science, was in the act of de-livering the annual British Broadcasting Company () Reith Lectures. Histopic was ‘globalization.’ In his introduction, Professor Giddens declared hisallegiance to the ‘radical’ campi.e., those commentators on globalizationwho argue that the term describes, however imprecisely at present, an eco-nomic, political, technological and cultural phenomenon of revolutionaryproportions. As he noted in his preliminary lecture:

When the image of Nelson Mandela may be more familiar to us than the face ofour next-door neighbour, something has changed in the nature of our everyday ex-perience (Anthony Giddens, Lecture broadcast April , , Radio ).

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Giddens and his ‘co-radicals,’ while proclaiming the existence of this revolu-tionary phenomenon, acknowledge that it does not lend itself to simplistic,causal analysis. In particular, Giddens draws attention to its dichotomous nature,in which ‘the global’ and ‘the local’ are both players:

Globalization, thus, is a complex set of processesnot a single oneand these operatein contradictory or oppositional fashion. Most people think of globalization as simplypulling power and influence away from local communities and nations into the globalarena and, indeed, this is one of its consequences; nations do lose some of the economicpower they once had. Yet it also has an opposite effect: globalization not only pullsupwards, it pushes downwards, creating new pressures for local autonomy (idem).

It must surely be a precarious undertaking to attempt a comprehensive analysisof a revolutionpredicting its direction and impactswhilst it is in progress.Such a project would be even more hazardous given that the revolution involvesthe whole world and, furthermore, that we cannot know at what stage in therevolution we presently are. Even more frustrating, is the contention that thecomplexity and uncertainty of outcomes may, particularly in the era of ‘reflexivemodernity’ (Ray a), be an inherent feature of the phenomenon underscrutiny. However, at the heart of the preliminary analysis by Giddens and other‘radicals’ is that globalization is a driving force with its own logic, energy andcausality while simultaneously being acted upon by localizing interests. Thereis, according to this view, the potential within the unstoppable momentum ofglobalization for intervention by states and for agency by local interests. Thedebate, they argue, should therefore be about the possibility for new forms ofintervention (regulation) and of new understandings of the concept of agency.

How, then, does globalization translate to the issues on-the-ground in na-tions, regions, localities and even village communities? This essay uses global-ization as a backdrop for working out, still on a very conceptual level, some ofthe options for regulation and agency that might be available to the territorialcomponents of the European Union. The term ‘territorial components’ is usedhere to focus the discussion onto the variety of geographical scales that aresmaller than the nation-state and in which socio-economic, cultural and evenpolitico-administrative action is increasingly taking place: at the very least,globalization has made the role and status of the state ambiguous and in needof reformulation.

But if globalization forms the primary background driving the ideas set outbelow, then the European Union provides the theatre for rehearsing those ideas:the ‘pulling-upwards’ by the forces of globalization is reflected in the increasinginfluence of the European Union over economic, social and cultural life in theform of common policies and regulation legislation, and interventions fundedby the Structural and Cohesion Funds. Organizations in the public, voluntaryand private sector are all, to a greater or lesser extent, being ‘Europeanized’ asthey direct their attention towards the in policy lobbying and in opportun-istic claims on funds allocated to programmes (Ray a; see also Martin and Smith ).

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The use of the term ‘territorial’ is also meant to concentrate the reader’s at-tention onto the issues facing the vast majority of people as they are acted upon,and seek to engage with, globalization/Europeanization in that the term en-capsulates the innate tension between the local and the extralocal. Increasingly,the spaces within which action (whether emanating from the ‘bottom up’ orfrom the ‘top down’) is being organized are being formed and re-formed as afunction of creative tensions between local context and extralocal forces. It isthrough the medium of these dynamic tensions that the forces of modernityare materializing; just as it has been argued that ‘(rural) development’ takes placeat, and is defined by, the interface between the agents of planned interventionand the actors in localities (Long and van der Ploeg ; Long and Villareal), so territories themselves are being moulded and created by the local/extralocal tensions of globalization and reflexive modernity (Ray a, a).

Thus, the use of the term territory (or ‘place’) signals the intention to for-mulate some of the options for action available to people in territories to whichthey feel a sense of belonging and in which the forces described above aremanifesting themselves. Although this essay emerges from research and reflec-tion in the field of (European) rural development, it will ignore the ‘rural’component and, instead, concentrate on the term ‘development. This reflects atheme in British (rural) sociology which calls for ‘post-rural’ studies that wouldturn attention away from rural areas and rurality per se and towards local terri-tories and excluded social categories (where these happen to coincide withrural areas) (Philo ; Murdoch and Pratt ).

