Journal o[" Rural Studies, Vol. 14, No. I, pp.

89-105, 1998
1998 Elsevier Science Ltd
Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved
0743-0167/98 $19.IX) + ().IX)

Pergamon
PII: S0743-0167(97)00040-5

Working with the Grain? Towards

Sustainable Rural and Community
Development
Graham Day
School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2DG,
UK

Abstract - - This paper explores some connections between the 'cultural turn' in
recent social theory, and the emergence of new models of local and regional
development which have potential importance for the pursuit of sustainable rural
development. Two particular examples of attempted cultural engineering, centred
on ideas of 'enterprise culture' and of 'corporate culture', are reviewed and both
shown to be flawed by their weak conception of culture. A more convincing
account of its importance is derived from work on regional development which
emphasises the role of social networks and institutional thickness in enabling the
growth of confidence and trust as preconditions for success. It is noted that these
institutional conditions show some surprising similarities to traditional social
features of rural areas, and so help explain the shift from failed strategies of rural
development towards more integrated approaches. A number of examples of
contemporary development practice in rural Wales are described, to support the
suggestion that the attainment of sustainable economic and social development in
rural areas depends upon creating social and institutional networks which embed
change within the prevailing social and cultural resources of rural populations.
1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Introduction
The attempt to provide a more 'holistic' or integrated perspective upon economic, social and
political relationships has been among the more
significant tendencies in recent social and political
thought. Efforts to break down analytical boundaries
between traditional disciplinary frameworks can be
seen as one aspect of a general 'de-differentiation'
(Lash, 1990), the challenging of fixed divisions and
categories in social life and organization, which has
led many to theorize in terms of a prevailing shift
from 'modern' to 'post-modern' times. New ways of
thinking, inevitably linked to new patterns of
economic and social structure, have arisen to bring
together themes and issues which were kept apart
previously, intellectually, and consequently in the
making of policy. Thus, for example, a 'cultural turn'
in social theory (Chaney, 1994) has been matched by

the 'communitarian' twist in social and political

philosophy (Etzioni, 1995) which is beginning to
feed into political decision-making. While these
general intellectual developments have, as yet, had
only a limited impact upon our understanding of
contemporary rural societies, they have been
discussed widely among rural geographers (Cloke et
al., 1994), and have been taken up to by some rural
sociologists (Murdoch and Pratt, 1993) and agricultural economists (Midmore, 1996). The main
purpose of this paper is to highlight some further
connections between these theoretical trends and
the rural context, more specifically in terms of their
relevance for ideas and practices of rural 'development'. It will be argued that conceptions of 'culture'
and 'community' have a particular resonance in
rural settings, and a particular relevance for
processes of sustainable rural development and
governance, and that this has been gaining growing
practical recognition in the movement towards

90

Graham Day

emphasizing forms of development practice that are

more 'endogenous' or 'integrated' in their orientation than those which have prevailed in the past
(Bowler and Lewis, 1991; Keane, 1990; Van der
Pioeg and Long, 1994). However, while sustainability has become an almost unavoidable point of
reference for contemporary discussions of rural
intervention, so far insufficient attention has been
given to critical questions concerning its social and
cultural prerequisites. Towards the latter part of the
discussion, the argument will be illustrated with
examples taken mainly from rural Wales.

Globalization, change and the rural

As has been widely remarked, the re-awakening of
interest in the potentialities of culture and
community seems somewhat surprising in the light
of the dominant tendencies of economic and social
development. Arguably, the most important forces
affecting our contemporary situation are those
which threaten to sweep aside most, if not all, significant distinctions of community and culture. Transnational global corporations, world-wide media
conglomerates, and supranational political and
economic institutions increasingly operate irrespective of national and subnational boundaries, and
appear to pay little heed to differences in ways of
life and social values. Rather, they have been said to
assimilate and homogenize, disregarding or undermining local distinctiveness, in a relentless progress
towards globalization (Dicken, 1992; Robertson,
1992).
For rural areas, this experience is hardly new.
Indeed, over a very long period, sociologists have
interpreted their history as one of progressive
absorption by the forces of modernization, rationalization, and urbanization, into the dominant forms
of life of modern society, including the all-important
relationships of the capitalist market economy. On
this view, 'modernity' has cut away the differences
which once characterized rurality, making it harder
to distinguish from the (non-rural) societal norm,
whilst simultaneously forcing all rural areas along
similar trajectories of change. More recently, the
operation of frameworks of regulation such as the
European CAP, the North American Free Trade
Act, and the world-wide GATT conventions have
subjected rural areas to shared pressures, compelling them to respond to their integrating and assimilating consequences (McMichael, 1994).
In terms of its developmental impact, for a long
while this process, though painful, tended to be
welcomed as bringing rural areas and peoples out of

their relative 'backwardness', enabling their ultimate

survival as producers and consumers through
subjecting them to the pressures of economic efficiency within a global environment where their erstwhile cultural, social and communal peculiarities
appeared to hold no special value. Very often,
'development' meant effectively the same thing as
'modernization' or 'Westernization', and it was
assumed that, faced with a choice between clinging
to their traditional ways of life or sharing in the
promises of modernism, rural people had little
option but to join the quest for growth and prosperity (Eisenstadt, 1970). l_~ss of their cultures and
communities was regarded as the price to be paid
for economic survival and security, and a host of
development agencies and experts were only too
prepared to assist in guiding them along the necessary path to such a future. Broadly speaking, the
rural was considered antithetical to the modern, and
modernization involved replacing various features of
established rural life with more appropriate ones - such as a more business-like economic orientation,
greater specialization, and more materialistic value
systems.
Curiously, however, as some of these assumptions
about the nature of development are being
rethought, suggestive possibilities can be discerned
that among the 'traditional' features of rurality there
are some which bear a remarkable affinity to conditions which are now believed to make for successful
economic and social development. Consequently,
what were held previously to be limitations upon
rural development may even be regarded now, given
the right circumstances, as potential sources of
strength; and this is leading to new efforts to
harness them within more effective strategies for
change, directed not just at economic considerations, but at development of the 'total human condition' of rural places (Keane, 1990, p. 291).
The new conceptualizations of development that are
under consideration here so far owe comparatively
little to the investigation of rural areas and situations. Instead they derive primarily from attempts to
uncover the secrets of economic and social success
in a globalized, post-modern setting through the
comparative study of pathways to national and
regional development. In the main, they have been
concerned with the analysis of leading-edge industrial developments and with the patterns of
economic and technological innovation associated
with them. Centrally, they recognize that although
the forces bringing about globalization may work on
the world scale, they continue to produce uneven
outcomes at a variety of social and spatial levels.
That is, there are both successes and failures in local

Working with the Grain?

91

development: whereas certain regions and areas

motor ahead, others stagnate or decline. A major
goal then is to identify what decides the relative
chances of joining the ranks of the successful that
are enjoyed by different sorts of local economy.
Once this is understood, it might be possible to copy
or transfer the ingredients of success into otherwise
unsuccessful places (e.g. Cooke and Morgan, 1992).

'culture' itself is open to very diverse interpretations.

The connection can be read in more than one direction and in a number of ways. For example, we can
ask what sort of culture or cultural identity is conducive to, or best adapted for, development at a given
time. Or, coming from an opposite direction, we can
ask, what does development do to culture and
identity?

