Images of Rurality: Commodification and Place Promotion

It is argued that rural areas and landscapes can increasingly be regarded as places of consumption rather than production. This is reflected in the emphasis which appears to be placed on attracting visitors to rural localities. While some rural locations are long-standing tourist attractions, others are increasingly endeavouring to promote themselves through the ‘marketing’ of local uniqueness. An emphasis on local heritage frequently underpins these attempts and landscapes, local individuals or families, events, traditions, building styles are amongst the ‘resources’ put into the service of place promotion. The use of local heritage as a mechanism to promote rural places opens up a series of issues including those of authenticity, romanticisation, sanitisation, contestation and dissonance. These place promotional trends are reflected in the importance attaching to tourism in rural development strategies pursued at a local level. In this way development funding and the various local strategies devised by local partnerships appear to increasingly emphasise the importance of attracting visitors. This apparent commodification of the countryside appears to be motivated by a number of concerns. While the desire to generate revenue is clearly one of these, social and cultural factors may also play a role. In turn, these place promotional initiatives affect both visitors’ and local residents’ perceptions of place. This paper explores aspects of the historic and contemporary promotion of rural places

Integration and Participation in Rural Development: the Case of Ireland

Rural development initiatives in recent years, in Ireland and elsewhere in western Europe, have placed great emphasis on ideas of integration, participation and empowerment. As a consequence, at both national and European Union levels, there have been a range of territorially-based programmes which, to a greater or lesser extent, espouse the idea of a more locally attuned ‘bottom-up’ approach to rural development. This approach is seen as a more appropriate mechanism than traditional 'top-down' strategies. While current strategies might be seen as offering new possibilities for those living in rural areas, this paper presents some evidence from on-going research in Ireland suggesting that there are a number of issues which need to be teased out. Two key themes are highlighted. Firstly, there are a number of what can be seen as ‘technical’ considerations centring on the mechanics of co-ordination and integration. Secondly, there are issues pertaining to power relationships at both national and local levels which need to be explored

Understanding the small business sector: reflections and confessions

No description supplie

Entrepreneurial growth in British regions 1980-1998

This paper examines the relationship between new firm startups and employment growth in Great Britain. We construct a new data set for 60 British regions, covering the whole of Great Britain, between 1980 and 1998. The central theme of the paper is that, with the exception of a recent paper by Audretsch and Fritsch (2002) for Germany, no data set has been available to examine long-run, as well as short-run relationships. The current paper uses a long-run data set and obtains results for Great Britain which are in some respects similar to those for Germany. There are a number of theoretical reasons to expect a positive relationship between the extent to which a geographical area is 'entrepreneurial' and the extent to which it is 'economically successful' (measured as, for instance, the number of jobs created). The first is that if 'entrepreneurial' is reflected in 'new firm formation' then these new firms create jobs directly and so add to the stock of jobs. The second is that the new firms constitute a (real or imagined) competitive threat to existing firms, encouraging the latter to perform better. Finally, new firms provide a vehicle for the introduction of new ideas and innovation to an economy, which has been shown to be a key source of long-term economic growth [Romer 1986]. However, there are also reasons for not expecting firm formation rates to be related to job creation. We mention two of them. The first is that new firms directly contribute only a small proportion of the stock of jobs in the economy [Storey 1994]. Secondly, most new firms are merely displacing existing firms without any observable gain either to the customer or to the economy [Storey and Strange 1991]. To establish the relation empirically, we estimate a model where employment growth is explained by startup activity and some controls, using our long-run data set. Within the period 1980-1998 we analyze different subperiods to examine whether the impact of new firm startups on growth has changed during the last two decades of the 20th century. We explicitly take account of numerous empirical pitfalls. We find evidence for positive employment effects of startup activity for British regions. Two important conclusions can be drawn from our regression exercises. First, the positive impact of new firm startups on employment growth is stronger for the 1990s than for the 1980s. This finding is consistent with Audretsch and Fritsch (2002), who find an increased impact of new firm startups on employment growth for German regions over the last two decades of the 20th century. Second, lag structures are important, and longer lagged startups are found to have a bigger impact on employment growth than shorter lagged startups. This finding is consistent with Audretsch, Carree and Thurik (2001). They investigate the relation between entrepreneurship and unemployment for 23 OECD countries and find empirical evidence for their claim that "the employment impact of entrepreneurship is not instantaneous but rather requires a number of years for the firm to grow". Selected references: Audretsch, D.B., M.A. Carree and A.R. Thurik (2001), "Does entrepreneurship reduce unemployment?", Discussion paper TI01-074/3, Tinbergen Institute, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Audretsch, D.B., and M. Fritsch (2002), "Growth regimes over Time and Space", Regional Studies (forth-coming). Romer, P.M. (1986), "Increasing returns and Long Run Growth", Journal of Political Economy 94, 1002-1037. Storey, D.J. and A. Strange, (1992), "Entrepreneurship in Cleveland 1979-1989: A Study of the Effects of the Enterprise Culture", Employment Department, Research Series No. 3. Storey, D.J. (1994), "Understanding the Small Business Sector", Routledge, London.