Development repertoires

The idea of ‘local’ (sub-national/sub-regional) territories as units within whichto frame development discourse and action has a long history. From what wenow call a ‘bottom-up’ direction, the idea emerged in the socialist utopian ex-periments of the th and th centuries, particularly in the United Kingdomand North America, the turn-of-the century Romantic movement (for exam-ple, Matthew Arnold), the doctrine of self-reliance/self-determination signallingthe beginning of decolonization (for example, Gandhi), the post- socialmovements reacting to the negative aspects of modernity, and the cultural andpolitical regional revivalism which continues to gather pace throughout Europe.Of more recent vintage is the adoption of an endogenous model of developmentfrom a ‘top-down’ directioni.e. by state and international bodies. Since ,the has been experimenting with the approach through, for example, itsObjective b programmes and the Initiative but, as a political doctrine,it has also surfaced in, for example, the delivery of state functions through‘community’ bodies (Rose ). Central to both approaches to endogenousdevelopment‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ sponsoredis the idea that de-velopment will be more successful and sustainable if it () starts from a base oflocal resources and () involves popular participation in the design and imple-mentation of development action. Where the ‘bottom-up’ approach differs,

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however, is that it has quite often (although not always) included a reflection onthe meaning of development, seeking alternatives to the underlying model inwhich economic expansion, job-creation and trade competitiveness dominate.

The logic of the endogenous approachfrom whichever direction itemergesis that the territory concerned can begin to think in terms of culti-vating its own development repertoire. The term repertoire is used here to mean astock of resources or regularly used techniques from which the repertoirepossessor can select according to the requirements of a situation. The termneatly encapsulates the principles of endogeneity: the idea of local ownership ofresources and the sense of choice (local, collective agency) in how to employthose resources (physical and intangible) in the pursuit of local objectives.

It is possible to conceive of a territorial repertoire in two ways. We can usethe term as a synonym for a cultural system where, in the context of endogenousdevelopment, the culture is different from, and represents a smaller geographicalscale, than that of the nation-state. The components of a repertoire will thus berepresented by the markers of the culture: its gastronomy, regional language(s)and dialect(s), craft knowledge, folklore and mythology, visual art and drama,music, historical and prehistorical artefacts, landscape and land-managementsystems (and their associated flora and fauna). As Herder (/) noted,these components, separately or in combination, are the means by which peoplereceive meanings from the past and reinterpret them according to contemporarycircumstances; they provide part of the raw material for a people’s creativity.However, because a culture manifests itself geographically, it is potentially avail-able to animate, and even to define, endogenous development. Moreover, at thisstage in the discussion, we need not concern ourselves with facile debates about‘authenticity.’ In a reflexive worldespecially in modernized societies anynotion of a pure and unique cultural system is probably redundant. This doesnot mean, however, that, consciously or subconsciously, a local culture cannotrepresent an innate, seemingly organic, particular worldview. Endogenous de-velopmentaccording to the culturalist line pursued herebecomes an exercisein raising awareness of the potential of local resources (whatever the basis of thelocalness) for territorial strategic action. Thus, one can cite examples of culturalregionalism where attempts have been made to operationalize the culture by co-opting a sympathetic political doctrine (see, for example, an account of the at-tempts by some Welsh nationalist activists to couch their cultural objectiveswithin a doctrine of socialism/communitarianism in Phillips ). It is possible,therefore, also to think of a repertoire as the sum of tangible and intangiblefeatures and resources associated with a territory. Thus, in addition to the ‘social’and ‘physical’ cultural forms listed above, a territory might have at its disposal,in particular, a political culture (Herder /). Alternatively, one couldthink of a situation in which a territory was characterized by cultural diversity,each community being able to imagine its separate endogenous development aswell as subscribing to a common, territorial repertoire, two or more of whosecomponents are the separate cultural systems (thus, avoiding the potential forlocal exclusion where a territorial identity is associated with only one culture).

