Managing rural communities: The role of local civil societies

The capacity of local civil societies to provide missing services and contribute to sustainable
community building lies at the core of discussions on the future of rural areas in Sweden.
Systematic and theoretically informed empirical studies of the roles and possibilities of local
civil societies to partake in community building in rural contexts are however lacking. The aim of this project is
therefore to generate knowledge concerning the role of local civil societies for maintaining
and developing services in sparsely populated areas in the Swedish countryside and its
effects on community building.

Research group: Centre for Research on Sustainable Societal Transformation (CRS), www.kau.se/en/crs
Lead partner: Marie Cederschiöld University, Pelle Åberg, Associate Professor in Political Science (project leader)
CRS researcher: Marie Nordfeldt, Professor in Social Work
Funder: Formas
Project period : January 2020 - December 2022