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

尽管城市化进程日益加快，但欧盟仍有很大一部分人口生活在农村地区。在压力下，这些地区在欧盟发展计划中被定义为有问题的地区，涉及人口变化、生态可持续性、社会凝聚力或经济增长等问题。欧盟区域发展议程，如LEADER，旨在通过呼吁地方行动者发展农村地区作为区域间经济竞争的一部分，并根据企业逻辑进行安排，来解决这些赤字。在此过程中，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方式——LEADER的目标是让居民参与到区域发展项目的起草和实施中来。2)领导人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各个方面。从欧洲民族学的角度，该项目分析了当地参与者如何实施LEADER发展计划，以及它以何种方式影响农村地区人口的日常生活。本研究基于两个主要假设：1)只有考虑制度框架和政策话语，而且考虑其实施及其对当地居民日常生活的影响，才能分析领导者的效果和功能原则。2) LEADER的实施是由日常文化中发展计划的挪用和翻译过程形成的。这些过程可能与LEADER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LEADER项目，他们如何将发展措施转化为他们的日常生活世界，以及这些转化对日常生活方式、观点、观念和文化客观化的影响。两项民族志和话语分析比较研究构成了该项目的实证基础。他们分析了欧盟农村发展的两个核心领域的地方项目：一个是生态可持续性，另一个是人口变化。这些研究是在邻近的LEADER地区Eifel、z<s:1> lpicher Börde和位于科隆行政区的Rheinisches Revier and Inde und Rur进行的。其目的是加强在政策分析中包括日常执行和谈判发展方案（如LEADER）的观点。此外，该项目旨在促进关于农村地区和关于欧洲化进程中参与式治理形式的民主潜力的社会政治辩论。

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.