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Using the concept of a repertoire allows us to revisit the model of a CultureEconomy set out in Ray (b). This was an attempt to schematize the “at-tempt by rural areas to localize economic controlto (re)valorize place throughits cultural identity” (p. ). The typology comprised four modes. Mode occursas action to commoditize a culture through local products or services, or theincorporation of a territorial identity onto a generic product or service. Mode involves the encapsulation of cultural identity into a strategic image for theterritory. Once constructed, this image is then available to raise the visibility ofthe territory concerned in the wider policy and political arenas. Mode simi-larly involves the construction or re-discovery of a culturally based territorialidentity but this time the goal is to cultivate a local solidarity within the territoryitself: “This is an important component of the theory underpinning local de-velopment initiatives . . . raising the self-confidence of local people and organi-zations, building confidence in their own capacities to bring about develop-ment, and valorizing local resources” (p. ). This mode is especially importantin those cases where, historically, local cultural identity has been suppressed ordevalued by a dominant (usually state) culture. More generally, it represents aninvitation to local people to engage in formal or informal, long lasting or adhoc, co-operative action. Modes and are also significant in that they allowfor territorial-cultural identities either to be renovations of previous entities orvarious degrees of constructed identity.

Taken together, Modes , and can themselves be thought of as a kind ofrepertoire of strategic action available to the territory in question. Mode of theCulture Economy typology, however, focuses attention onto the possibility ofa range of paths of development. In addition to marshalling resources so as to com-pete in the global marketplace or policy arena, the alternatives can “for exam-ple, stress local self-reliance in the use of physical resources, a land stewardshipethic, or the cherishing of ‘close community’” (p. ). This can, in fact, be con-ceptualized as a further level of strategic choices of which three are noted here.The territory can chose participation, whereby it acts competitively to secure aposition in the market economy or in the policy arena. Second, it can opt fora coping strategy, employing one set of cultural resources for external consump-tion and another for internal use (see Boissevain , and the anthropologicalconcepts of ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage’). Third, there is the more radical op-tion of resistancein other words, a deliberate attempt to disengage, albeit par-tially, from external forces by framing development within a radical, politicalor metaphysical ideology (including such diverse ideas as self-reliance, landcollectivization and local currencies).

To summarize thus far, local cultural identity, far from being a fixed or re-actionary concept can form the basis of a dynamic, ‘progressive’ and flexibleapproach to endogenous development in the era of globalization. The termrepertoire has been introduced in order to highlight not only the existence ofcomponents in a territorial-cultural identity but also that each component canbe employed separately or in conjunction with others in a number of territorialstrategies. Just as the repertoire of a musician can be inherited as a whole entity,

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created from new and/or added-to over time so too can this be the case for en-dogenous development. It provides a framework for territorial agency. It em-phasizes the options for local collective action whilst allowing for a diversity ofdegrees of co-operation within a single territory. Finally, it seems reasonable toclaim that local collectivity/solidarityflexible enough to accommodate whatwe believe to be the dynamics of reflexive modernityis a necessary basis forendogenous development to succeed within the wider context of globalization.

Development and democracy

One does not have to have been involved at whatever level in endogenous de-velopment for very long before becoming embroiled in questions of politics.The turn to culture being explored in this essay serves to problematize suchquestions yet further. What are the politics of endogenous development? Whatis the nature of the structures required on the ground to operationalize it?

Theoretically, endogenous development is concerned with the transfer ofpower to, or its reinforcement at, the geographical level at which endogeneityis thought to be most appropriate. Given the historical context of state build-ing and intervention, this invariably means a transfer of power downwards butto do this can precipitate crises of legitimacy at all levels of the politico-admini-strative structure of the nation state. Such crises are not necessarily driven by thereactionary instincts of power holders within the status quo; they often seemmore to reflect the concerns of officials and elected representatives to maintainthe operating principles of democratic society (see, for example, Ray b).Issues of legitimacy and accountability are problematized yet further in the caseof -sponsored endogenous development of which the Initiative isperhaps the best known in rural development circles. In such cases, there issimultaneously a shift of some power upwards (to the appropriate Directoratein the European Commission) as well as downwards to the local level (Ray). But the experience of is instructive here in two ways: there isnot a universal geopolitical ‘local’ level as the destination of the downwardsshift of power, not even within a single national context; and the various par-ties (from a community group up to the European Commission) may adoptquite different interpretations of the democratic politics of endogenous devel-opment based on ‘local participation’ (Ray a; b). The experi-ence abounds with examples of ‘new’ bodies taking on the role of animatingendogenous development, often deliberately based on geographical boundariesthat transcend those of the public authorities. Furthermore, and to varying de-grees, the responsibility for designing and implementing in localitieshas been mediated through the participation of players outwith the model ofrepresentative democracy: private sector bodies, ‘community’ groups and vari-ous non-governmental organizations (particularly representing cultural and en-vironmental interests).

