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IRISH Centre for Rural Transformation and Sustainability (ICERTS)

ICERTS is one of the six research centres involved in ISSP (Irish Social Sciences Platform) within NUI Galway. This is an integrated research programme funded under Cycle 4 of the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI4).

ICERTS is responsible for the policy area of Balanced Regional and Rural Development, which is cross-cut and integrated through a number of conceptual themes. This research programme primarily focus on the cross-cut conceptual themes of innovation and spatial strategies. The aim is to undertake research to guide spatial and sectoral strategy formulation needed to produce balanced and sustainable development across the island of Ireland.

ICERTS is internationally recognised as a key centre for rural research. The research associates involved in this programme are drawn from a wide variety of disciplines including Economics, Geography, Sociology, and Political Science. This PRTLI4-funded research provides financial support for one post doctoral researcher and five PhD students.

Balanced Regional and Rural Development research explores alternative approaches to exploiting the potential contributions of innovation in rural development. This includes projects on rural development concepts such as rural enterprise, accessibility and sustainability, value added creation, the efficient development of rural natural and human resources, the promotion of rural tourism and its implication for development policy and the study of new forms of governance in rural areas.

There are currently six research projects in ICERTS under PRTLI4 funding:

Balanced Local Development: Managing Shellfish Production in Killary

Aquaculture has been heralded by scholars and policy makers alike as a means of developing small rural communities as it provides livelihoods to those in rural areas where local economic conditions are weak. However the difficulty with it is that there is a wide variety of ideologies on which way aquaculture should be carried out. Each of these ideologies or discourses can be seen as a shared way of understanding how aquaculture should be done and each one have their own basic assumptions that guide how they interpret and judge particular events. Certain ideologies prefer a method of cooperation between each individual fish farmer that work towards a common goal so that each individual interest is geared toward collective responsibility. Others, such as the state advocate the role of individual capitalist accumulators who look after their own plot and work toward their own individual goals. When these interests and ideologies meet in social space, quarrels and disputes can emerge which often leads to the development of power struggles between the different aquatic users and also between the marine users and the state that is responsible for developing marine resources. Such power struggles can create a challenging social environment for aquacultural development. The purpose of this research is to examine the ideologies that create the power struggles and try and develop an understanding of why different interests believe that aquaculture should be carried out in a certain fashion. This will be achieved through an ethnographic study of shellfish farming in the Killary Fjord in North West Connemara. The research will look at those who believe that the cooperative style of organisation is the most effective way of doing aquaculture, examining why these people believe this and understanding how the cooperative has developed over time. The research will also look at those fish farmers in Killary who have opted out of the cooperative instead pursuing their own individual interests as a means of sustaining their livelihoods. The states role in developing the marine resource will also be looked at. Their insistence on the neoclassical economic approach that stresses the importance of industrialising the commons so that individual fish farmers can maximise their output will be studied. In this way the research can then be seen as an attempt to map out the basic structure of the various ideologies and understand their history and why the different discourse think about aquaculture in sharply different ways and the effects it has once they meet in social space.

Peter Cush, PhD fellow.

Prof. Chris Curtin, research director.

Department of Political Science and Sociology, NUI Galway

Time spent off the farm: Social, Community and Leisure activities of farmers and farm family members in the West of Ireland

In modern economic climates, we observe people reallocating resources in response to changes in economic conditions. How quickly people perceive and how efficiently individuals respond to these changes is attributed to allocative ability (Schultz 1975). For many years, farm operators have been forced to reallocate their labour between farm and non-farm markets in response to falling on-farm income (Brick 2005). The changing economic climate of Ireland in the past decade has had profound effects on the reallocation of leisure time in rural and farm households as a decade of economic growth has created prospects of higher incomes in the non-farm sector. The aim of this research project is to increase our understanding of time use by typical farm operators, their spouses and farm family members. This is necessary to aid the Government to plan for the future sustainability of farms and rural communities of which farm households and their interaction in social and community activities are a significant component.

Sinéad Keogh, PhD fellow.

Dr. Eoghan Garvey, research director.

Department of Economics, NUI Galway.

Negotiating Development; Rural Communities and New Forms of Governance in Ireland”.

Following the establishment of new forms of participatory democracy in rural areas, rural communities now operate within a complex governance environment. This research examines how changing leadership roles in rural areas have impacted on how these communities negotiate to achieve their goals. The study will offer a deeper understanding of the affect of new forms of rural governance on rural communities engaged in community development endeavours.

Ruth Pritchard, PhD fellow.

Prof. Chris Curtin and Dr. Tony Varley, research directors.

Department of Political Science and Sociology, NUI Galway.

Exploring the Role of Embeddedness as a Strategy for Developing Rural Tourism

The project develops a multidimensional model of embeddedness, based on the review of an extensive body of international literature. The model will be assessed through in-depth comparative research with c. 50 small business and c. 20 institutions pertinent to tourism, in two regions in Ireland, one where embedded tourism, as defined here, is better developed than in the other. The results will contribute to growing academic interest relating to this topic and to more effective rural tourism and development policy.

Martyn Pring, PhD fellow.

Dr. Mary Cawley, research director.

Department of Geography, NUI Galway.

Social Capital and Natural Resource Use Governance in Common Pool Arrangements

This study will explore the challenges of managing common pool resources by seeking to understand cooperative behaviour amongst the various stakeholders and how building social capital within and between the groups could contribute to cooperative action and reduced conflict in the management of commons. The focus will be on inshore fisheries in Ireland. It is assumed that where communities are organised in well developed resource management groups and undergo a process that builds social capital within the group, we encounter a more cost-effective solution to resolving the ’tragedy of commons’ that complements the legal mechanism. This process of social capital building is seen as important, within the group; across the various stakeholders horizontally and vertically with the administrative agent (government). A Multi-method approach will be employed involving social network analysis and econometric modelling.

Betty Nyambura, PhD fellow.

Dr. Tom van Rensburg, research director.

Department of Economics, NUI Galway.

Conceptual Issues in Rural Development and Empirical Testing

The core focus of this research project is value-added creation in rural areas, with innovation as an essential crosscutting theme. A number of conceptual issues relevant for rural development are explored, with a focus on innovation and the performance of the rural enterprise, the concept, measurement and representation of accessibility and the concept of sustainability in rural areas. Theoretical research is accompanied by a programme of empirical research to be developed and implemented over a three-year period. Quantitative research analysis is used to test a number of hypotheses concerning the creation of value added within the rural and global market context.

Dr. Amaya Vega, Postdoctoral fellow.

Prof. Michael Cuddy, research director.

Department of Economics, NUI Galway.

Irish Centre for Rural Transformation and Sustainability (ICERTS)
This page was last updated Thursday, April 09, 2009