A number of important lessons have been drawn

from such research which point to the key role
played by the interactions that take place between
the economic, social, and cultural characteristics of
regions, interactions which have frequently been
overlooked in the past, as a result of their separation (or differentiation) into distinct dimensions of
existence and investigation, or denied by the implementation of narrowly specialized and sectoral policies based on such perceptions. As indicated earlier,
much of what has been learned can be encapsulated
within ideas of 'culture' and 'community'.

Conventionally, these two questions have been run

together to produce a single answer, suggesting that
there is a simple correspondence between culture,
identity and development. That is, a particular kind
of culture favours development, and, vice versa,
development brings about the progressive ascendancy of just this sort of culture and its related
identity. Numerous sociologists have been ready to
join with others (economists, political scientists, etc.)
in assuming that there is a single dominant direction
to change, and that, out of all the myriad possible
human cultures, there are at best only a few which
will 'succeed' in the long run because they are
compatible with such change. Weber's analysis of
the development of the West, and more narrowly his
account of the role of the Protestant Ethic has been
exceptionally influential here (Weber, 1930; Hoselitz, 1960; McClelland, 1961). This semi-Darwinian
account, in which only 'fit' cultures survive,
encourages the view that development is destructive
of local or regional cultures, posing problems for
their survival, and, therefore, that those who are
committed to such regional cultures (including rural
cultures) may have to battle, against development, if
they wish to keep them alive. Despite postmodernist critiques of such meta-narratives, the
literature on globalization itself tends to reproduce
this evolutionary account.

'Culture' as a factor in d e v e l o p m e n t

In his review of cultural studies, David Chaney

comments more than once that "culture has come to
dominate intellectural work in the human sciences
in the latter years of this century" (1994, p. 181). By
'culture' he is referring to sets of shared understandings, meanings and values which characterize
particular life-worlds. In his view, culture, and
related themes, "have become simultaneously both
the dominant topic and most productive intellectual
resource in ways that lead us to rewrite our understanding of life in the modern world" (Chancy, 1994,
p. 1). Indeed, modernity and post-modernity themselves can be construed essentially as cultural
phenomena, constituting distinct regimes of signification (Lash, 1990, p. 4). However, transformations
in cultures have important interconnnections with
changes in social and economic structures. Thus, as
Lash notes, post-modernization stands in a relationship of 'compatibility' with key features of a postindustrial capitalist economic order. Developmentally, economic and social change is closely
connected to cultural change; there is indeed "a
crucial, but often neglected, cultural dimension to
economic development" (Hughes et al., 1996, p.
lOO).
Few are likely to deny that there is some connection
between 'culture' as understood above and the rate
and direction of social and economic development.
But beyond saying that there is a linkage, it becomes
far more problematic to state just what the connection is, not least because, as we shall see, the term

Of course, not everyone engaged in analysing such

issues attaches the same weight to culture. For
some, it has been central, whereas others (including
most Marxists) have been less ready to accord it
such significance, regarding it more as a reflection,
or even a mystification, of the truly important causes
and influences. Most often, culture figures as one of
many elements which have to be taken into account,
usually placed quite a long way down the list.
However, the recent discovery, or re-discovery, of
the significance of cultural factors has brought it
into greater prominence. To exemplify this, I will
examine briefly, and in a simplified fashion, two
particular strands of thought which achieved prominence during the 1980s for their bearing upon ideas
of development: those relating to enterprise culture
and to corporate culture. The two are inter-related,
but not necessarily compatible, bodies of ideas
which had their common origin in a sense of relative

92

Graham Day

decline or even failure experienced in what had

been counted among the more advanced or
developed economies and societies - - especially
Britain and the United States. This threw doubt on
the expectation of continued steady evolutionary
progression. The two sets of ideas offered a
common solution, an engagement in processes of
'cultural engineering' to re-direct development along
the correct path. Since this was seen as a general
prescription for desirable change, it had its inevitable repercussions for rural areas.

Enterprise culture or corporate culture?

The importance of 'enterprise culture' was much

debated and propagated in Britain during the 1980s.
It emerged as a theme of government rhetoric and
policy in the heyday of 'Thatcherism' and was
expounded by such luminaries as Lord Young, Keith
Joseph, and Margaret Thatcher herself. Essentially
their thesis was that lack of development in the
British economy, indicated by its poor performance
in comparison to major competitors and a growing
perception of national decline, owed much to the
absence of a sufficiently 'enterprising' culture.
Various explanations were suggested as to why this
should be so. Some (on both the right and the left
of British politics) argued that Britain had never
really had a full-blooded 'entrepreneurial' revolution
and remained too wedded still to the values and
assumptions of a preindustrial and rural landowning
aristocracy (Anderson, 1964; Wiener, 1981). Others
regarded the source of the problem as more recent,
to do with the softening of effort induced by welfare
state paternalism, and/or the resort to collectivism,
as opposed to individualistic values, which reflected
the excessive corporate power of the unions, public
sector/nationalized industries and large corporations.
Whether by conviction or out of opportunism, an
extraordinary range of organizations and agencies
subsequently joined the enterprise culture bandwagon (Rees, 1986). Even if the rhetoric has faded
since, the ideas have been thoroughly embedded
within a range of organizations and programmes,
such as Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs),
Enterprise Agencies, and Enterprise Zones. Indeed,
the Scottish Development Agency changed its name
to Scottish Enterprise. In the rural context, the need
to instill the enterprise culture was a key component
of the DRIVE (Development of Rural Initiative
Venture and Enterprise) programme, and was
endorsed as a prominent aim of such rural development agencies as the Development Board for Rural
Wales and its offshoot, Menter a Bushes, charged

especially with the inculcation of more enterprising

values among Welsh speakers.
'Culture' was at issue in this approach because the
claims were pitched at the level of ideas and motivations. While the meaning of 'enterprise culture' was
vague and confused, and inclined to melt away
under close scrutiny (Burrows, 1991) its focus was
clear enough: it was concerned with the content of
people's consciousness, the understandings and
meanings which they brought to their behaviour,
especially their economic behaviour, and the goals
which they chose to pursue. For advocates of enterprise culture, the lynchpin of desirable change was a
transformation of values and attitudes, freeing the
spirit of competition, initiative, self-reliance, risktaking, and so on. As necessary preparation, it was
recognized that this would require change in key
institutional parameters: either the 'rolling back of
the state' or its transformation into an 'enabling'
state, the fostering of small business and self-help,
the neutering of trade unions; all these interventions
were geared ultimately to an extraordinarily ambitious project of changing the culture of the British
people, thereby 'releasing' or 'reviving' their
dynamism.
At the heart of the rhetoric of the enterprise culture
lay an elision between two meanings of 'enterprising'. The first was a very broad notion of initiative, self-reliance, responsibility, and inventiveness;
the second was a much narrower conception, that
equated 'enterprise' with the 'entrepreneurial', with
essentially economic activity which was businessoriented and 'wealth creating'. To the extent that
these were seen as synonymous, it was implied that
any population with 'enterprise' (get up and go)
would be business-oriented, and that (conversely)
the relative lack of successful and dynamic business
activity in a population or region could be
accounted for in terms of, and seen as indicating, an
absence or deficiency of 'enterprise culture'. Insofar
as this analysis became widely accepted, it served to
marginalize other interpretations of 'enterprise'
which bore no such direct relation to the conduct of
economic life. It also helped turn attention inwards,
towards the culture of a given area or population,
rather than seeking explanations for relative prosperity in the relationships between different areas
and populations. Putting it crudely, if the South-east
of England, or Emilia Romagna in Italy, showed
greater dynamism and growth than other regions,
this was because the enterprise culture was
flourishing there; if, however, a region like the
North-west of England, or rural Wales, was slow to
grow, then it would suggest people in those areas
lacked 'enterprise', and in that sense were deficient.

