Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland © Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal 2021. Published version Kumpulainen, Kaisu; Husu, Hanna-Mari; Nousiainen, Marko Kumpulainen, K., Husu, H.-M., & Nousiainen, M. (2022). Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland. Community Development Journal, 57(3), 449-468. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsab012 2022 © Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal 2021. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),which permits unrestricted reuse,distribution, and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly cited. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsab012 Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland Kaisu Kumpulainen*, Hanna-Mari Husu and Marko Nousiainen Abstract In this article, we study how declining rural communities build political resilience in Finland. Community resilience is an adaptive process through which rural communities try to maintain their viability in changed circumstances. This process does not entail a submissive attitude, but rather active agency and an effort to influence matters concerning the community’s well-being. We focus on the political dimension of resilience by identifying different local tactics that rural communities adopt to promote their own development following municipal mergers. We classify these tactics into three categories: cooperation, conflict and community-led development. The significant differences between them lie in how the community relates to the new municipality and communicates with its officials and decision-makers. However, none of the three tactics identified in our study are sufficient to ensure the viability of rural communities in the context of municipal mergers. Because of population decline and public-sector funding crises, rural communities all over Europe face the same challenges in maintaining their vitality (Elshof et al., 2014;Hospers and Reverda, 2015). Globalization and urbanization create pressure to centralize services and industries in cities. In addition to losing inhabitants and services to cities, rural communities have trouble getting their voices heard in political discourse. Rural interests have been marginalized in policymaking (Holdo, 2020). Therefore, it is essential to strengthen political agency so as to build the resilience of rural communities. Community resilience typically means communities’ capacity to adapt to external crisis and change. Communities’ adaptive capacities have been *Address for correspondence: Kaisu Kumpulainen,Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences,PO Box 35,40014,University of Jyväskylä,Finland;email:kaisu.kumpulainen@jyu.fi Community Development Journal 2021 pp. 1–20 1 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 2Kaisu Kumpulainen et al. scrutinized in the context of natural disasters such as earthquakes (Demiroz and Haase, 2019;Imperiale and Vanclay, 2016;Saunders and Becker, 2015), environmental (or climate) change (Kelly et al., 2015), sustainability (Berkes and Ross, 2016;Jarzebski et al., 2016), policy (Shaw, 2012;MacKinnon and Derickson, 2012) and rural studies (Wilson, 2010;Freshwater, 2015 McManus et al., 2012;Skerratt, 2013). Coping with the loss of inhabitants, jobs and services, as well as a general effort to adapt to changing circumstances and keep towns and villages alive, can be understood as community resilience (McManus et al., 2012). Community resilience as a concept originates from ecology and social– ecological systems theory (Holling, 1973), as well as from developmental psychology and mental health (Paton and Johnston, 2001;Berkes and Ross, 2013). It is doubtful how well these formulations apply to social systems and the social sciences: social systems are emergent properties whose complexity cannot be reduced to ecological or psychological principles (Davidson, 2010;Berkes and Ross, 2013). Works highlighting the concept of (social) capital (Magis, 2010;Aldrich and Meyer, 2015;Roberts and Townsend, 2016; Pfefferbaum, et al., 2015;Vårheim, 2017) use a more sociological approach. Power-related and agency-oriented approaches have also been gaining interest (Davidson, 2010). We argue that a social systems-based approach to community resilience will benefit from insights from field theory, such as the ideas of power, struggle and social skill (Fligstein, 1997 2001;Fligstein and McAdam, 2012). We are interested in political community development rather than ecological (e.g. Holling, 1973), psychological (e.g. Bonanno, 2004), social (e.g. Magis, 2010) or economic (e.g. Doeksen and Symes, 2015) perspectives. Local political capacities to build resilience have been somewhat neglected; we seek to fill this gap by focusing on the political dimension of community resilience processes—i.e. local efforts to politically influence local development. Our study deals with community resilience in the context of municipality mergers in Finland. Municipalities in Finland are responsible for organizing local public health, social, educational and cultural services and can decide independently how to produce services for their citizens (Kröger, 2011). Small rural municipalities face financial difficulties in fulfilling their responsibilities for functional and equal basic services. This means increased demand for new solutions, such as municipality mergers to produce local services and organize administration at lower cost. The number of municipalities decreased from 460 to 311 between 1990 and 2017 (Association of Finnish municipalities 2020). However, long distances make mergers challenging, particularly in rural areas. When economic necessities drive municipal service production towards bigger units, the increasing distances threaten the accessibility of Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland 3 services in peripheral communities. In consequence, the most peripheral communities in Finland may be located dozens or even hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest school or health