Operationalising Contemporary Rural Development: Socio-Cultural Determinants Arising from a Strong Local Fishing Culture

Abstract

A transition to programmes adopting a governance-based approach in encouraging value-added and innovation in rural economies is often described as offering new opportunities for marginalised rural communities that have not benefited from top-down development policies. In practice, however, it is noted in Ireland and elsewhere in the EU that traditional fishers and farmers have been slow to engage in economic activities favoured by contemporary policies. I discuss how traditional small-scale fishing communities can be estranged from contemporary rural development policies that are focused primarily on providing high value-added service-oriented and processed goods. I approach the problem of poor integration of fishing communities by focusing on how contemporary rural development programmes - though shrouded in language of local participation, governance, and indigenisation - can fail to actively engage with indigenous socio-cultural identity and resources. Exploring how intricate human ecological relationships involving custom and local knowledge of physical resources are not readily commoditised, I raise questions in relation to some of the central claims of the governance and rural development model, such as that it has the capacity to empower and generate confidence through locally appropriate economic activity.