Working with the Grain?

This interpretation reiterated a longstanding view of
the more peripheral rural areas, and their relative
under-development, as stemming from the inherent
limitations of local ambition and entrepreneurial
drive, from defects in their cultures (Williams,
1980).
Roughly coinciding with the movement for an enterprise culture, a separate set of messages began to
arrive, also from the other side of the Atlantic,
suggesting that not all business activity was equally
endowed with the dynamic and innovative qualities
which made for success in the modern world
economy. Likewise stimulated by an acute sense of
competitive failure, particularly by comparison with
Japan, American management and organization
theorists began to argue that the source of 'excellence' and high performance in leading companies
lay with their 'corporate cultures'. According to this
new perspective, assiduously promulgated by business consultants such as the McKinsey Corporation,
the important features ot organizations were not
their hard 'rational' techniques, technologies, and
structures, but their softer, intangible, more spiritual
facets - - their corporate 'missions', value statements
and strategies, their 'heroes' and 'rituals', the shared
understandings and conceptions of purpose which
bound them together and kept them on course.
Successful organizations were united in their aims,
and knew what they were about: they had strong
cultures (Deal and Kennedy, 1988; Peters and
Waterman, 1982). Some exponents of the corporate
culture approach went even further, arguing not
merely that it was culture which held the key to
future success, but the possession of particular forms
of culture, and specific cultural values. Japan, they
contended, was outperforming the USA because it
was closer, in its distinctive culture, to many of these
key values (Pascale and Athos, 1982). Indeed,
Japanese culture was celebrated sometimes as the
late 20th century equivalent of, or replacement for,
Weber's Protestant Ethic. Here too, there were
implicit lessons for regional development; at the
global level, Japan was a successful 'region' because
its typical values, attitudes and meanings were more
adapted to contemporary, conditions - - better
adjusted to rapid change, and continual technical
progress, more 'flexible' in outlook, and far more
capable of taking the long-term view, whereas the
previously dominant economies and cultures of the
West were out of tune with the times, hidebound by
formalistic rationality, bureaucracy, and outdated
class hierarchy. Just as Weber, followed by others,
had predicted that development would be faster in
the more 'Protestant' regions, so in order to develop
now, other regions, like corporations, had to learn

93

the lessons of Japan - - perhaps by importing

Japanese management to set an example.
While there were numerous points of contact
between these two schools of thought, in certain
respects the positions they took differed radically.
There were major discrepancies, if not contradictions, between the particular values and patterns of
behaviour that they upheld. Despite attempts to
develop notions of the enterprising state, 'enterprise
culture' remained strongly centred on the individual,
whose responsibility it was, by the proper exercise of
autonomy and self-reliance, to make his or her own
destiny. Insofar as 'enterprise' stretched beyond the
individual, it was mainly considered in the context
of the small- or medium-sized business, which
remained under the close surveillance of the individual entrepreneur. The most pertinent measure of
the level of enterprise culture would be the numbers
of new small businesses being created.
~New Wave Management' thought, by contrast, was
firmly attached to the large corporation, the firm
which enjoyed market leadership. Success would be
shown though 'growing' the organization, while at
the same time keeping it as 'informal' and 'flexible'
as possible, through the reduction of hierarchy, the
encouragement of participation, and the stimulation
of innovation. In keeping with supposedly Japanese/
Asian cultural traditions of deference and collective
responsibility, the emphasis was on the skilful
management of human resources, the cultivation of
group-orientation, loyalty and commitment. The
effective corporate culture was, above all, an organizational culture; the individual, as member, would
be subordinate to the needs of the organization as a
form of community. It was the close bonding of the
individual into the company (symbolized by the
company song and uniform) and the security of lifetime employment (the reduction of personal risk)
which, it was suggested, made the Japanese organization so strong. While this made the approach less
obviously appropriate for rural settings, where large
and powerful organizations are rare, nevertheless
many of the features associated with the ethos of
this corporate culture have filtered subsequently into
agencies and programmes concerned with the regulation of rural life. There is emphasis on the need to
bond rural partnerships and projects together
around shared 'visions' and collective 'missions' in
order to encourage the mobilization of collective
effort, and to unify disparate aims and interests.
Like the organization, the rural community can
internalize risks and uncertainties and mobilize
resources that are not available to individuals
(Keane, 1990, p. 295).

94

Graham Day

These approaches placed on offer two contrasting

recipes for cultural success: an individualistic enterprise culture or a more collectively oriented
corporate culture. Each had behind it a considerable
weight of support, in the form of publications,
speeches, and organized 'lobbies' devoted to
spreading the word. Each aimed to stimulate the
active participation of people through their commitment to particular goals and values. However, if we
examine them closely, neither appears to provide
really convincing guidance for regional development.
Despite their different emphases, the two
approaches are alike in proposing a remarkably
impoverished concept of 'culture'. Thus, the literature of corporate cultures frequently reduced and
simplified its message to banality; corporate 'values'
might, in practice, amount to mere slogans - - ' I B M
means service', 'Productivity through people',
'Quality at a good price' (Deal and Kennedy, 1982,
p. 23) while corporate mission statements often
consisted of no more than platitudes and vague
generalities. Despite awareness among management
theorists that organizational needs vary according to
a wide range of contingencies, structural constraints
tended to be put into abeyance: the recommendation seemed to be that, no matter what business you
were in, if you got yourself the right slogan, all
would be well. This was 'culture' as understood by
the advertising industry. Similarly, in the case of
enterprise culture, the conversion of the British
population from their allegedly sluggish 'dependency' culture was to be achieved largely by exhortation and propaganda, reinforced by the essentially
negative pressure exerted by removal or dilution of
the welfare system. The belief was that, once freed
from excessive molly coddling, people would quickly
learn to be enterprising from the examples set by
the more successful among them.
The weakness in these positions is that they persist
in treating culture as something separate from, and
external to, the social relationships in which people
live. In each case, culture is depicted as something
which can be 'stuck on' to an existing situation,
more or less at will, and which then sets to work like
yeast in fermenting beer. The impression is given
that culture can be manipulated from without,
rather than having to be lived from within. This
explains why, contrary to its ambition to bring about
change, each line of argument is marked by a
glaring silence concerning how, exactly, 'values' and
'meanings' translate into action. Instead of comprehending culture as rooted in the realities people
experience over time, and which, therefore, has a
real and continuing history, it is treated as virtually
extraneous to how they live. By confining 'culture' to
ideas and understandings people simply 'have', or

