Emergent social innovations in rural Sweden and their potential contribution to sustainable rural development

The Swedish countryside is facing a wide range of interconnected demographic, socio-economic, and environmental challenges.

Rural development policies at the European and national levels focus on fostering innovation and entrepreneurship as a core response to these challenges, and to develop rural areas as attractive places for people to live and work.

At local levels, rural challenges have triggered the emergence of social innovations – e.g. new networks and reconfigured social practices – amongst small-scale farmers and non-industrial forest owners in Sweden, to develop more diversified income streams and reduce the vulnerability of rural communities.

This project, Social Network Innovations for Rural Sweden (SIRUS), will explore two innovative social networks that have recently emerged in rural Sweden – REKO-ring in small-scale agriculture, and Skogens mångbruk in non-industrial forestry.

SIRUS aims to identify the underlying causal mechanisms by which these two social networks have emerged, and by which these networks contribute to rural development.

Knowledge of these mechanisms will make a key contribution towards the development of a causal model for the emergence of social innovations in rural development settings, which could be useful in supporting sustainable rural development policies in Sweden and Europe.