The ‘problem’ for initiatives such as is that their rhetoric includes aninvitation to populist participation but their implementation requires the politi-

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cal and financial support of the organs of the orthodox politico-administrativesystem. Indeed, has, in certain situations, found itself the subject of ac-cusations of being ‘undemocratic’ (particularly where it has been implementedthrough the private sector or where the geographical boundaries have not con-formed to those of the Local Authorities). Dealing with the ‘problem’ requiresus to review the options available within the generic term democracy. The le-gitimacy claimed by the representative democracy model rests with the power ofcitizens as electors. This power is expressed through ‘the anticipation of retro-spective control’the ability to vote representatives out of power or appointthem for a further periodand through ‘prospective control’the view thatrepresentatives only have a mandate to act insofar as their intentions were setout in the election manifesto (Elster ). Endogenous development can oftenbe a challenge to the modus operandi of orthodox democracy, especially if a cul-tural or ethnic rationale is brought to the fore. This is not only because of theappearance of ‘non-elected’ interests into the decision-making structure but alsobecause, as has been suggested above, endogenous development contains withinitself an invitation to imagine alternative, even radical, notions of development.

This can be contrasted with the view that endogenous development is a proj-ect in participative democracy. In this, peoples’ demands for action are registerednot only through elected representatives but also through the lobbying activityof myriad interest groups. In a rural development context, one can already findexamples of populist approach in operation, either formally in the democrati-zation of the decision-making body of a initiative (Midmore et al. ;Ray ) or informally through the principled modus operandi of communitydevelopment workers (Ray b). First impressions suggest that the partici-pative approach may emerge if the body created to manage a territorial initiativeresists the temptation to direct development through prescriptive plans and, in-stead, encourages the creating of local, quasi-autonomous bodies to animatedevelopment dialogue and action (with the territorial organization concentrat-ing on the strategic levelmodes and of the Culture Economy model).

The two forms noted so far do not exhaust the possibilities of democracy. Athird option is deliberative democracy (Elster ). The term dates back to writerssuch as Mill (/) who argued that elected representatives should befreed from the tyranny of their electoral mandate so as to be able to engage infree and rationale debate in their assemblies. It is used here, however, in a dif-ferent way, recalling aspects of Classical Greek polity. This presents us with theidea of endogenous development being defined and animated through localdebate. Immediately, one can see in this the possibility for ‘alternative paths ofdevelopment’ to emergediscussing the meanings of development and optionsfor local actionas in Mode of the Culture Economy model. Idealistic, per-haps, but, again, one can glimpse occasional, tentative examples of this approachon the ground. It has happenedadmittedly in a rather implicit and ad hocwayin some of examples of community appraisal. Where this has happened,the role of the development worker becomes one of gentle encouragement tothe people of a locality to be prepared to think radically (Ray b).

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The point to emphasize here is that endogenous development is, by definition,political and that, in order to operationalize it, one needs to address directly andcontinuously these issues of democratic politics. If ‘top’ organizations (states, the) are courting the idea of endogeneity in order better to address the problemsof society, then it is only by addressing simultaneously the politics that endoge-neity will have a chance to succeed.

Development and rights

This discussion has concerned itself with sketching some of the elements nec-essary for a theory of endogenous development, particularly in a West Euro-pean (rural) context. The emphasis has been on ways in which local territoriescan recover or construct a development repertoire, particularly through a turnto cultural identity. But the essay began with the concept of globalization andhow this was intensifying in multiple ways the reflexive construction of iden-tities. To cite Herder (/) again, it has long been assumed that the de-fining characteristic of humans (versus the rest of the animal kingdom) is theirinnate capacity for self-reflexivity, defined as the capacity to see oneself as partof wider social, cultural, economic and/or political contexts. In what has beencalled the era of reflexive modernity (Giddens ; Ray a), local percep-tions are increasingly penetrated by (and, in turn, penetrating) myriad extralocalcontexts. Accordingly, our understanding of what we are and how we wish tobei.e., the questions of ‘development’is formed by the dialogues betweenthe local and the extralocal.