can acquire, these approaches fail to see how it

forms necessarily just one aspect of the whole
complex pattern of social life within which people
are embroiled; although importance is attached to
culture, it remains no more than a 'dimension' that
exists separate and apart from the other domains of
economic and social existence.
There is a huge gulf between this conception of
culture and the sense more usually adopted by
sociologists and anthropologists, whereby culture
constitutes a distinctive 'way of life'. If the concept is
really to bite upon the problem of development, a
more adequate interpretation is needed, of the kind
suggested by Gareth Morgan when he writes that
When we observe a culture, whether in an organization
or a society, we are observing an evolved form of social
practice that has been influenced by many complex
interactions between people, events, situations, actions,
and general circumstances (1986, p. 139, my stress).
To treat culture as 'an evolved form of social practice' implies that it is altogether less malleable than
the simplistic interpretations so far considered, and
that it does not lend itself so easily to being made
into a tool for change. It also makes it more possible
to see cultural change as a continuous process in
which people, far from being passive victims or
willing dupes, actively engage in determining their
own futures: as Raymond Williams pointed out
many years ago, culture has to be constantly made
and remade (Williams, 1958). For this very reason,
because it is continually changing and adapting to
circumstances, a living culture does not fit comfortably into any set of simple or fixed categories, nor
lend itself to being rendered down into mere sloganizing. That it is a pervasive, and deeply rooted
phenomenon, is well expressed by Michael Bassand
in a discussion of self-reliant development:
Our definition of culture is broad; it includes the signs,
symbols, images, models, attitudes, values etc., inherent
in social life...Culture is present in every aspect of
social life...Culture characterises a collectivity; each
collectivity creates its own cultural specificity. This
specificity defines the ability (or inability) to create and
innovate, the collectivity's adaptability (or nonadaptability), and its willingness to act. Briefly, a collectivity exists through culture which contributes to the
formation of its identity; it acts as its memory; it
restores the cohesion of its actors constantly; and it
legitimates their actions. (Bassand, 1986, p. 141).

E c o n o m i c successes and cultural conditions

Given recent experience, there is no longer such

confidence that we can read the direction of

Working with the Grain?

development, or regard it as taking everyone
towards the same destination - - after all, the
success of Japan and the other countries of the
Pacific Rim came as a surprise, and their achievements made people think again about the assumption that 'western' values and techniques are
necessarily the best. Instead, recent writing on
regional development suggests that there is actually
a diversity of potential routes to development, that
despite 'modernization' and 'globalization' marked
local variations may persist, and that therefore,
there are still significant choices to be made about
which direction to take. These are among the
leading themes of the new institutionalist
approaches to development which will now be
discussed.
If we look for clues to favourable cultural conditions
for development among the more successful regions
at the present time, we find a rather confusing
picture. Everyone seems to have their own favourite
example of the pace-setting region, and the list
continually changes. Apart from Japan, which has
attracted vast and sometimes uncritical adulation,
other prominent candidates would be Silicon Valley
(California), along with equivalent 'high tech'
centres (such as Greater Boston) elsewhere; districts
like Baden Wurttemburg in Germany and RhoneAlpes in France, the Basque country in Spain; and
the so-called 'third Italy' (Emilia Romagna). The
last of these alone has given birth to a huge literature on the virtues of 'flexible specialization' and the
'second industrial divide', in which the Italian
example is held out as a model for others to follow
(Heidenreich, 1996; Piore and Sabel, 1984).
When we examine these actual examples of
successful, or relatively successful, development at
regional level, it appears extraordinarily difficult to
draw out from them any obvious common set of
cultural values, or to detect among them a form of
cultural identity that is recognizably the same. The
contrast could hardly be greater between, say, the
dedicated young computer engineers of Silicon
Valley, highly educated and qualified, working and
playing frenetically hard (Rogers and Larsen, 1984),
and the craft-oriented artisans of Prato or Bologna
snug in the embrace of either (sometimes both!) the
Catholic church or the (former) Communist Party.
Where differences are so marked, it seems rather
pointless to try to transplant the culture of one area
to another, in the hope of reproducing the same
beneficial effects.
Yet this does not mean that we must abandon
cultural explanations altogether: rather, we need to
search for the influence of culture at a deeper level.

95

When we do so, similarities begin to appear between

seemingly very different situations. From the recent
work of a large number of authors (for example,
Castells, 1989; Clegg, 1990; Mingione, 1991; Sayer
and Walker, 1992), it is possible to distil a common
message, of the sort with which this paper opened:
that we cannot pretend to understand economic
behaviour without taking into account fully the
whole set of relationships, social, political and
cultural, within which it occurs. These authors insist
that the manner in which people act 'economically',
and therefore, the extent to which they can undertake expansive or 'developmental' action, is wrapped
up with the kinds of social relationships to which
they belong, and that this in turn is connected intimately to the way in which they understand the
world. Hence, cultural meanings and social bonds
are part-and-parcel of economic action. Applied to
the rural setting, this conclusion underlines the
contention that approaches to development need to
be 'integrated' or 'holistic' (Buller and Wright, 1990;
Walsh, 1995).
A number of concepts have been used to emphasize
this. Following Granovetter (1985) the most
common is embeddedness ; economic action is
'embedded' in social practices and institutional
arrangements, and cannot be understood apart from
them. Consequently, instead of separating culture
from economic action and treating one as the
'cause' of the other, the two must be seen as fused
together, within a framework of established social
relationships. As expressed by Sayer and Walker,
individuals are imbricated in a social fabric of practices
and institutions, outlooks and morals, which it is impossible to dissolve (1992, p. 116, my stress).
Others write of institutional thickness (Amin and
Thrift, 1994). What they have in mind comes close
to what has been understood traditionally by the
term community, referring to a whole pattern of life
in which members are fully engaged, and in which
various aspects and dimensions of social existence
are woven together in a kind of seamless web. The
practical import is that in many situations it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say where 'economic'
relations end and other social relations, such as
those of family, or wider community, begin. Hence,
any attempt to regard behaviour as 'purely'
economic is likely to misfire. For example, reflection
on the survival ability of family farming, or the
tenacity of small craft and retail businesses, along
with research on new forms of work practice that
have been developing in the changing (more 'flexible') labour market, shows how it is households, and
sometimes wider families and other social units such
as ethnic groupings, rather than individuals, which

96

Graham Day

constitute the key economic players. At times, they

succeed because, following the lines of their
particular social arrangements, they arrive at decisions which flout the logic of 'correct' economic
thinking, and behave in ways which do not seem
economically 'viable', but which none the less enable
them to realize certain objectives (such as, the
survival of the .family enterprise; see Gasson et al.,
1988; Pile 1992).
The two fashionable culturalist nostrums for
economic development that were considered earlier
lack a sufficient sense of the social context for
economic activity. Arguments for the enterprise
culture offer little if any guidance as to the social
supports which might be needed to sustain the
heroic individual on the lonely path to entrepreneurial achievement (notoriously, one of its main
advocates in Britain proclaimed that there was 'no
such thing as society'). The literature on corporate
cultures, although providing a considerably fuller
account of the kinds of organizational structure
which seem to be compatible with release of the
willingness to co-operate (non-hierarchical 'matrix'
management; team working; plentiful occasions for
social interaction; and so on) pays surprisingly little
heed to the world of social relationships beyond the
organization, within which it is compelled to exist.
The organization is treated as a more or less selfcontained entity, in a way which overlooks some of
the very earliest critiques of industrial sociology.
Where the more recent institutionalist writings
differ is in looking more carefully at this
surrounding social context, and in perceiving how
social relationships run through organizations, and
cut across the boundaries of 'economic' units - - so
that the 'firm', for example, dissolves into a complex
combination of 'networks' and 'hierarchies'
(Thompson et al., 1991). A major step in this direction came with the increasing awareness of the
importance of inter-firm connections and the part
played by clusters of interconnect.ed businesses in
generating economic dynamism. The clustering of
industry appears to be a central feature of all
advanced (i.e. relatively successful) economies
(Porter, 1990, p. 149). The re-discovery of the
Marshallian 'industrial district' as a factor in growth
and innovation at the regional level supports this
(Amin and Thrift, 1992; Sabel, 1989). For each of
the relatively successful regional areas, a case can be
made that the economy 'works' well because "a
dense network of social relations is overlaid on the
business relations connecting...firms" (Granovetter,
quoted by Clegg, 1990, p. 117). Again and again in
these discussions we come across references to the
centrality of the network as the pattern of social

