The discursive construction of an active rural community

Abstract

In this article, I will study active rural communities, how they are constructed in the speech of local people involved in community development practices. Over the past twenty years, community-led development practices have been a new paradigm for the rural development in Finland, which has been reflected as increasing number of village associations. I will analyse the discursive construction of the active community by interviewing all the present and previous leaders of three active village associations in the province of Central Finland. Active rural communities are constructed through village associations, by their local activities and self-consciousness as active communities. In the local representations, a rural community is constructed especially as a nurtured process, which progresses and develops according to the amount of local people’s commitment to the home village. Even if the leaders of active communities have adopted the strategic development discourse as the way to define their villages, the rural policy objective to get rural communities to adopt entrepreneurial subjectivity has not been achieved. Instead, the local discourse reflects how the local activeness is more about struggling for survival. Despite the contradiction between rural policy and local level, the activeness discourse constructs village associations as responsible for keeping villages alive through the rationality and practices of rural community development.