The concept of ‘development’ (and its sub-category endogenous/participat-ive rural development) directs our attention therefore to basic questions relatingto human nature and to social structures. Being able to ask ‘what does develop-ment mean?’ is to acknowledge the possibility of a choice of development pathswhilst asking ‘how best to achieve it?’ concerns the various actions that mightbe taken to facilitate such development. Human nature can be conceptualizedin two ways (Freeden ): a developmental interpretation which emphasizesour natural capacities as individuals, with ‘development’ translating as the delib-erate cultivation of those capacities; and/or a communitarian interpretation whichemphasizes collective identities, switching the focus of development onto mem-bership of supportive groups. Traditionally, such issues were discussed primarilyin terms of theology or ideology. Nowadays, however, they are increasinglycouched in terms of discourses of rights.

What is a right? In their discussion of the contest between industrial agri-culture and environmentalists and, as they see it, the necessity of state interfer-ence, Bell and Lowe () prefer the term ‘regulated freedoms.’ Freedom, acore idea of liberalism, evokes an image of the individual struggling for freedomagainst slavery and other forms of tyranny or of cultural groups fighting againsta ‘foreign’ power for self-determination. It seems synonymous with the term‘liberty’ whose essence Freeden () defines as ‘the absence of impediments.’The terms freedom and liberty may therefore be used with regard to the acqui-

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sition of a condition of mutual forbearance. A right, on the other hand, suggeststhe metaphor of ‘a protective capsule’ around an entity which would otherwisebe threatened by other, conflicting interests or values. A right “denotes a con-dition, namely that of being able to use one’s power” and so goes beyond “afreedom from and a freedom to” to entail the notion of a duty by someone tosomeone else (Freeden , p. ). In other words, a right involves “a duty toconduct for the right-upholder” and “an attitude of regard to the significantentities who are rights-bearers” (pp. -). Perhaps, therefore, the terms freedomand liberty should denote the desired state to which a group aspires whereas theterm ‘right’ should focus attention onto establishing the ability to enforce thosefreedoms. The discourse of rights also incorporates a moral dimension.

To return to the subject of this essay, culture and territory/place are markersof the heterogeneity of the human world. Juxtaposing territory-culture andrights leads the discussion to the concept of collective rights. According to Freeden,this communitarian perspective is based on two arguments: that individual de-velopment is helped by association with others, and, a stronger version, thatthe essence of what it means to be human lies in one’s membership of groups.Because an individual’s identity (sense of self-worth) and development derivefrom the existence of cultural, social and/or political heterogeneity, contem-porary rights discourse targets the recognition and protection of group attrib-utes. This abiding need to belong to groups in spite of the homogenizing di-mension of globalization (see, for example, Ritzer ) has been captured inMaffesoli’s () phrase ‘neotribalism.’ By collective rights, we are referringto the rights of particular categories of peoplefor example language commu-nitiesi.e., the rights of a community. This draws on a pluralist view of societywith its associated right of free association. The argument is that a communitycan claim a right but, as Freeden argues (p. ) “the notion of a community mustcome to be adopted consciously by the individuals who constitute it,” so thatcollective rights have legitimacy at the level of the individual. Collective rightsconcern the interests of individuals insofar as these depend on co-operative ac-tion. Thus, for example, there can be no such thing as a right to speak a locallanguage as a marker of one’s cultural identity if measures have not been takento protect the viability of the speech community as an entity.

In Ray (b), the work of Moran () was used to develop the CultureEconomy model through the concept of intellectual property. This is the propo-sition that title over a product of the human mind can be claimed by an indi-vidual, company, community or territory. Herder, in his ‘Essay on the originof language’ (/, p. ), set out the philosophical basis of the idea:

What right has the bee to the flower from which she sucks? The bee might answer,‘Because nature made me for sucking honey, my instinct guiding me to this flower,and no other, is my dictator who gave me a title to this flower and the garden. Ifwe ask the first man, ‘Who gave you the right to those herbs?’ he will answer, ‘Na-ture, because she gave me conscious awareness. I have laboured to recognise theseherbs, laboured also to teach their characteristics to my wife and my son . . . Everythought I spent on them is the seal of my title, and whoever drives me out of my

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own, not only takes my life in taking the sustenance of it, but also the value of mypast years, my strength, my pains, my thoughts and my language: I have labouredhard for them!

Herder also acknowledged that this process of knowledge creation is both asocial phenomenon and (because human knowledge varies according to geog-raphy) a cultural phenomenon. This is to argue from a moral viewpoint; thatcultural diversity is a natural characteristic of humanity; it defines our human-ity as self-reflexive beings. The logic of this for Herder was that people’s or-ganic cultural affiliations should form the basis of their political arrange-mentsi.e., the Volk state as a “territorial unit in which men conscious ofsharing a common cultural heritage are free to order their lives within a legalframework of their own making” (Barnard ).

