rural development

The topic of rural development has received attention from a wide range of disciplines and professions. Many books and articles have been written, presenting success stories, critical reflections, and very detailed guidelines on how to realize development.

In a new book on rural development Kristof Van Assche and Anna-Katharina Hornidge bring together these different insights and discuss the most influential perspectives and renders their risks and benefits visible. They put forward a novel integrative perspective on rural development drawing on Evolutionary Governance Theory. Paying particular attention to the various roles of knowledge, Van Assche and Hornidge offer useful insights in the multiple discourses on development and the changing ways in which these are embedded in governance. Drawing on the experiences in five different continents they show that discourses, institutions, actors, are constantly co-evolving and they offer the reader the conceptual tools to understand how things are organized now, which development path has already been taken, and how things could possibly move in a different direction.

The book is available from Wageningen Academic Press