relationships which underpins economic activity. In

the social economy of the 'third Italy', there is an
intricate network of small- and medium-sized businesses. Piore and Sabet describe how, in the textile
region of Prato, a structure of large integrated firms
has given way to "a vast network of small shops,
employing one to twenty workers (often members of
a single extended family)", which has shown a capacity to innovate, and keep up with technological
change, and kept it ahead of its competitors (1982,
p. 214). The symbolic example is Benetton, which at
the production end consists of around 200 small
firms, and at the retail end has a franchise operation
of 25,000 stores; the whole business is best depicted
as a network controlled from a small central unit
(Clegg, 1990, p. 121).
Although the links between the various .parts of the
network are economic, they are also more than this;
the small Italian firms exist within a shared social
universe of strong family attachments, craft tradition, common religious and political affiliation.
Economic links are simply part of the wider
'community' within which a local population is
bound together. Piore and Sabel suggest indeed that
"it is doubtful whether regional conglomerations can
survive without community ties, be they ethnic, religious or political" (1982, p. 266). In other words,
cultural bonds of shared commitments, identity, and
belief can help to unify a region, and act to regulate
relationships of competition and co-operation within
it. Elsewhere, Sabel and Zeitlin use historical
examples to show how certain 19th century industrial districts gave rise to distinctive 'communities'
which adapted flexibly to change on the basis of
shared normative understandings: as patterns of
socialization "created a community across and
within generations that protected the economy as a
whole against the consequences of short-term calculations of advantage" (Sabei and Zeitlin, 1985, p.
154). In a similar fashion, Castells describes the
'innovative milieu' encountered in the high-tech
region which he terms the 'informational city', as
made up of a
network of interactive relationships among innovative
organizations and individuals.., a milieu of a specific set
of social relationships of production and management
... (with) common goals and a shared work culture
(1989, p. 72).
That is, while the content of this particular regional
economy differs greatly from that of middle Italy, or
from craft production in 19th century Sheffield,
some of its social features are the same. Likewise,
Mingione, having reviewed a range of different
situations, notes that while the specific cultural
detail may vary, "the essential elements are strong

Working with the Grain?

and stable networks of cooperation" (1991, p. 316).
Movements of ideas, skills, and individuals through
such networks enable the flexibility, and common
identity, which holds the local economy together,
and helps it grow and adjust.
The importance of well-developed local, social and
economic networks is that they appear to be able to
bring about a number of desirable results. Networks:
(i) channel information, (ii) stabilize interaction, (iii)
reduce uncertainty, (iv) generate trust, (v) provide
support, (vi) enable resources to be mobilized, (vii)
encourage learning and (perhaps most importantly),
(viii) permit the development of a long-term vision.
The ability of people to see where they are going,
and to show some patience in waiting for results,
helps sustain the confidence to invest resources and
hopes in future outcomes; conversely, unexpected
and unplanned for disruptions to their established
order, often from outside, undermine confidence
and destroy the capacity to plan ahead.
From a slightly different direction, Amin and Thrift
(1995) emphasize the importance of 'institutional
thickness' in enabling some places, cities and
regions, to stave off, and even gain from, global
pressures towards fragmentation and disarticulation.
The presence of a high level of local economic
integrity provides the answer, and they suggest that
there are lessons in this for the chances of local
"empowerment" in all sorts of locality (1995, p. 92).
In a global economy, the economic success of localities depends increasingly upon the way in which
'economic' variables articulate with institutional
"thickness". The latter is defined as:
composed of institutional interaction and synergy,
collective representation by many bodies, a common
[industrial] purpose and shared cultural norms and
values. It is a 'thickness' which both establishes legitimacy and nourishes relations of trust. It is a 'thickness'
which continues to stimulate entrepreneurship and
consolidate the local embeddedness of [industry]. It is,
in other words, a simultaneous collectivisation and
corporatisation of economic life (Amin and Thrift,
1905, p. 102, my parentheses).
Comparative research shows that these positive
outcomes are not always associated with conglomerations of industrial and business activity; thus
Saxenian suggests that, despite its concentration of
new and high tech companies, Cambridge, England
has not managed to reproduce the network relationships of trust and reciprocity which occur in Silicon
Valley (Saxenian 1989a, Saxenian 1989b). As in this
example, in order to explain why it is that one
region succeeds economically where others fail,
these studies make heavy use of terms like 'trust',
'confidence', 'cohesion', 'solidarity' and so on. Clegg,

97

for example, speaks of "the central role of networks

of social relations in producing trust in economic
life" (1990, p. 116), while Amin and Thrift point to
the importance of shared norms and values which
serve to constitute the 'social atmosphere' of
particular localities (1995, p. 104). The institutionalizing processes which they see as both underpinning
and stimulating a diffused entrepreneurship involve
the promotion of "a recognized set of codes of
conduct, supports and practices which individuals in
institutions can dip into with relative ease" (1995, p.
103). Clearly these are cultural, as well as social and
political, phenomena. They are cultural in the sense
that they involve feelings of loyalty, and belonging,
and call upon shared symbolic meanings and
common understandings, but they are also social
because they imply the formation of certain obligations between individuals - - what Mingione (1991)
refers to as "reciprocities". Notions of 'enterprise
culture' show complete disregard for such obligations, while the language of 'corporate culture' tries
to capture them entirely for the organization.
Drawing on these sources, we could define a
regional culture as a distinctive set of practices
(ways of doing things) which is embedded in
particular social structures and relations (networks)
that serve to unify a given population, providing it
with a shared focus. The reinstatement of the idea
of the economy as a social device, and insistence
upon "the inherently social nature of modern economies" (Sayer and Walker, 1992, p, 1), strongly
suggests that both individuals and corporations will
succeed best when they find themselves running with
the grain of the social and cultural relationships
which surround them; when they are sustained and
propelled by the momentum of a whole, rather than
rubbing against it. The trick, of course, is to identify
the direction of the social and cultural forces and
find ways of working with, rather than against, them.
This argues for more effort to be exerted to understand what it is that binds local populations
together, and gives them energy, so that development can build upon the positive strengths they
have, rather than appearing as a challenge and a
threat. This is the thrust of the turn towards 'endogenous' solutions. Instead of local cultures being
seen as an obstacle to development, or as a legacy to
be swept away, or at best mummified and celebrated
as a 'heritage', in this approach local and regional
cultures figure as a vital potential resource and
vehicle for development, since genuine development
seems most likely, and most capable of being
sustained, when economic arrangements are
properly embedded in local social and institutional
patterns.

