Vaughan Higgins

Geoffrey Lawrence

Lynda Cheshire

Recent decades have witnessed the transition from the government of rural areas towards processes of governance in which the boundaries between the state and civil society are blurred. As a result, governance is commonly linked to ‘bottom-up’ or community-based approaches to planning and development, which are said to ‘empower’ rural citizens and liberate them from the disabling structures of top-down government control. At the same time, however, a range of other actors beyond the local level have also become increasingly influential in determining the future of rural spaces, thereby embedding rural citizens within new configurations of power relations. This book critically explores the social causes and consequences of these emerging governance arrangements. In particular, the book seeks to move beyond questions of empowerment in governance debates and to consider how new kinds of power relations arise between the various actors involved. The book addresses questions concerning the nature of power relations in contemporary forms of rural governance, including: how community participation is negotiated and achieved; the effects of such participation upon the formulation and delivery of rural policies; the kinds of conflicts that arise between various stakeholder groups and the capacity of each group to promote its interests; and the prospects of this new approach for enhanced democratic governance in rural areas.

International Perspectives

Rural Governance

Food security and sustainability are arguably the most important issues facing the agri-food sector at the beginning of a new millennium. In an era of globalization, where nation states appear to have a diminishing role in governing these matters, the existing and emerging power relations underpinning agri-food regulation demand renewed scholarly attention. Drawing upon the expertise of some of the most prominent writers in rural sociology, geography and anthropology, this book shows how globalization processes open up a new regulatory politics in which ‘non-political’ forms of governing play an increasingly influential role in shaping agricultural production and consumption. The first of its kind to critically and comprehensively examine new forms of governing and regulation, this important text explores the relationship between globalization and new sites, spaces and agents of agricultural regulation, using detailed case studies in developed nations to illustrate points made. Demonstrating the political significance of regulatory mechanisms extending beyond the state, the book also discusses the consequences for the governing of the agri-food sector.

Globalization and the New Politics of Regulation

Agricultural Governance

Wendy Larner

This book examines how neoliberalism is constituted from multiple, diverse elements; how these elements are brought together and made to cohere; and the challenges, contestations, and consequences of such. Informed by assemblage thinking, the collection builds on research that emphasizes the forms of experimentation, adaptation, and mutation through which neoliberalism is enacted and rendered workable across different spaces. Contributors provide original case studies on topics such as democratic administration, carbon markets, the sharing economy, behavioral economics, disease management, free trade, and youth volunteering. They interrogate the forms of expertise through which neoliberalism is rendered knowable; the diverse socio-technical practices that make neoliberalism governable; and the practices, effects, and tensions involved in the assembling of neoliberal subjects.

Vaughan Higgins

Books

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