The analysis of Moran‘Rural space as intellectual property’concernedthe title to the knowledge (which we can now call a component of a repertoire)contained within local and regional traditions of wine production. Althoughstill drawing implicitly on Herder’s political morality, Moran brings the issueinto the present-day contexts of capitalism and state/international regulation.Economic agents in localities wish to continue their traditions but, rather thanin the context of local production and consumption, they increasingly seek toexploit their knowledge through the global market economy. In order to en-sure that the economic benefits of this exploitation are confined to the localityconcerned, it becomes necessary to transform tradition into the concept of in-tellectual property. Property is a legal concept to denote something that can beowned, individually or collectively. This confers on the owner the sole rightto benefit from the use of the property by the creation of a copyright. This hastaken on a new urgency in contemporary debates about local knowledge andindigenous rights.

The analysis of Strathern () demonstrates how local cultures exposed toa global predatory capitalist order are seeking protection through legalistic lan-guage and regulatory frameworks such as the Convention on Biological Diver-sity. The anxiety for some commentators is that this defensive mechanism trans-forms a culture simply into something that is tradable, that nothing is inalienablefrom the doctrine of economic utilitarianism and its associated concepts of indi-vidualism/possessiveness; culture becomes a commodity and nothing more. ForHerder, this would be disastrous in that it would undermine the fundamentalcharacteristic of humans introduced above in that organic cultural identity isthe medium through which human/personal development and innovation oc-curs. The issue of biological diversity and economic exploitation demonstratesthe difficulties involved here with, for example, large companies arguing thatownership should move from the locality to whatever company succeeds inidentifying a commercial use and in developing markets for the knowledge.

Frow (), on the other hand, takes a more positive view that draws onfield evidence from anthropologists. He argues that although commoditizationdoes undoubtedly have an affect on people, drawing them into the values ofthe capitalist order, the transformation is only ever partial: “My labour power

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is bought and sold on the market, but my value as a moral person is not therebynecessarily degraded” (p. ). He cites examples in which the commoditiza-tion of local, indigenous art through international trade has not necessarily re-sulted in the loss of local, religious and aesthetic symbolism and function. Whileextralocal interestsuch as Urry’s () ‘Tourist Gaze’may work to raiseawareness of, and to valorize, local cultural identity, there appears also to be anabiding notion of market inalienability; that some aspects of a culture are, orshould be, protected from perversion. Citing the classic anthropological dis-tinction between a gift and a commodity, Frow defines inalienability as: “rightsor things . . . that can be given away but not alienated by sale in the market.This domain includes personal attributes and the integrity of the body, sacredobjects and kinship relations. . .” (p. ).

It can be argued, as Frow does, that commoditization transforms commonresources into private ones; property equals ownership and can thus be traded.The trend in property rights, whether the ‘right’ to the image of a famous per-son such as Elvis Presley, the right to the exploitation of a plant species or evento the knowledge of how to exploit human genes, is presently towards takingownership out of the public domain and into the private sector. It is for thisreason that the relationship between a territory-culture and the capitalist orderin the era of globalization must develop a moralistic, protective framework ofcollective rights. Such rights would categorize local knowledge as property butthis property would be owned by the territory, for the local collective good.Endogenous development provides, potentially, a way to resolve the com-moditization-alienability tension by creating local democratic structures of aparticipative or deliberate nature.

There is, in the above, a strong thread of communitarianismthe thesis that“the community, rather than the individual, the state, the nation or any otherentity is, or should be, at the centre of our analysis and our value system” andwhich is taken to be in opposition to “the abstract and disembodied individualof liberalism” (Frazer and Lacey , p ). The focus of attention in this essayhas been on territorial-cultural identities as frameworks for endogenous devel-opment within the era of globalization. It is difficult, however, to continue anexploration of the concept of rights without mentioning, however briefly, in-dividual or human rights. Human rights are increasingly setting the agenda forrelations between nation states and between states and their citizens. They areacquiring a universality, transcending space and thereby becoming acultural.Their basis is the developmental interpretation of human nature and developmentmentioned above. This argues that progress in life is about the working-out ofone’s natural capacities as an individual; that it is about the unfolding of a rangeof personal attributes (Freeden ). According to this view, society shouldbe organized so as to prevent any hindrance to, or diversion of, this ‘becoming’of each individual. At a very general level, individual/human rights have cometo refer to principles such as the right to autonomy, creativity, the means to earna living, physical well-being, and non-violation of the body. They are also oftenframed within general social categoriesin particular, gender and age.