care unit. Sometimes municipality mergers are reached through signing formal merger agreements which protect rural service units and municipal jobs during a five year transition period. Another significant change a municipality merger causes in a peripheral communityisthelossofautonomyindecisionmakingorininfluencinglocal development. Municipalities are local development actors. In merger situations the old municipalities may form sub-municipal community boards (kunnanosavaltuusto) to deliberate local development issues. Often community boards have also a modest public budget to spend. In other cases, previously autonomous peripheral communities organize local development or village associations (NGOs) that seek ways to promote community viability—that is ensuring the sufficient health, social, and education services, livelihoods, infrastructure and recreation to make living in the locality possible for community members. The centralization of political power and services has affected the strategies offered to rural areas to secure their vitality. Finnish rural policy promotes local communities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) increasing their role in developing rural areas. In the European and Finnish official rural policy discourse, local stakeholder such as village associations are seen as actors which can take those responsibilities that municipalities are not capable of carrying out anymore. For example European Union LEADER funding and village action movement are seen as important instruments which encourage communities to become more active in developing local living conditions and securing the welfare of the citizens. (Nousiainen, 2015;Nousiainen and Pylkkänen, 2013). In small rural communities, municipality mergers cause changes in decision-making systems and the availability of services, but do not remove local communities as actors. The same communities exist after the mergers, but they have to adjust to changed circumstances. We are interested in the strategies rural communities adopt to cope with these circumstances: how do rural communities react to the changes and challenges they face? This is related to ways of adjusting to new circumstances and taking advantage of available opportunities to preserve and develop communities’ vitality. Therefore, we refer to the theory of community resilience (Berkes and Ross, 2013;Coulthard and Britton, 2015;Roberts and Townsend, 2016). We present the results of a research project (2012–2014) investigating the impacts of centralization on four municipality mergers in Finnish rural localities: Konginkangas and Leivonmäki in central Finland, and Uukuniemi and Värtsilä in eastern Finland (Kumpulainen, 2014). We focus on how rural Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 4Kaisu Kumpulainen et al. communities build political resilience after losing independence as municipalities, describing conditions where rural communities strive to maintain their viability and development. We focus on the political dimensions of resilience by identifying different local tactics that rural communities adopt. Community resilience as political agency The concept of resilience was first applied in the 1970s to explain ecological systems’ adaptivity to adversity (Norris et al., 2008). According to Holling and Gunderson (2002, p. 28), this refers to ‘the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its structure by changing the variables and processes that control behavior’. This raises the question whether social systems can be treated in the same way as ecological systems. An increasing number of recent studies emphasize the need for holistic views in community resilience research (Berkes and Ross, 2013 McManus et al., 2012;Norris et al., 2008;Wilson, 2010). The social theorization of systems also highlights how disturbance, crisis, stress and decline interrupt systems’ functioning and reproduction. The difference from ecological systems is that ‘only humans anticipate change and use social, political, and cultural means to influence resilience’ (Folke et al., 2010, cited in Berkes and Ross, 2013, p. 16). Community resilience theory focuses on social systems, highlighting the transformative stage that occurs after shocks (see Skerratt, 2013;Shaw, 2012). Freshwater (2015) identifies four vulnerabilities that communities face: natural events, policy changes, economic shocks and general insecurity. Becoming resilient as a community means gaining control not over the conditions people face, but over how they respond to change (Magis, 2010). Recent research aims to explain communities’ adaptation, recovery and development after disturbance, stress or decline in different contexts. The emphasis has increasingly shifted to agency rather than systems: how individuals and groups actively influence their community’s development (Roberts and Townsend, 2016 Steiner and Markantoni, 2013;Magis, 2010). Skerratt (2013;seealsoFreshwater, 2015) refers to ‘proactive human agency’, which means that local residents identify and use available local resources to develop their community. Revell and Dinnie (2018) talk about ‘transformative’ resilience: when planetary limits have been met, alternative ways to develop more sustainable communities are required. An important aspect of transformative resilience is that communities need a strong sense of control over decisions that affect them. In this view, local actors and resources are important for building local adaptive capacity and resilience. According to Magis (2010), community resources consist of natural, human, cultural, social, financial and political Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland 5 capital. Following Wilson (2010), rural communities’ resilience is also based on multifunctionality, meaning a balance between forms of community capital (Roberts and Townsend, 2016). Active actors and strategic action are important too (Magis, 2010). Community resilience as a strategy can mean local people’s adaptive means of maintaining and promoting wellbeing after a decline in local