Working Group 4.1

Rural Experts and Rural Expertise

Convenors:
Gareth Enticott, Cardiff University enticottg@cardiff.ac.uk  (contact person)
Andrew Donaldson, Newcastle University
Jeremy Phillipson, Newcastle University

The challenges facing rural areas require experts to resolve them. Experts can diagnose and provide remedies to all our problems, from the challenges of sustainability, to enhancing animal health and welfare and addressing social change . As the themes of the congress make clear, rural experts and rural expertise are vital for progress.

Or are they? Or, rather, what actually is rural expertise, how is it made and who counts as a rural expert? Moreover, what is currently happening to rural experts and expertise and how might this affect the way rural challenges are dealt with? Will there be sufficient experts to deal with the challenges facing rural areas in future? Finally, but perhaps most significantly for our discussions, where does the rural sociologist sit within all of this?

Papers are invited that deal with experts and expertise in a broad range of social, natural, environmental, animal and human problems and which address the following questions:

1. What is rural expertise?

 What counts as expertise when it comes to resolving the challenges currently facing rural areas? What types of knowledge are most valuable? How is expertise constructed in dealing with rural problems?

What are the geographies of expertise: where is it made and how are rural areas implicated within this geography? How does expertise travel across space at local, national and international scales? What are the barriers and opportunities facing the mobility of expertise?

How is expertise contested within rural problems? What types of expertise are valued? How does rural expertise vary with expertise made and constructed within other geographical and policy spheres?

How can rural sociology contribute to theoretical debates on expertise raised in science and technology studies (e.g. Collins and Evans, 2002)?

2. Who are rural experts, where are they and what is happening to them?

Who counts as a rural expert? How is this definition made and ascribed to rural actors?

What is happening to rural experts? How have rural professions changed over time? How have the actions of the state affected rural experts? How is the geography of rural experts changing over time? What are the implications for the provision of rural services?

How have wider social changes in rural areas affected rural experts? How has population change affected the use and importance of ‘lay’ knowledges? How has population change affected the provision of professional rural services and to what effect?

3. How is rural expertise used?

Who uses rural experts? Are rural sociologists rural experts? Who makes use of their expertise and how? 

How do policy makers draw on rural experts? Which types of expertise do they value most – how do rural sociologists meet these demands?  What are the experiences of rural sociologists in attempting to influence the policy process? What factors allow rural sociologists to be successful ‘policy entrepreneurs’?

How can rural sociologists more effectively deploy their expertise? Has the turn to interdisciplinarity helped the case of the rural sociologist? How can rural sociology help in the development of innovative methodologies to better understand rural social problems? What sort of interventions can rural sociologists make?