Title:
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Minority Languages and Rural Development in the EU: Constructing Identities in Cornwall
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Abstract
This thesis examined the roles of culture and identity in development processes, focusing on the
case of indigenous minority languages in the EU. I undertake a study of cultural, political and
linguistic activists in Cornwall, during preparations for the current Objective One programme.
'Development' is broken down into a range of discourse and ideology; some of those components
are shown to have been central in the process of nation-state bUilding in Europe, which also
reduced certain languages to the status of 'minority'. Combining elements of social
constructionism, anthropology and actor-network theory, I construct the concept of 'cultural
literacy' to describe the skilis utilised by actors in the deliberate creation of identities from cultural
resources. Using qualitative methods - interviews, observation and documentary analysis - I
explore the use of cultural literacy, the ways in which identities are constructed to achieve goals,
among local and extralocal actors in development. The Cornish language died out before the twentieth century; its existence now is' a result of a
Celtic-Cornish Revival. Currently, the Cornish language has greater value as a symbol of a
distinctive territorial identity than it does as a means of communication, however this
chara~teristic has been central to the project of the Cornish Revivalists and their successors. The
success of Cornwall's Objective One bid lies partly with the creation and mobilisation of a postindustrial
territorial identity over the last century, and partly with the ability of certain actors to
position this identity in a European policy arena. The recognition of Cornwall as a European
region is seen as beneficial to the activists' goal of self-governance. I conclude that the current mode of development in the EU offers an opportunity for territories to
define new identities for themselves, and that the construction of these identities is intimately tied
up in the renegotiation of power dynamics. As a consequence, new development ideologies will
emerge from within 'peripheral' territories. Development has come to involve discourses other
than those simply concerned with 'development' and has the potential - though this Is not
necessarily intentional - to playa major role in transforming the cultural and political state of the EU.
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