Journal Articles

Local communities empowered to plan?: Applying PAR to establish democratic communicative spaces for sustainable rural development

---

This article presents the second cycle of an ongoing participatory action research (PAR) project that aimed at facilitating bottom-up, sustainability planning and development in one of the most socio-economically disadvantageous micro-regions of Hungary. The process at the very beginning started as conventional qualitative research, and gradually emerged to a PAR process as deeper relationships with local people were developed and previous research practices and research focus were questioned. Current institutional changes, such as the availability of European Union funding for rural development and the micro-regional re-districting driven both by top-down and bottom-up processes, were structural factors that created a more promising context for participatory planning. Although a PAR project generally targets silenced groups, for this to happen it is arguably necessary to legitimize such development work in the eyes of local decision-makers and funding organizations, in order to establish more inclusive communicative spaces around future rural development. However, this also creates a controversial situation: breaking away from prevailing structural inequalities and hierarchies remains difficult through a process which is designed around consensus-building.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

Action Research

Call Number

-

Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publication., 2009

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

1476-7503

Classification

-

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

Vol. 7, No. 3, September 2009.pp. 313-334

Subject(s)

Hungary
Rural development
Sustainability
Ecological economics
Local communities empowered to plan

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment