Reflections on Human Resources in the Strategy of Rural Economic Development

The general hypothesis that is developed in the following pages is founded on very elementary economic concepts. Underlying it is a methodological assumption that these concepts and those of sister disciplines have as a primary function the directing of attention to relevant general categories of relationships. In the main, they have been effective in doing so or they would not be maintained as the conceptual core of the several disciplines. However, if used uncritically, they can direct inquiry away from relationships of strategic significance as readily as toward them. Disciplinary researchers with their specialized conceptual constructs have operated mainly in splendid isolation. In so doing, these constructs have been allowed to direct attention away from, rather than toward, potentially important relationships. These relationships, if understood, quite possibly could enlighten regional economic and human resource development policy. No more stones should be cast at one discipline than at another