Participatory Development of Rural Regions. Negotiating the EU-LEADER Program in Everyday Culture

尽管城市化进程日益加快，但欧洲联盟的很大一部分人口仍然生活在农村地区。迫于压力，这些领域在欧盟发展项目中被定义为在人口变化、生态可持续性、社会凝聚力或经济增长问题上存在问题。LEADER等欧盟区域发展议程旨在通过呼吁地方行为者将农村地区作为地区间经济竞争的一部分来发展农村地区，并按照创业逻辑进行安排，以解决这些不足。在这一过程中，日常生活世界以两种方式成为区域规划的对象：1)参与式社区主导的地方发展--领导者的方法旨在让居民参与区域发展项目的起草和实施。2)领导政策措施旨在通过努力促进公民参与、加强区域认同和发展区域网络来改变日常生活的方方面面。从欧洲民族学的角度，该项目分析了当地行为者如何实施领导人发展方案，以及它对农村地区人口的日常生活产生了哪些影响。本研究基于两个主要假设：1)领导者的作用和作用原则不仅要考虑制度框架和政策话语，而且要考虑它们的实施及其对当地居民日常生活的影响。2)领导者的实施是通过日常文化中发展纲领的借用和翻译过程来塑造的。这些过程可能会与领导者的目标相矛盾。该项目的核心问题是居民如何参与当地实施的领导者项目，他们如何将发展措施转化为他们的日常生活世界，以及这些翻译可能对日常生活方式、观点、看法以及文化客观化的形式产生什么影响。两项人种学和话语分析比较研究构成了该项目的经验基础。他们分析了欧盟农村发展两个核心领域的地方项目：一方面是生态可持续性，另一方面是人口变化。这些研究是在科隆行政区的邻近领头羊地区Eifel、Zülpicher Börde和Rheinisches Revier an Inde und Rur进行的。其目的是加强一种观点，包括日常执行和谈判发展方案，如领导政策分析。此外，该项目旨在促进关于农村地区的社会政治辩论，以及在欧洲化进程中参与性治理形式的民主潜力。

Despite increasing processes of urbanization, a large part of the European Union's population still lives in rural areas. Subject to pressure, these areas are defined as problematic in EU development programs regarding issues of demographic change, ecological sustainability, social cohesion, or economic growth. EU regional development agenda such as LEADER aim to address these deficits by calling upon local actors to develop rural areas as part of the economic competition between regions and to arrange them according to entrepreneurial logics. In the process, the everyday life world becomes an object of regional planning in two ways: 1) The participatory community-led local development-approach of LEADER aims to include residents by requesting them to get involved with the drafting and implementation of regional development projects. 2) LEADER policy measures aim to change aspects of everyday life by trying to foster citizens' involvement, strengthen regional identity and to develop regional networks. From the perspective of European Ethnology, the project analyzes how the LEADER development program is implemented by local actors and in which ways it influences the everyday life of the population of rural areas. The study works with two main hypotheses: 1) The effects and functional principles of LEADER can only be analyzed if not only institutional frameworks and policy discourses, but also their implementation and their impact on the everyday life of the local population is considered. 2) The implementation of LEADER is shaped by processes of appropriation and translation of the development program in everyday culture. These processes can contradict the goals of LEADER. Central questions of the project are how inhabitants participate in the local implementation of LEADER projects, how they translate development measures into their everyday life worlds and which effects these translations can have on forms of everyday life-style, points of views, perceptions as well as cultural objectivations. Two ethnographic and discourse analytical comparative studies form the empirical basis of the project. They analyze local projects in two central fields of EU rural development: ecological sustainability on the one and demographic change on the other hand. The studies are carried out in the neighboring LEADER regions Eifel, Zülpicher Börde and Rheinisches Revier an Inde und Rur in the administrative district of Cologne. The aim is to strengthen a perspective which includes the everyday implementation and negotiation of development programs such as LEADER in the analysis of policy. Further, the project aims to contribute to socio-political debates on rural areas and on the democratic potentials of participatory forms of governance in processes of Europeanization.