Dinámicas locales en el desarrollo territorial de áreas rurales periféricasel caso del alto valle del Río Colorado (La Pampa-Argentina)

Abstract

The dissertation belongs to the scope of investigations on territorial development processes in peripheral rural spaces. It raises the study of the obstacles undergone during four decades by the Higher Colorado river basin (La Pampa-Argentina). The work is structured throughout ten chapters integrated in four parts: theoretical frame, spatial context and territorial diagnosis, public policies and economic agents and, finally, extra-economic factors of territorial development. First of them begins with a presentation that locates and justifies the study object. In this part, the hypotheses and objectives are formulated , and the work methodology is specified. Within the theoretical framework, the two great perspectives of development are opposed: the theories “from above” that base the construction of the studied space, and the theories of endogenous development, that sustain the argument of the investigation. After that, an exhaustive analysis of the habitually considered “extraeconomic” factors in these last ones –social capital and institutions- is made. In the second part a descriptive analysis and diagnosis of the territory is made by means of a change of geographical scale that, starting from the provincial context, descend to the study of the local space. The third part is dedicated, on the one hand, to the analysis of the four decades of public policies of provincial government on the Colorado river basin, that allows us to understand the process of construction of the territory. On the other hand, economic agents in the Colorado river are studied and its role in the territory is evaluated by means of an analysis of its activities. In fourth part, the extra-economic obstacles of development in the concrete territory are studied. The characteristics of the human capital, including some aspects related with it, like their capacities in economic terms and expectations, are analyzed. With that base, territorial social capital and its impact in the processes of collective action of predominant economic agent is studied. Finally, attention is paid to the local institutional context and its influence in creating obstacles to territorial development. A final chapter synthesizes the main results and contributions of the investigation.