IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecdequ/v7y1993i3p227-236.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rural Development Policy: Breaking the Cargo Cult Mentality

Author

Listed:
  • Beth Walter Honadle

    (University of Minnesota)

Abstract

A comprehensive national rural development policy has been thwarted by at least five factors: inaccurate rural stereotypes, perceived conflicts between urban and rural interests, competition among rural development advocacy groups, declining rural population, and fragmentation of rural development within Congress. Rather than formulate a coherent strategic policy for rural development, the last several presidential administrations have substituted rhetoric and procedural changes for real action. They have cut programs and slashed technical-assistance efforts in the name of efficiency and used terms like coordination, targeting, and improved access to make existing programs more responsive. Despite the clear focus of federal policy makers on urban and international issues, rural development advocates behave like cargo cults, religious sects that wait for material goods to be brought by magic by the spirits of their ancestors in cargo ships. This article offers some relatively modest suggestions for how rural development advocacy groups might actually better serve rural people.

Suggested Citation

  • Beth Walter Honadle, 1993. "Rural Development Policy: Breaking the Cargo Cult Mentality," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 7(3), pages 227-236, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:7:y:1993:i:3:p:227-236
    DOI: 10.1177/089124249300700301
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/089124249300700301
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/089124249300700301?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Honadle, Beth Walter & Zapata, Marisa A. & Auffrey, Christopher & vom Hofe, Rainer & Looye, Johanna, 2014. "Developmental evaluation and the ‘Stronger Economies Together’ initiative in the United States," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 64-72.
    2. Freshwater, David, 2007. "Rural Development and the Declining Coherence of Rural Policy: An American and Canadian Perspective," Staff Papers 42314, University of Kentucky, Department of Agricultural Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:7:y:1993:i:3:p:227-236. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.