OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

1. USING A TERRITORY’S CULTURE TO PROMOTE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT
activities. In some cases, the setting is “mixed”, and thus offers the benefits of
entrepreneurial culture associated with certain activities such as textiles. In other
cases, there are zones where farming has always reigned unchallenged, which means
that the stability of output and outlets becomes a liability once their markets are
lost or disappear.
A rural region such as Arcadia in Greece illustrates the attendant cultural changes.
The entrepreneurial culture there reflected the nature of its human resources,
marked by the territory’s history: the lack of an industrial past; the importance of
independent employment; emigration and ageing of the population. Moreover,
entrepreneurship was hobbled by the lack of management capacity and knowhow,
ineffective marketing of products, raw material shortages, the scarcity of modern
equipment, the narrowness of local markets.
It was realised that the only way to change this entrepreneurial culture was
gradually, through the introduction of new technologies, and by stressing quality
and encouraging networking among the still-rare initiatives. These fabrics, in
which personal relations predominate, could take advantage of new development
opportunities if the area were not dominated by outside economic forces, as is
often the case with territories where there is little diversification. Where this is
the case, it is better to adopt other ways of thinking and working, something that
can be achieved through a new technical culture.
The growing interest in the analysis of local cultures has sparked proposals for
other typologies. In their study of eight European regions, Keating et al. (2003) classify
them into four different cultural types:
• regions that stress their low production costs in the hope of attracting investments;
• regions with a conventional, conservative culture that offer products with high
value-added but that exhibit great social inequalities;
• regions that are socially more democratic, where production of this kind goes
hand-in-hand with greater social integration;
• regions that attempt to constitute themselves as states and to take on new
attributes and responsibilities, including cultural ones.
Producing new entrepreneurial cultures
Merely identifying links between desirable cultural traits and local development
does not provide a sufficient basis for local policies. The time needed to win acceptance
of these new benchmarks or approaches is likely to exceed the lifespan of any
CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005 35