98

Graham Day

What seems to mark out the effective local economy

is the capacity its population demonstrates to
mobilize action and resources, and to engage in
creative projects, from a position of security and
trust. This might be done on a basis of common
ethnic identity (for example, among a minority
group within a city or region); it can be through
shared religious or political affiliations, or family
ties, or simply through a common attachment to a
place. In some cases, such as rural Wales, a minority
language might form such a basis, as the following
comment proposes:
The rationale for integrated development goes beyond
the needs of a development agency for local support. In
many rural areas the sources of innovation around
which new enterprises can be built are very limited. It is
as likely that these will emerge in social or cultural
groupings as among those that are explicitly business
oriented. Thus a concern to preserve a language can
eventually become the basis for a commercial translation agency. But more importantly the community
leaders associated with campaigns to preserve a threatened language or way of life may also be the most
suited to encourage and give confidence to potential
entrepreneurs from within their own community (Stern,
1993, p. 21).
What counts is that there is some binding commitment which helps to integrate and fuel social
networks, a n d which contributes towards their
reproducibility over time. Such a population forms a
'community' which participates in a shared culture.

Rural development, social networks, and

sustainability
Just as post-modernism has been said to take us
"back to the future" (Cooke, 1990) (or perhaps,
forward to the past) so, as noted earlier, there are
interesting parallels to be observed between features
that are now being advocated as providing the right
sort of structural underpinnings for local economic
success in the 1990s, and the social conditions traditionally ascribed to rural areas, and more usually
viewed as inherently conservative and resistant to
change. As Whatmore has remarked, "many of the
features claimed to be distinctive to post-Fordism as
a 'flexible' regime of accumulation are long-established characteristics of the social relations of agriculture" (Whatmore, 1994, p. 54) - - such as the
importance of family-based production and local
diversity. In fact, the paradigmatic achievements of
the 'third Italy' owe a good deal to its continuity
with a rural past. So although the literature on
'embeddedness' and 'institutional thickness' has
emerged from a preoccupation with achieving relative economic success, measured by levels of produc-

tive dynamism and innovation, in urban and

industrial contexts, it also has implications for our
understanding of sustainability in rural areas.
Indeed, there is every reason to consider sustainability to be a prerequisite for true economic success
in any context, since it helps separate real development from mere short-term improvement (Hoggart
and Buller, 1987, p. 26).
Rural sociologists have long paid attention to the
strength of social networks as a cornerstone of rural
community. The description of rural Wales, for
example, as a 'community of communities', rests on
the character of its interconnected social networks
(Day, 1995). The way in which economic relationships within the rural population can interweave
with ties of kinship, neighbourhood, religious
worship, and formal and informal association to
produce powerful, multi-dimensional, social bonds
among individuals and families has also been
emphasized (Frankenberg, 1967). In the past, this
has been seen as conducive to a high degree of
stability and integration, and strong commitments to
shared cultural values among rural people, an
important factor in helping them to withstand situations of disadvantage. In Wales today, there is still a
strong interconnection between the farming population, and the maintenance of the Welsh language
and its associated culture. Hughes et al., (1996, p.
93) note the continued predominance of family
farms in Wales, and the stability and social cohesion
which this gives to the farm population and thereby
to the rural Welsh-speaking community, since
"farms are inherited within the family, and successive generations of Welsh speakers become socially
and economically tied to particular localities, reinforcing the continuity of the traditional farm structure". Even in areas where Welsh speaking is not
part of the local equation, those involved in farming
and associated agricultural activity nevertheless
display a similar attachment to local social networks,
and a concomitant depth of territorial commitment
and identification (Day and Murdoch, 1993).
To a considerable extent, despite enormous
economic and social restructuring, this still constitutes the core of the pattern of local social relations
in rural areas. Even when 'captured' within the
extensive relationships of the agro-food system of
commodity production, farming continues to act as
an organizing focus for substantial clusters of localized economic activity, around which other personal
and institutional connections may crystallize.
However, in the light of problems faced by agriculture as an industry, and its diminishing capacity
to support the rural population as a whole, these
social relationships have not been regarded as a

Working with the Grain?

particular asset for rural development. Instead, the
tendency has been to search for alternative sources
of economic well-being to replace agriculture and
the traditional rural economy. In many rural areas,
including rural Wales, strategies to promote inward
investment and diversification have resulted in the
introduction and encouragement of new, and often
poorly interconnected, forms of employment, which
may bear no relation to pre-existing activity, and
which, therefore, demand the formation of new
skills and attitudes. Often, rather than meeting the
needs of local people directly, this has led to the
in-migration of newcomers who have been more
immediately adapted to the requirements of the new
economic order - - for example, by already having
attitudes or experience deemed appropriate to the
new forms of work. Efforts to develop a rural manufacturing base in this way have frequently been met
by criticisms that it results in the creation of 'branch
plant' and marginalized forms of employment that
fail to put down local roots and, therefore, may
prove ultimately unsustainable (Day and Hedger,
1990). Without continuous injections of assistance,
they wither away and development never takes off
into self-sufficiency. At the same time, the introduction of new, and 'alien' economic and social components can upset the balance of rural life and damage
its social fabric, while simultaneously disassociating
production from its ecological and environmental
context. In other words, the strategy fails to build
upon what is already there, contributing instead to
the globalizing tendency for rural places, like others.
to beome no more than "juxtapositions of intersecting, overlapping, and unconnected global flows
and historical fixities" (Amin and Thrift, 1994, p.
10). This can dislocate local identity, and in the
worst cases contribute to making peripheral rural
regions
"poor,
depopulated,
disorganized,
dependent, marginal and apathetic" (Bassand, 1986,
p. 135).
For a number of reasons, recent years have
witnessed a revision of this approach. There has
been a mounting sense of the limitations to what it
has achieved, coupled with a growing unwillingness
on the part of governments to continue indefinitely
to put in the same levels of economic and social
support. Both positive and negative grounds have
been adduced for giving local people a larger role in
bringing about their own development - - it is more
democratic, more participatory, may create greater
enthusiasm, and so on, but it is also a way of passing
the buck, and the responsibility for failure should it
occur, away from the state and its agencies, so
encouraging people to be less 'dependent' on
outside aid. Consequently a considerable shift has
occurred towards strategies of local community

99

development and rural 'self-help' (Thomas and Day,

1992). Unfortunately, many suspect that this movement towards 'bottom-up' processes is as yet more
rhetorical than real, since they continue to be
absorbed largely within existing institutional and
organizational structures, and may, therefore,
amount to little more than an additional mechanism
for top-down intervention (Bowler and Lewis, 1991).
If, however, the arguments outlined in the first part
of this paper are taken seriously, then they provide
more convincing reasons than this for making the
effort to involve the community within the development process - - because potentially this enables the
mobilization of existing social networks and their
cultural 'bias', so releasing the dynamics of rural
communities towards more effective promotion of
their own interests (Bowler and Lewis, 1991, p. 177;
Lowe et al., 1995; Murdoch and Morgan, 1996). The
limited experience gained so far with models of
'Integrated Rural Development' (IRD) in Britain
and Ireland provides some backing for this suggestion (see for example Armstrong, 1986; Blunden and
Curry, 1988; Murray and Hart, 1989; Parker, 1984).
IRD has been said to represent a "potentially significant force in stimulating economic regeneration
within peripheral rural regions" (Murray and Hart,
1989, p. 142) because it sets out explicitly to overcome the restricted and often contradictory sectoral
nature of conventional policy and action by bringing
together interrelated problems and resources. For
instance, in the example of the IRD programme for
County Tyrone described by Murray and Hart
(1989), action was co-ordinated multisectorally
across agriculture, forestry, fishing, local industry,
tourism, services, education, training and marketing.
An early experiment sponsored by the Peak
National Park in England in the villages of Longnor
and Monyash (Parker, 1984) was the inspiration for
the three principles that lay behind the project:
interdependence, individuality and involvement.
Interdependence refers both to the linkages between
the various aspects of the rural situation, and to the
co-ordination and co-operation between agencies
that is required to handle them. Individuality means
that action should be tailored to the particular needs
and character of a place, rather than standardized
and routine; and to ensure that action can be fine
tuned in this way, it is necessary to obtain the
involvement of local people in order that their attitudes, needs and aspirations are propertly understood. If this can be achieved, then there is scope
for the emergence of ways of working and sets of
aims that are reasonably consonant with the 'local
cultural background' and with increased local
autonomy (Bassand, 1986, p. 130).