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In a globalizing world, this category of rights cannot be ignored. The tensionbetween liberalist/universalist and communitarian/relativistic conceptions ofethics and rights which should frame development is perhaps more acute in anon-western context (Gasper ). Its inclusion here is justified, in a generalsense, because of the need to include in the new view of European endogenousdevelopment, both cultural specificity and universality; the global communi-cation of ideas and experiences will ensure that this must be so. This is not justa matter of the pursuit of social and/or economic equality between individuals,it also concerns political equality, which takes us back to the strategies of cul-tures and territories. It should also be noted that even among the advocates ofhuman rights, there is a growing concern to respect variation within universalcategories; variation may reflect legitimate and valued cultural features (Frazerand Lacey ).

In summary, endogenous developmentwhether rural or urbanthus be-comes a project () to imagine the possibility for freedoms, and () to find waysto legitimize them as rights. This might be by institutionalizing them, protect-ing rights by legally enforceable means. Or it might be by their encapsulationin an ideology (and the rhetoric of religious and cultural revivalist groups is fullof such claims). They will appeal to ‘moral rights’i.e., that they have a moralright to live how they want to live (cultural relativism)and the force of thisway of thinking is not diminished by its not being enshrined in a regulatoryframework. To quote Freeden (): “People do assume that moral rights ex-ists, and they behave accordingly” (p. ).

The introduction of rights as a generic category into the model of endoge-nous development has a further implication. In the era of reflexivity, individualand collective identities and values are affected by the dynamics of the extralo-cal. A defining characteristic of globalization is the increasing connectivity ofthe world as ideas and experiences are exchanged and interpreted by individualsand localities. The rights discourse in a locality, therefore, can be enabled byglobalization, feeding on information flows from outwith the territory. Therights discourse also ties the locality into the extralocal as the territory-cultureseeks out entities that can legitimize and protect such rights. These entities maybe orthodox institutions such as the state, the or other international bodies orthey might be networks of solidarity between territories with a shared interest.

Tying the concepts together

We can now revisit the concepts introduced above in order to see how they fitinto a meta-framework of endogenous development. A territorial repertoire con-veys a sense not only of local ownership of the resource components but alsothat the repertoire is expandable, or diversifiable, over time according to needand opportunity. The term is intended to stifle any angst among practitionersand commentators about the ‘authenticity’ of resources. Authenticity, ratherthan being seen as an innate, definitional characteristic, becomes instead a valuewhich territorial actors (within the local-extralocal dialectic) may ‘choose’ to

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assign to a component. A territorial repertoire also conveys the idea of choice,whereby each component can be used singly or in combination for strategicpurposes, or whereby components can each be employed in pursuit of a varietyof objectives. Endogenous development thus becomes, in essence, the act ofraising consciousness of a territorial repertoire, and then of the cultivation of therepertoire over time.

A repertoire functions dynamically as a mediator between the local territoryand the extralocal level. A territory possesses the capacity of agency althoughnot in the orthodox meaning of an autonomous actor enjoying complete free-dom of choice of actions and outcomes. Rather, the capacity for agency has tobe seen as interrelated with extralocal factors, in that the latter impact on localconditions and can be recruited by territories into their strategies (see the dis-cussion on globalization above).

The concept of rights also operates at the flexible interface between the local(territory) and the extralocal (national, European, global) levels. Rightsas aduty of regard by the extralocalrequire the support by extralocal institutionsto create a regulatory framework. Rightsas a consciousness within the localrequire a rationale, an ideology that draws on ideas of populism and culturalrelativism. This ideology, wherever it emerges, will have to rationalize collec-tive rights and individual/human rights: communitarianism and individualism/universalism. Rights, therefore, by energizing a cultural and political dynamic,allow for a discourse on alternative paths of development to be pursued. The dis-course itself is operationalize through any or all of the three modes of democracy,but especially those of the participative and deliberative kind.

