This is a call for papers for the European Society for Rural Sociology
Congress, Vaasa, Finland, 17-20 August 2009

Working Group 4.1 - Rural Experts and Rural Expertise

**Call for Abstracts**

The challenges facing rural areas require experts to resolve them. Experts
can diagnose and provide remedies to all our problems, from the challenges
of sustainability, to enhancing animal health and welfare and addressing
social change . As the themes of the congress make clear, rural experts and
rural expertise are vital for progress. Or are they? Or, rather, what
actually is rural expertise, how is it made and who counts as a rural
expert? Moreover, what is currently happening to rural experts and expertise
and how might this affect the way rural challenges are dealt with? Will
there be sufficient experts to deal with the challenges facing rural areas
in future? Finally, but perhaps most significantly for our discussions,
where does the rural sociologist sit within all of this? 

Papers are invited that deal with experts and expertise in a broad range of
social, natural, environmental, animal and human problems and which address
the following questions:

1. What is rural expertise?
 What counts as expertise when it comes to resolving the challenges
currently facing rural areas? What types of knowledge are most valuable? How
is expertise constructed in dealing with rural problems? What are the
geographies of expertise: where is it made and how are rural areas
implicated within this geography? How does expertise travel across space at
local, national and international scales? What are the barriers and
opportunities facing the mobility of expertise? How is expertise contested
within rural problems? What types of expertise are valued? How does rural
expertise vary with expertise made and constructed within other geographical
and policy spheres? How can rural sociology contribute to theoretical
debates on expertise raised in science and technology studies (e.g. Collins
and Evans, 2002)?

2. Who are rural experts, where are they and what is happening to them?
Who counts as a rural expert? How is this definition made and ascribed to
rural actors?  What is happening to rural experts? How have rural
professions changed over time? How have the actions of the state affected
rural experts? How is the geography of rural experts changing over time?
What are the implications for the provision of rural services? How have
wider social changes in rural areas affected rural experts? How has
population change affected the use and importance of ‘lay’ knowledges? How
has population change affected the provision of professional rural services
and to what effect?

3. How is rural expertise used?
Who uses rural experts? Are rural sociologists rural experts? Who makes use
of their expertise and how? How do policy makers draw on rural experts?
Which types of expertise do they value most – how do rural sociologists meet
these demands?  What are the experiences of rural sociologists in attempting
to influence the policy process? What factors allow rural sociologists to be
successful ‘policy entrepreneurs’? How can rural sociologists more
effectively deploy their expertise? Has the turn to interdisciplinarity
helped the case of the rural sociologist? How can rural sociology help in
the development of innovative methodologies to better understand rural
social problems? What sort of interventions can rural sociologists make?

Please submit abstracts of not more than 250 words by February 28th 2009 to
either:
Dr Gareth Enticott
Cardiff University
[log in to unmask]
or
Dr Andrew Donaldson 
Newcastle University
[log in to unmask]

Convenors:
Gareth Enticott, Cardiff University 
Andrew Donaldson, Newcastle University 
Jeremy Phillipson, Newcastle University 

For further information on the ESRS 2009 Conference see: http://www.esrs2009.fi/
For further information on the ESRS see: http://www.ruralsociology.eu/

Thanks
Gareth