Ethics and Rural Development: Case Study of Tajo-Salor (Extremadura, Spain)

In the genesis of theories, which provide a basis for endogenous rural development policies, a major role is played by those critical views of this predominant position of economic thought, which had achieved to establish an increase in production and its measurement through quantitative indicators as the top and only priority of economic growth. Imposing these last theories implied relegating other issues of economic development to a second place such as income distribution, social welfare improvement, poverty reduction, cultural identity, population participation, and conservation of natural resources. In the European context, the policy known as “leader approach” is the best example of these endogenous rural development policies. As we know, the implementation of these programmes is managed by the so-called local action groups (LAG) and is based on a specific territorial area: the region. By using the case study methodology, the main objective of this research is to analyse the allocation of investments and resources managed by LAG, which have been responsible for applying the leader approach in the Tajo-Salor region during the last decades. As it will be justified, the region under study meets all the conditions to be considered a paradigmatic object of the case study; with the added interest that it is a peri-urban region, very close to the capital of the province. This research aims to study to what extent the investments of rural development programmes in the aforementioned region have focused on productive projects (undertaken by private entrepreneurs), but it particularly analyses to what extent the aforementioned programmes are capable of promoting other types of actions, of a “non-productive” or non-profit nature, aimed at addressing these other aspects which have been relegated to a second place by the predominant economic thought. This work will call these projects “ethical investments”.