The Rake

details of a project of ‘Work in the Village’

Entrepreneurship in the countryside is important. We know farmers and growers in the countryside as independent entrepreneurs. But with the process of economization of society the amount of entrepreneurs has diminished in capitalist and in communist countries both. In the former communist countries entrepreneurship didn't exist at all for a while.

The number of entrepreneurs has diminished drastically during the last century. In the place of the independent entrepreneur came the big organizations. In the beginning those big organizations were the result of the activities of one or a few entrepreneurs. But the enterprise slowly became an organization, managed by a board and directors with salaries. Everybody came to be on the pay roll. The owners became anonymous shareholders.

On 9th-10th of december an international committee for jobs will meet in Kreiz Breizh in Brittany. Cultural Village of Europe decided to use their knowledge of the European countryside for the search for new jobs. On this first meeting a plan of approach will be worked out.

The decline of the number of farmers in Europe should not force more people to leave the countryside and to go into the cities. That is not good for the countryside and it is not good for the towns. That is a reason to search for new jobs in the countryside. The search for these new jobs should not been left to the professionals in towns. The countryside itself should develop some ideas of what is possible and what fits.

At the mayor´s conference of Cultural Village on May 5th-8th this year in Schachdorf Ströbeck the role of women in villages was discussed. Each of the twelve villages had prepared a contribution. Here is a story based on those contributions.

The role of women in the countryside has always been big. That was the image that appeared from the conference. Women as the true managers of local economy. Two villages even used the word `matriarchate`.
For example by Paxos. On the island Paxos the men were usually away. They were at sea or on the mainland. The organisation of the island was entirely in the hands of women. The women couldn´t stay inside. Another article is devoted to the extreme situation on the island. The Dutch village Wijk aan Zee has similar characteristics, having a history as a fishing village.

Preceding the workshop on nature, a lecture was held by Yves Léon (director of research of the French National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA)) in which he told about a number of scenarios he developed for the future of rural areas. All scenarios take place in what Léon calls an “increasingly urbanized society� but they do not claim that villages themselves will necessarily urbanize.

Léon considers the countryside to have three functions: a productive function (think agriculture or mining), a residential or recreational function and a “natural� function (i.e. conservation of natural resources and protection against natural disasters). These three functions are viewed as subsystems by Léon, which are influenced by global events. These global events are also divided in three, namely by the classic division between political, economical and social factors.

Specialisms have made large cities possible and attractive. Possible because a city of a million people can only work by thoroughly dividing tasks. Attractive because people who focus on only one facet can take go a long way into their specialism.
We have specialisation to thank for our level of technology. Because people were prepared to dedicate their lives to a small facet goals were accomplished that couldn’t have been attained otherwise. And in sports it turns out that people can reach amazing speeds and pull off amazing feats by directing all their energy towards one goal.
When somewhere there is insufficient expertise it may happen that the whole infrastructure stutters. A city of a million people cannot afford this. So things have to be governed by laws. This gives rise to a formal system of criteria that working on a gas pipe, the power lines, digging a hole, placing a sign, building a house, driving a car, the state of the car and walking the streets have to meet.

In Wijk aan Zee, from january to july, every Wednesday twenty seniors gathered to exchange their life experiences. This was a unique experience. Sharing life experiences changes your own view of your life, makes you aware of your part in history, and imbues contact with other generations with purpose. The knowledge by experience that elder people have is often hidden, and by speaking to others its values to today’s society become apparent. A network of trust emerged in which various stories complemented each other. New thoughts formed about care for elderly people in the village, about volunteering, education, religion, war: about what happened in the 20th century in Europe, and how people in Wijk aan Zee shape their lives. In october 2005 the project is ended with a meeting of villagers, family, friends and experts. Most of the people in the group want to continue the project. It would be good if something like this would be set up in other places as well.

The Dutch edition of the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia describes Wijk aan Zee as a village with “a sense of community …. that is hard to find in other seaside villages, and which manifests itself through a vibrant public life and a strong organisation potential.� An interesting come back for a village that in the 1970s seemed to have vanwege plannen om met het grondgebied waar het dorp ligt iets anders te gaan doen. How did this happen? The key term is ‘village culture’. Village culture has a bad name in circles of culture and art. Therefore I intend to describe how I discovered that village culture is an empowerment to the community.

The point is often made that the old are unable to comprehend the young because of differences in world view, values and often even language. By clinging on to old ideas and views, the elderly are unable to understand the young. While it is true that communication between different generations is poor in modern society, it seems strange to put this segregation on the account of the elderly’s “resistance to change.�

After all, old and young are segregated in many ways. How many bars exist, where both teenagers and 90-year-olds go? And how many kids in modern society live in the same house as their grandparents? The fact is that generations stopped living together a long time ago. And this is the real reason why they cannot communicate.

The knowledge of my own village is not only the knowledge of material things as landscape and buildings. Knowledge of the people who live there and the knowledge of these people in the last century is important as well (the stories told by grandparents, parents and others). So with knowledge on humans I don't mean the general knowledge on human nature, like psychologists, psychiatrists and anthropologists tend to have. I'm only concerned about the knowledge people have of other people, either living or dead, who have a name or nickname that sets them apart from others.

Getting a discussion together on the value of local knowledge can be a revolutionary thing. Not by discussing how traditional knowledge can be exploited to lure tourists. Not even by pointing out that local knowledge often is ‘valid knowledge’. On the contrary, one the most exciting parts of the discussion will be challenging the conventional wisdom on what makes knowledge valuable at all.

In this scientific age, we tend to adopt a value system similar to that of scientists. For them, creating knowledge is part of a big, collective endeavour that tries to determine the truth. To do so, they have adopted what is commonly called “the scientific method�, an elaborate framework that has proven to be very useful making scientific progress. Part of this method is performing experiments under controlled conditions. The reason scientists do this is to be able to eliminate the surroundings or context of the phenomenon they study. In this way, they can get to the – often abstract – essence of their object of study, thereby creating, from their point of view, valuable knowledge.