livelihoods (Coulthard and Britton, 2015). In rural areas, for example, the smallest schools and health units have closed down, and various joint organizations produce these services in cooperation between municipalities. In these circumstances, actors need to interactively organize and develop stable practices to guarantee their area’s vitality. Community resilience thus highlights networks, knowledge, skills, learning processes, communication, values, beliefs, economic development and the role these factors jointly play in adaptive capacity (e.g. Berkes and Ross, 2013). If we focus on political community resilience as the adoption of active agency to defend or develop communities’ vitality, the ideas of strategic action and power become central; the latter is particularly neglected in community resilience theory. Here we refer to the concepts of social skill, power struggle and the game point of view, adopted from Fligstein and McAdam’s (2012) field theory. Generally, fields differ from systems in that they are open, game-type arenas of struggle, and cannot be understood purely in terms of function. Strategic action is defined widely as ‘an attempt of actors to create and maintain social worlds’, which is also ‘about control in a given context’ (Fligstein, 1997, p. 398; Fligstein and McAdam, 2012, p. 17). Fligstein and McAdam (2012, pp. 46) highlight the role of social skill as ‘the ability to induce cooperation by appealing to and helping to create shared meanings and collective identities’. More specific definitions refer to actors’ ‘cognitive capacity for reading people and environments, framing lines of action, and mobilizing people in the service of broader conception of the world and themselves’ (Fligstein and McAdam 2012, pp. 17). Social skills are central to strategic action, as in the cases of building allies, seeking cooperation and convincing opponents. Such negotiations in relation to municipal mergers take place in the context of policy changes to decision-making and management structures. Community resilience as an adaptive process (Magis, 2010) means not only adjusting to new circumstances, but also actively influencing local development and politics. Skilled actors are able to perceive and interpret the field from other actors’ perspectives, and to construct appealing shared meanings, interests and identities for the advantage of their own group or coalition (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012, p. 46). They can build diverse tactics related to conventional (political party voting and activities, political Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 6Kaisu Kumpulainen et al. discussions and meetings) or unconventional politics (social media influencing, protests, various types of civic engagement such as implementing development projects). Anotheradvantagethatcanbetakenfrom field theory is theideaof power struggles and the understanding that these processes are ‘about who gets what’ (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012 p. 3). System and resilience theories tend to gloss over these issues. Fields are generally arenas of struggle over advantage and desires to be in power, gain power or resist power, indicating conflicting interests in which actors’ resources, skills and strategies are central (e.g. Fligstein and McAdam, 2012). It is important to include these factors in the theorization of political community resilience. For instance, municipal mergers occur in relation to a wider neoliberal politics characterized by public service cuts, privatization, new public management, individualization etc. Moreover, the development of rural areas is overshadowed by a general social and political climate that emphasizes centralization. It follows that local actors lose their previous decision-making power and services, and this links political resilience—otherwise understood merely as adaptive capacity—to power struggles and conflicts. The idea of political community resilience must take into account how local actors navigate systems characterized by imbalanced power relations so as to maintain their own political agency and gain experience of political influence and meaningfulness in changed circumstances, including by promoting their own interests and desires to foster their community’s vitality. Data and method In Finland, rural local affairs are largely organized through the municipality system, and province-level or village-level administrative structures are not significant (Ylikangas, 1991 pp. 97–98). Finland is (at the moment) divided into nineteen provinces whose main tasks are regional development and planning which emphasizes the independent role of municipalities as governmental agents. The village-level the village associations (NGOs) do not have any official role in the municipality structure, even though there is a strong will in the national rural policy to integrate village planning to the municipality planning processes (Kumpulainen, 2012). The data for our study were collected from municipality mergers in four small rural communities in Finland (Table 1). The communities were selected according to specific criteria: •They were not located near provincial centres or regions with population growth. They can be defined as peripheral communities. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland 7 Table 1 Studied communities Community Province Distance from the provincial centre Inhabitants (estimated) Municipality merger Konginkangas Central Finland 65 km (from Jyväskylä) 1500 1993 (with Äänekoski) Leivonmäki Central Finland 51 km (from Jyväskylä) 1100 2008 (with Joutsa) Uukuniemi South Karelia 145 km (from Lappeenranta) 500 2003 (with Parikkala) Värtsilä North Karelia 74 km (from Joensuu) 600 2005 (with Tohmajärvi) •The mergers were not too recent (under five years) which means that the integration process is still in progress. •All the communities were active, and there was a strong local identity (active NGOs, activities and happenings). We wanted to find rural communities which have strong community resilience. •All the communities in the study are merged to different municipalities to obtain the most diverse data possible. After careful survey from the internet and documents, we decided to select four rural communities which meet the criteria best for this study. As Figure 1 illustrates the mergered communities are large areas with long distances. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews (e.g. Wengraf, 2001) which lasted one to three hours. We interviewed four active long-time members in each of the four communities in 2013 (sixteen in total). First, we contacted the chairperson of the village association and discussed with them who could be potential informants in our study. Since the aim was to identify different tactics of development, we chose only active community memberswho wereexperienced in organizinglocal activities and promoting the common good. Ten informants had also acted as municipal councillors. All of them were over forty year old and twelve of them were men and only four women. All of the interviewed lived in the community but we did not collect more detailed information, for example how long they had lived there. The interviews were carried out in informants’ homes, or in public spaces such as village halls. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. We have translated the data from Finnish to English. The interview included questions about general community development and the experiences and effects of the merger. First, we asked about the history of the community, the present situation and ideas or visions for the future development. Secondly, we asked how the municipality merger was decided, carried out and what had happened after the change. We were especially interested in how the communities have built their relationship with the new municipality after the mergers. Thirdly, we discussed how Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 8Kaisu Kumpulainen et al. Figure 1 Villages (Dark) and in parentheses their Municipalities (Light): (1) Konginkangas (Äänekoski), (2) Leivonmäki (Joutsa), (3) Uukunniemi (Parikkala), (4) Värtsilä (Tohmajärvi) local people have experienced and reacted to the changes they have faced in their community. Lastly we were also interested in the local community activities, local identity and place attachment, and how the informants see they have affected the development of the community or vice versa. However, the interview strategy was open-ended, and interviewees could introduce topics they felt were worth discussing. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland 15 forms of collective action through NGOs following the municipal mergers. Two communities, Värtsilä and Konginkangas, had founded new village associations; in Leivonmäki and Uukuniemi, the existing local associations had adopted more substantial community development roles than previously. According to the informants, autonomous action and NGOs often provided easier ways to act in rural communities than official municipal decision-making bodies. A popular way to advance local welfare through community-led development was by organizing local events. Nearly all our informants described community events such as village fairs (Interviews 1, 5, 12, 16), music festivals or concerts (Interviews 2, 11), sports events (Interviews 1, 2, 3) or summer theatres (Interviews 4, 16). For instance, village fairs attracted tourists to the locality and also had an important symbolic function. They brought villagers together to celebrate local identity and demonstrate the village’s vitality to outsiders: But this small group has been active and we have a very active chair [of the village association], and we get involved in many kinds of things, for example celebrate these village festivities.... The first time it attracted lots of people, and the second and third time quite well. Now it is the fourth time, we’ll see. We have local performances and then we elect the Konginkangas Villager of the Year. (Interview 5) Similarly to this interviewee, many informants seemed proud of their annual fairs, despite their somewhat improvised content. Some more imaginative local events were also mentioned. An informant from Uukuniemi talked about a young adults’ association that organized music and cultural events, such as a biannual, two-day rock festival set up ‘through voluntary work and without any previous experience’ (Interview 11). In Leivonmäki, the local sports club organized a floorball championship, which was obviously held in high regard in the community as it was mentioned in several interviews. This event had already been held fifteen times, and was described as having attracted several hundred players from all over Finland (Interviews 1, 3). Such local events may generate revenue for local tourism entrepreneurs, but they are more meaningful in their symbolic function of representing community spirit and vitality (Interview 1). Another mode of community-led development was the maintenance of public facilities. A couple of informants talked about people who donated their own money and time to take care of local sports facilities on a voluntary basis. Even though these facilities—such as skating rinks, football fields or ski runs—were usually owned by the municipality, their maintenance was left to the communities. According to interviewees, village associations also had special expertise in activating voluntary work compared with Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 16 Kaisu Kumpulainen et al. other actors, e.g. the parish. People became interested in environmental conservation work, such as raking a cemetery, when it was made into a ‘happening’, as one Uukuniemi informant told us (Interview 12). Village newspapers or newsletters were also published through communities’ independent efforts. In Värtsilä, an informant mentioned the online local newspaper Värtsin lehti, which was the result of a couple of active individuals. It had been established by a ‘retired journalist from Karjalainen’ (the North Karelia regional newspaper) and was continued by ‘an active