Social capital and rural development in Europe: a geographical perspective

By considering the use of the concept of social capital and its relation to local development and the neo-endogenous approach of rural development, the aim of this chapter is to place the three concepts in a spaceterritory perspective. This approach highlights the European diversity of regions and rural areas, which are subject to heterogeneous local and territorial development processes. It offers a “bird’s eye view” of a European geography of rural development in relation to social capital and local development processes, especially their “regional” or territorial roots. It further provides a means of exploring the contextual historical, cultural and political-institutional divides in Europe, which, according to some authors, explain existing social-spatial European differences in territory. Bearing in mind that the discipline of geography includes scholars other than geographers (Gibson, 2009), this approach converges with contributions from diverse fields of research. The first section combines social theory with spatial and regional science to investigate past framing of social change and behaviour in conjunction with the political, institutional and economic contexts of European policies. These policies shape both the types and capacities of organisations operating in a territory. The second section of this chapter presents geographers’ theoretical discussions on social capital, including territorial capital and governance, which is more specifically analysed in Chapter 5. The third section provides an overview of studies on social capital, mostly focused on social and political attitudes and behaviour. These studies are compared at the European regional level to contextualise the approach adopted in this book. The fourth section discusses different meanings of “rural” in treatments of rural development and social capital in Europe. Finally, the chapter provides critical insights derived from empirical research on social capital and rural development in European countries and regions, and concludes with reflections on the geography of inequality which emerges from these empirical sources. Thus, the analysis proposed in this chapter helps to understand and contextualise how multi-level and regional frameworks for public policy and governance systems structure social capital in local and rural development.