101)

Graham Day

Experiments like this have been sufficiently

successful to encourage the Rural Development
Commission in England to make local involvement a
priority in its formulation of Rural Development
Programmes for specified Rural Development Areas
that are judged to have particularly severe economic
and social problems. The steering groups which have
drawn up the programmes have included membership drawn from local authorities, rural community
councils, boards of the national parks, tourist
boards, and voluntary organizations. However, the
extent of 'bottom up' involvement has been heavily
mediated by numerous layers of technical and financial~control, while the Rural Development Commission itself is excluded from key areas of intervention
such as transport, housing policy, planning, and
training by the presence of other powerful governmental and statutory organizations. Consequently
the impact of community-led development remains
modest and uneven (Bowler and Lewis, 1991) and
its endorsement as a positive strategy appears somewhat half-hearted.

literature addressed to such bodies explaining how

greater local involvement can be secured (for a
review of possible methods, see Day et al., 1997).
Like its English counterpart (Lowe, 1995) even the
recent government Welsh Rural White Paper
(Welsh Office, 1996) with its opening section on
"sustainable communities" at least pays lip service to
the value of incorporating communities within a
framework of integrated rural action, although it
remains to be seen whether this results in any
substantive change in procedures. The document
gives favourable mentions to a number of examples
of communities taking action to identify and tackle
their own problems, ranging from the very specific
to more broadly conceived attempts to institute
whole programmes of local action.
To illustrate the sorts of intervention which seem to
be working with, rather than against, the grain of
rural Welsh society at the present time, the
following brief snapshots must suffice. They
exemplify the diverse ways in which efforts are now
being made to draw local people more fully into the
development process.

More could be asked, and expected, of genuine

participatory action. In the case of rural Wales for
instance, respect for and involvement with the local
community has long been a powerful motivating
force; the sense of 'belonging' is an important part
of the culture, and a source of reciprocity and
co-operation. Hence, those who seek to stimulate
greater enterprise and initiative among local Welsh
populations will be considerably more likely to
succeed if their actions are couched in terms which
do not offend against these deeply ingrained sentiments of community and belonging, and if they can
find ways in which to embed their contribution
inside stable and lasting social structures. Ignorance
of this has been an important aspect of the fraught
relationship between incomers, business success, and
local communities within Wales in recent years.
Very often, efforts to force the pace, or to make
changes without adequate consultation, lead to accusations of 'arrogance' directed towards 'outsiders',
agencies, and 'the English' in general (Cioke et al.,
1997). However, in Wales as elsewhere, there is
accumulating practical support, at a variety of levels,
for the value of adopting more sympathetic ways of
working, and this is beginning to make an impression on the prevailing philosophy of rural
development.

In three pilot areas of Wales, covering about a tenth

of its agricultural area, the Countryside Council for
Wales (CCW) has sponsored a programme, Tir
Cymen, which provides payments to farmers for
positive environmental management that meets
certain of the Council's conservation criteria. For
relatively modest amounts, the Council has achieved
some of its wildlife, landscape and recreation objectives, but more importantly for our purposes here,
has also benefited farmers socially, by helping to
maintain the viability of family farms, while at the
same time enhancing local business and economic
activity using existing countryside skills. This integrated package of benefits builds outwards from
what farmers are already doing, and the role of advisors who are familiar with local conditions and who
can gain the trust of those involved has been crucial
in 'selling' the scheme to participants (Wyn Jones,
1996). In effect, Tir Cymen assembles a number of
distinct sets of regulations and incentives into a
single agri-environmental framework which is then
connected into the social and economic circuits of
Welsh farmers in a way that make sense to them in
relation to their immediate needs.

Consequently, a considerable range of rural organizations in Wales are now promoting participatory
action, and appointing various kinds of community
development officers to implement it. Local authorities, responding to the impetus of Local Agenda 21,
are among them, and there is an ever expanding

In a similar way, the organization Coed Cymru has

been working to encourage farmers in Wales to
undertake more active programmes of woodland
management. An important aspect of its work has
been to develop new products which allow value
added benefits to go to the producer, rather than

Working with the Grain?

leaking out of the locality. In a small scale version of
'institutional
thickening'
Coed
Cymru
has
co-operated with a range of agencies (including
CCW, local authorities, the farmers' unions and the
Forestry Authority) to develop an interactive
support network within which the individual farmer
or farm can be embedded (Coed Cymru, 1995). In a
study of farmers' attitudes to woodland management, Day and Thomas (1996) found that there was
strong endorsement for the part played by individual
advisors who were felt to be approachable and
'hands on' in their manner, and who were known
and relied upon as part of the farmers' social circle.
Several respondents referred to the way in which
they had learned to trust the advice of a particular
individual, who might be a neighbour, relative, or
official drawn from a range of organizations, and
contrasted this with the generalized distrust they felt
for 'faceless bureaucrats' and form-filling officials.
This was given as the reason why they were more
likely to respond to the Coed Cymru style of
working then they were to most systems of agricultural incentives: as the following comments indicate,
Coed Cymru was more in tune with local cultural
mores.
Coed Cymru provided the enthusiasm to do something
with the woods to improve its condition; work in the
woods can sometimes clash with farm work, and it tends
to be neglected; but then someone will phone from
Coed Cymru and ask if they can bring someone round,
and then you wish you had done more during the last
year - - they keep up your interest in the woodland and
its management
All work in woodland discussed by farmer and son,
Coed Cymru and ESA officer. Coed Cymru are very
good at finding market for wood and doing the paper
work regarding the grant. Will price the job so that you
know exactly what work you have in front of you and
the likely return; always willing to give good advice.
I discuss it with Tir Cymen officer - - they know the
farm; have mapped it out and could advise on most
suitable area etc.
At a somewhat different level, but with similar aims,
there is growing interest in the relevance of credit
unions for rural Wales. These would provide a
means of improving the flow of local capital, and
raising the level of confidence within a community.
The Wales Co-operative Centre (WCC) has stressed
the potential for success provided by strong regional
and local self-identity in rural Wales (WCC, 1994),
since a credit union requires a strong cohesive force
to establish its common bond; but at the same time
the risks deriving from cultural cleavages and demographic changes have to be recognized. The