Conclusion

Globalization has been described above as both a threat and a friend of localeconomies and cultures. Commentators such as Giddens stress the importanceof realizing this dichotomy. What is not clear, however, is whether the forcesof pulling-upwards and those grounding-downwards are necessarily equal. Aswas noted towards the beginning of this essay, globalization is truly a revolu-tion, and a revolution which is proceeding according to its own momentum. Acurrent debate concerns the possibility and wisdom of attempting some form ofregulation. Giddens, for example, is among those who argue for the creationof a global organization to regulate financial markets. It was also noted abovethat globalization enables, or is even partly driven by, a localization trajectory.

Finding ways to understand and deal with this globalizing-localizing dichot-omy is the major challenge for nation-states, supra-state organizations such asthe and for sub-state localities. Cultural regions often have an ambivalence(sometimes an hostility) to the state and find themselves most earnestly search-ing for the balancing point of the dichotomy. This essay has sought to gener-alize their experience to all localities, including local rural areas. Endogenousdevelopment initiatives and cultural regions feel that they have discovered afriend in the form of the , or more precisely its executive wing, the Commis-

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sion. The appears to listen to their needs and offers them money to pursuetheir local agendas. Although committed to the development of a single Euro-pean trading and financial (and even political) space, the simultaneouslypromotes internal heterogeneity through the idea of an Europe of cultural di-versity, local endogenous development and regulation (such as to protect ‘pro-duits typiques’). Looking solely at matters from this top-sponsored direction,one would have to conclude that the offers of cultural diversity and endogene-ity are being made at the price of greater integration of localities and theireconomies into the capitalist, free market order.

Nonetheless, research on endogenous development and anthropologicalstudies suggests that a belief in local, territorial agency is not entirely misplaced.The actions of the in offering endogenous development in initiatives suchas , the growth of new social movements and of cultural regionalism inparticular, the spread of the ideas generated by post-colonial, participative ap-proaches to rural development, and the various, on-going responses of nationstates to devolve power downwards are generating manifold and diverse open-ings for new territories and structures to emerge in which endogenous devel-opment can be cultivated. Underlying this essay is, however, the contentionthat local agency in the era of globalization can only proceed if it develops apolitical theory within which to sustain itself.

Cultural-territorial identity, it has been argued, could provide the frameworkfor such a theory. Cultural specificity is vital because it maintains and extendsthe possibility of local mediation of any negative effects of globalizations and ofmodern development in general. This mediation if operationalized by providingfor the locality a range of ways in which to engage with the extralocal. In an eraof doubts about the trajectory of modern development, the cultivation of a di-versity of living experiments would seem to be a wise and grand option for‘risk society’ (Beck ). An emphasis on culture-territory is also an invitationto consider new forms of varying formality of collective action. This collectiveaction is simultaneously local/parochial and, thanks to globalization, inter-local/international.

Beck () focuses on the dichotomy of globalization and individualism thatthe ‘developed’ world has been cultivating, particularly over recent decades. Forhim, modernity is: “not just ‘instrumental rationality’ (Max Weber), ‘optimaluse of capital’ (Karl Marx) or ‘functional differentiation’ (Talcott Parsons, Nik-las Luhmann), but supplementing and conflicting with these, it is political free-dom, citizenship and civil society” (p. ).

The on-going outcome of the project of modernity has been, according toBeck, the ‘internalization of democracy’ into the individual. People, especiallythe younger generation, are ‘freedom’s children’ in that they reconcile indi-vidualism with the need to belong to groups (but which are joined on a volun-tary basis); the spectre of the ‘me’ society is, in fact, a ‘self-organized concernfor others’ (p. ). If Beck and Giddens are correct, the new human conditionis a continuous act of living as individually and collectively, at the local and atthe extralocal. The project for endogenous development, therefore, becomes

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one of raising consciousness of this dichotomy and of the creative possibilitiesthat could flow from it. These creative possibilities emerge if a local cultural-territorial identity is operationalized so as to allow repertoires and paths of de-velopment to emerge and then to be cultivated. If repertoires provide one ofthe fulcrums articulating the relations between a locality and the extralocal, theother is provide by a discourse of rights whereby a locality looks both inwardsfor a moral basis to cultural rights and outwards for frameworks of protectiveregulation.

Finally, the term ‘rural’ has not featured very prominently in this essay. Thismight be seen as an attempt to undermine ‘rural’ development. This is not nec-essarily the case. Rural areas do have certain characteristics different from urbanand peri-urban areas and some of their problems appear to have different features.However, this author aligns himself with those who have argued that, whateverthe nature of rural development issues, they would be best addressed through aprism of local culture-territory rather than on concentrating on rurality per se.

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