The right to development: construction of a non-agriculturalist discourse of rurality in Denmark

The paper argues for the existence of two powerful discourses of rurality in Denmark after World War II. The first one is termed the modernist-agriculturalist discourse. Although still influential in the current public debate, in Denmark as well as in other Western European countries, this discourse of rurality had its heyday in the 1960s. It is based on key words, such as structural changes, development and vertical integration. Since the 1950s, it has belonged to groups of Danish farmers who use a productionist terminology in the public debate. However, the paper mainly focuses on a second discourse of rurality, established during the 1970s. Based on key words, such as community, culture, environment and active citizenship, this terminology was applied and promoted by new non-agricultural elites in the villages and can therefore be termed the non-agriculturalist discourse of rurality. The paper shows how this new ‘family’ of powerful words was developed and promoted by The National Confederation of Village Communities in rural Denmark (Landssammenslutningen af Landsbysamfund or L.A.L.), established in 1976. Thus, from the late 1970s, members of this organization contributed to build and apply a peculiar L.A.L. vocabulary in their journal Landsbyen (“The village”)—a vocabulary which later was to be disseminated among the population and, finally, to have a significant impact on state politics.