Paper short abstract:

The presentation explores how inhabitants of rural regions are called upon to imagine their future life against the backdrop of meta-narratives about uncertainties caused by the dissolution of traditional family and neighbourhood support.

Paper long abstract:

Rural regions in today Western European societies are confronted with the cultural, social and economic effects of demographic change. The European Union addresses those transformations with neo-endogenous policy programmes such as the EU development programme LEADER for rural regions. LEADER confronts inhabitants of rural regions with threatening future imaginations or meta-narratives in order to invoke inhabitants to proactively counteract the risks of demographic change and to envision and create alternative future scenarios for their communities.

On the example of a LEADER project in the German Federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia that aims to create new forms of community and neighbourhood support, I will explore how inhabitants in rural regions are called upon to imagine and approach their future life against the backdrop of meta-narratives about uncertainties caused by the dissolution of traditional family and neighbourhood support. The presentation thus considers local people's "cruel optimism" (Berlant 2011) of staying attached to vanishing yet familiar helping structures in rural areas by re-inventing them today for the future.

Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in three rural LEADER regions in Germany I will present findings of my dissertation project as part of the research project 'participative development of rural regions' funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).