lady from the village’ after he moved away. According to the informant, the village association became the publisher when they needed somebody to administer the paper (Interview 14). The small number of active people seems to be the greatest flaw in the community-led development tactic (Kumpulainen, 2017). When our informants described successful actions and achievements, they also mentioned that activeness often relied on individual activists; this limits the credibility of community-led development. In the ‘new rural paradigm’, community solidarity is seen as an important basis for organizing diminishing services in rural areas (Kumpulainen, 2016;Nousiainen and Pylkkänen, 2013). Our data seem to support the critical evaluation of this policy. The biggest challenge in increasing the role of voluntary organizations in rural community development is to get more people involved in community work. Communities’ own initiative seems suitable for short-term or individual development efforts, but sustained action seems to exhaust the actors, even when supported by substantial European Union funds. Even though the informants regarded NGOs as effective instruments for promoting local development, the activeness and use of the community-led development tactic were not entirely voluntary, but were experienced as a necessity because of the lack of support from the new municipality. Discussion and conclusion We see the political dimension as an important part of community resilience. For example, MacKinnon and Derickson (2012) criticize the concept of resilience for overemphasizing the adaptive role of communities, and they call for approaches that highlight communities’ active role in shaping their own destiny. The addition of the political dimension to community resilience discussions may be one way to focus attention on the deeper empowerment of rural communities. In addition, power struggles and discrepancies are a central part of political community resilience. Our findings revealed disappointments and experiences of injustice, but also the creativity and various tactics our informants adopted to take care of their local communities. In the rural communities in our study, political Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland 17 resilience was constructed from a combination of diverse tactics to act in the situation the municipal merger represented. These were cooperation and conflict with the municipality, or community-led development. None of the three tactics identified in our study were sufficient to defend the viability in rural communities in the context of municipal mergers. All had recognized shortcomings. Therefore, we conclude that resilience requires a readiness to adopt various modes of action, depending on the situation. Cooperation with the new municipality, local activeness and the role of associations were crucial instruments in local community development. The cooperation tactic entailed formal decision-making processes, and informal cooperation, which aimed to build trust. This required social and communication skills in order to secure local interests, which was the main interest of local actors. The skillful actors can create dense, interpersonal networks, which help them in achieving their goals. Perhaps surprisingly, cooperation within the formal municipal decision-making process was the least effective way to promote local community development. The results emphasize the importance of civic participation, but they also reveal something about the inefficiency of the prevailing decision-making system, especially from small communities’ point of view. There was also a need for conflict tactics. Usually the conflict tactic was brought to bear after the cooperation tactic had failed. The rural communities found that officials and decision-makers in the new municipalities were not interested in the periphery and its problems. By putting pressure on officials, it was possible to politicize decisions that were based on questionable justifications or unfairly served the interests of the centre at the expense of the periphery. Officials and decision-makers in the new municipalities had more power than local actors. They had powerful positions to influence the structure and goals of the municipality; they were better able to drive their own interests, and construct their view of the world as legitimate (see Fligstein and McAdam, 2012, p. 13). Local actors after municipality mergers, on the other hand, had less power than decision-makers in new municipalities, and did not occupy the same positions from which to negotiate the game in their own interests. However, rural communities seem to have a lot to learn about conflict tactics; accounts of conflict tactics were sporadic. In the community-led development tactic local actors take an active role in developing their community and to a certain extent remain independent from the municipality. This tactic enables locals not to stay in contact or be dependent on the new municipality and they have decision-making power. In this tactic, it all comes to locals’ willingness to work for their own success. Skillful local actors can promote the villagers’ collective identity and encourage group activity. Activeness, however, was often based on individual activists. Even though the advantage of the community-led development Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsab012/6248487 by guest on 01 November 2021 18 Kaisu Kumpulainen et al. tactic is that it is well established and supported by national and European Union rural policies, it seems to exhaust the actors. In community resilience research, the emphasis has been on communities’ internal capital and resources (Magis, 2010;Roberts and Townsend, 2016). Resilience, however, is built not in a vacuum but in relation to surrounding actors, through external relations, networks and influence on policy (Skerratt, 2013). Political resilience means not only intracommunity decision-making, but the capacity to influence community affairs. 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