地域の豊かさへのアプローチ

地域農林業研究における志しの復権

抄録

The gap in socio-economic standards between the local and the central, or primary industries such as agriculture and other industries, has increased under the influence of economic globalization. As the specialists for researching the rural economy and society based on agriculture and forestry, we have to struggle to find a breakthrough in this crisis. As one approach to the problem, this essay calls for the transformation of our research perspective by first recognizing and reintroducing the values upon which all scientific research is ultimately based. Through reviewing the literature in our journal and its commemorative publication, we found that it tended toward a fixed way of analytical formation when studying the social phase of a rural life, that might be called a “goal-function” analysis. We urge that it be replaced by a perspective running in the opposite direction, that is, by an “intrinsic value-meaning creation” analysis, which is the second point proposed in this essay. This new perspective requires that we accept the wealth and affluence of rural society as a premise from the beginning and that we strive to diffuse this idea by research that takes on the aspects of a social reform movement.