The Relationship between Firm Births and Job Creation: Did this change in Britain in the 1990s?

This paper examines the relationship between firm births and job creation in Great Britain. We used a new data set for 60 British regions, covering the whole of Great Britain, between 1980 and 1998. The central theme of the paper is that, with the exception of a recent paper by Audretsch and Fritsch for Germany, the relationship between new-firm startups and employment growth has previously been examined either with no time-lag or with only a short period lag. The current paper examines short-run as well as long-run relationships and provides results for Great Britain similar to those for Germany. We find that the short-run employment impact of new-firm startups in British regions has been bigger in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. Concerning long-run effects, we find that the employment impact of new-firm startups is strongest after about five years, but the effect disappears after a decade.

Investigating the link between firm births and job creation in British regions, 1980-98: Is there a Upas Tree effect?

We examined the relationship between firm births and job creation in Great Britain. We used a new data set for 60 British regions, covering the whole of Great Britain, between 1980 and 1998. The relationship between new firm start-ups and employment growth has previously been examined either with no time lag or with only a short period lag. We found, for Great Britain as a whole, no significant relationship between start-ups and employment creation in the 1980s, but a negative relationship for the 'low enterprise' area of Northern England. For the 1990s, we found a significant positive relationship for Great Britain as a whole but for Scotland, which focussed policy on start-ups, a negative relationship. We feel this raises questions over policies designed to raise rates of new firm formation as a strategy for employment creation, particularly in 'low enterprise' areas. This paper was previously published as Research Report H200108 and as Scales Paper N200202. The major change compared to the previous version entails separate studies of region-specific deviations in the relationships. The effect of the number of start-ups on growth was found to be significantly smaller in regions with relatively low numbers of start-ups, also called the 'Upas Tree effect'.

‘New’ Migrants in the British Countryside

The eastward expansion of the European Union (EU) in the early 2000s had a number of consequences. One of these, deriving from the EU principle of freedom of movement and the associated relaxation of border restrictions, was a marked increase in migration from the new member states into the longer established western ones. Within the United Kingdom much of that migration was towards larger urban centres, but a relatively high (and perhaps unexpected) proportion was to smaller towns, villages and more rural areas. This article explores the extent of this migration and, more specifically, it seeks to highlight some of the reactions to it. In doing so, there is a focus on rural parts of the English west midlands, in particular the county of Herefordshire. The article places this migratory movement within the context of increased east-west migration more generally, the regulatory environment surrounding it, and the broader responses to it at a national level

Which Boys in Green? Identity Issues in Irish Soccer

Ireland’s political partition has clearly impacted on sport in a wide variety of ways leaving a sporting landscape that includes regulatory bodies that transcend the border and others that mirror the political divide. Soccer on the island is split between northern and southern organisations with both fielding teams in international competitions. Many northern nationalists have eschewed identification with the Northern Ireland football team, preferring to transfer their allegiance to the Republic in what might be seen as an intrinsic expression of a northern nationalist identity. Just as supporters loyalties prove contentious, so too have those of players themselves. Tensions have emerged over the decision by some northern-born players from Irish nationalist backgrounds to elect to play for the Republic, an option available to them by virtue of their entitlement to Irish citizenship. While this phenomenon seems a logical extension of a tendency amongst those from a nationalist background in the north to regard themselves as Irish, the apparent defection of players such as Darron Gibson and James McClean has engendered considerable controversy. McClean probably best exemplifies an apparent political motivation in his decision to opt for the Republic, having provided very explicit indications of his allegiance and publicly expressing his Irishness in ways that are intimately bound up with the city of Derry where he grew up. This paper focuses on on-going tensions surrounding this specific example of sporting representation and citizenship. It outlines the wider political and sporting context to the phenomenon, examines player motivations and explores the various reactions to it on both sides of the Irish border