Rural development

Abstract

In this introduction, we present an overview of rural development as an ideology and as a practice. We argue that as a practice, with some significant exceptions, it does not achieve its ostensible goals. We conclude that this failure is the result of the incompatibility both between different goals and between the goals and the means which are almost universally promoted as the ways to achieve rural development. This incompatibility is concealed by a rhetoric which asserts the mutual interests of rural development; agencies, governments and rural populations en masse. This rhetoric of common interest obscures the reasons for failure.