101

development of credit unions will, therefore, need to

pay careful attention to the cultural dimensions of
economic development, and give due recognition to
the "heterogeneous social character and differing
cultural identities o f rural Wales" (Butler, 1996,
p. 152).
Since the publication in 1988 of the EC report on
The Future of Rural Society a strong lead to involve
local people and their communities in rural development efforts has come from Brussels. Wales had 4
of the 217 groups funded to develop participative
rural actions in the first round of the European
L E A D E R programme, and in 1994 additional
funding was obtained under L E A D E R II for these
to continue their work, along with a further four
new groups. One of the most effective and widely
publicised has been SPARC (South Pembrokeshire
Action in Rural Communities) which grew out of a
pre-existing development network (the Taff-Cleddau
Rural Initiative: see TCRI, nd) into an organization
embracing some 36 local village communities, and
about 1000 individuals, carrying out a range of
locally determined projects encompassing employment generation, rural tourism and recreation,
environmental improvement, and social and
community provision. The working method SPARC
employed was to encourage the development of
strong local groups, which could initiate social and
economic village appraisals, from which local action
plans could be developed. SPARC served to stimulate and co-ordinate such actions, and to pinpoint
relevant linkages between them - - for instance,
environmental work on local footpaths was
developed into a system of routes which could
benefit tourists and enhance awareness of local
heritage (Asby and Midmore, 1996). As facilitator
and co-ordinator, the organization has specialized in
assembling grant aid under various schemes and
programmes, and in promoting an interface between
a complicated array of agencies and bodies, such as
local authorities, the Wales Tourist Board, CCW,
the Welsh Development Agency, and the local
training and enterprise agency, each of which has its
own rural remit and sectoral or functional
specialism. SPARC has succeeded by placing itself
at the centre of an institutional web, which crosses
such sectoral divisions, connecting the local, and
locally based concerns, with the wider regional,
national, and European frameworks of governance
and regulation.
The lessons of these and other examples were
synthesized in the strategy document produced by
Wales Rural Forum in 1994, itself the outcome of a
consultative process involving a network of individuals and agency representatives meeting in a

102

Graham Day

series of discussion groups over a period of several

months. In its statement of principles, the Forum
affirms the need for an integrated vision of rural
problems and goals, arguing that:

if successful, it produced changes in the 'hearts and

minds' of those involved.

Conclusions

from the viewpoint of those who live and work within it

there are no neat divisions between the environmental,
social, economic, cultural, and political dimensions of
rural life (Wales Rural Forum, 1994, p. 9). lRather] We
recognize the ways in which economic, social and
environmental factors influence questions of culture and
identity -- and vice versa (1994, p. 71)
Responding to this unity of rural existence, the
report stresses the importance of partnerships and
'working together' as a way of handling the linkages
across sectors and issues. Sustainable rural development is said to require patience, and the ability to
take a long-term view; it takes time to bring about
the active involvement of communities, to encourage
the growth of local capacities, and to enlarge the
scope of local leadership and self-determination.
However, the pay off is held to be considerable,
since "the prospects of economic security appear
much greater when the whole set of social relationships of an area can be mobilised in its support"
(Wales Rural Forum, 1994, p. 11). Elsewhere, two
prominent members of the forum have referred to
the need to cultivate "a culture of continuing
development" in the context of a clear planning
framework, a commitment to partnerships, effective
on-going linkages between agencies and communities, and the installation of effective mechanisms for
local capacity building (Asby and Midmore, 1996).
Such conclusions are not unique, either to Wales or
to rural settings. A recent review of experience in
Ireland makes very similar points about the
contribution to be made by local community
development, and offers a strong endorsement of
the core principles of partnership, participation, planning and multi-dimensionality. Their application at
local level within Ireland is said to have helped
create strong institutional arrangements with the
capacity to facilitate local social development
(Haase et al., 1996, p. xiii). For this to succeed, it is
argued, a framework of continuity and consistency is
required, along with sufficient time, and willingness
to be genuinely responsive to the wishes of communities. Under these circumstances, programmes and
projects begin to emerge which have a real impact
upon even the most disadvantaged local people. The
authors refer to the formulation of local action plans
as a "key conceptual instrument" (Haase et al., 1996,
p. 99) in bringing about a shared vision on strategic
issues among a wide variety of local actors - - a task
which could be said to be essentially cultural, in that,

Evidence from studies of effective local and regional

development in non-rural areas suggests that there
is much to be gained from building upon the
strength of local social networks and institutional
linkages, and in so doing, winning support from
local cultural norms and values. This is not just a
matter of encouraging the growth of 'clusters' of
economic activity, although this is an important part
of the process (Breathnach, 1995). Certainly, as has
been emphasized by the Wales Rural Forum, an
objective of sustainability at local level is to capture
as much economic activity as possible within the
local economy, in order to maximize multiplier
effects, rather than seeing value 'leak' elsewhere.
This entails strengthening vertical and horizontal
links among local businesses, and where possible
insulating them from dependence upon externally
based or oriented connections. Indeed, it can be
argued that this is a necessary feature of cluster
formation, which is "only likely to succeed where the
clusters concerned are mainly built around locally
based firms which have developed a substantial
array of linkages into the local economy" (Breathnach, 1995, p. 7). Again, this echoes the earlier
situation within rural economies, where goods,
services, and money tended to circulate within a
relatively self-contained, 'self-sufficient', community.
What has been argued here is that these linkages
are more likely to develop organically if they are
allowed (or encouraged) to follow the lines of other
local interconnections. These are not merely
confined to institutional linkages, but also encompass shared cultural bonds. In this sense, development is about bringing the social relationships of
community into alignment with the pursuit of locally
preferred economic and political ends, while making
the economics of the locality an integral part of the
whole social system. There is mounting endorsement
for this view from the practices of rural community
development, although as yet these are the exception rather than the rule in the more 'advanced'
rural regions. The implementation of Local Agenda
21 may encourage greater sensitivity towards local
autonomy, diversity and cultural variety (Hughes et
al., 1996) and give a further impetus to their adoption. Developing local capacities, and finding ways
of working which are in harmony with what is
already there, rather than simply imposing standard
models from outside, demands patience and a
considerable investment of effort; but in the end it

Working with the Grain?

may produce benefits which are more lasting, and
which do less damage to a rural social fabric that
has been constructed over a very long period of
time. None of this implies that it is easy to embed
development within local society, far from it, since
the message is that this is more difficult than has
often been assumed, and requires a much better,
and deeper, understanding of how local communities work. It cannot be achieved by superficial
slogans or patronizing advice from above, nor by
importing disconnected fragments from the external
economy.

Nor is the intention to deny that local social structures and values may be deeply resistant to change
and suspicious of any intervention, no matter how
well-intended, and so may block development
altogether. Having indicated the importance of local
cultural understandings and practices for development, there is obviously a great deal of work to be
done to discover how exactly they operate to
mobilize action, who they include and exclude, and
how they relate to local power and decision making.
But we should have learned to our cost that, by
ignoring them, it is easy, almost inadvertently, to
destroy social arrangements which represent
substantial past investments with enormous potential. Towards the end of the classic study of the
South Wales miners, Francis and Smith (1980)
quote a poignant comment from a young Mountain
Ash collier, speaking in 1978; "We've taken a
hundred years to build these communities; you can't
kill them overnight" (Francis and Smith, 1980, p.
451). Unfortunately, not long after, the communities
in question were demolished, virtually instantaneously, with hugely damaging and continuing social
consequences. Rather than simply repeating the
mistake in the rural context, there is a great deal to
be said for making sure that those involved in
bringing about change and development continue to
work to perceive, and develop from, the strengths of
the social and cultural forms of life that are
contained in rural communities.

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