Culture, Intellectual Property and Territorial Rural Development

This paper explores some of the uses of local cultural identity in European rural development, particularly in the latter’s shift towards local territorial activity. It proposes the term ‘cultural economy’ and a four‐way typology. In order to contribute to a theorization of such development activity – whether policy driven or emerging from the ‘bottom‐up’– local cultures are characterized as forms of intellectual property that may allow local rural economies to impose some level of control over social and economic development.