The empowering strategy amidst rural community development in Australia
澳大利亚乡村社区发展中的赋权策略

In recent years, Australia’s rural communities are facing increasing difficulties, including deteriorating terms of trade, droughts, low fertility issues, and reduced federal and state government support. Although not unique to Australia, these problems seem to be getting worse due to the large inland areas and severe isolation between communities. In the past few years, the federal government and state governments have tried to settle the issue through the ‘de facto dual track rural development strategy’ including agricultural policies and social welfare measures. However, perhaps because of the decline in the hegemony of agriculture in contemporary rural areas, people have increasingly realized that the task of developing rural Australia is not just to solve agricultural issues. Instead, Australia’s current rural development strategy has transformed its focus on the concept of self-help and bottom-up community development. It aims to “empower” individuals to protect themselves from the compulsory structure of government intervention. From the perspective of empowerment, the author discusses the Queensland government and experts’ discourses on rural community development and concludes that these strategies indicate advanced liberalism that seeks to govern through the community.
近年来，澳大利亚的乡村社区正面临着越来越多的困难，包括贸易条件恶化、干旱、低生育率问题以及联邦和州政府的支持减少。虽然这些问题不是澳大利亚独有的，但由于内陆地区面积大和社区之间严重隔离，这些问题似乎越来越严重。在过去的几年里，联邦政府和州政府试图通过包括农业政策和社会福利措施并行的“乡村发展双轨策略”来解决这个问题。然而，也许是由于当代乡村地区农业霸主地位的下降，人们越来越意识到，澳大利亚乡村发展的任务不仅仅是解决农业问题。因此，澳大利亚目前的乡村发展战略已经转变了重点，提出了自助和自下而上的社区发展理念。它的目的是“赋权”个人，保护自己不受政府干预强制结构的影响。作者从赋权的角度出发，讨论了昆士兰政府和专家关于乡村社区发展的论述，并得出结论认为，这些战略表明了高级自由主义试图通过社区进行赋权治理。

In this context, empowerment is defined as a process that improves the individual’s entrepreneur qualities to take action on his own, regardless of any structural restrictions that limit movement. The key lies in cultivating the individual’s inherent ability and internalizing the community culture. Those community development practitioners who adopt this view are only supporting the existed belief that globalization is a natural and inevitable phenomenon. And the empowerment is more like a government technology which changes individual attitudes and behaviours under empowering speech in a manner consistent with government control.
在这种情况下，赋权被定义为一个提高个人企业家素质的过程，使其能够独立行动，而不受任何限制行动的结构性限制。赋权关键在于培养个人的内在能力，内化社区文化。那些采用这种观点的社区发展实践者，只是在支持已有的信念，即全球化是一种自然的、不可避免的现象。而赋能更像是一种政府技术，在赋能的言论下，以符合政府控制的方式改变个人的态度和行为。

The article shows that Australia’s governance approach is roughly the same as that of the United Kingdom and Europe. People in the rural area has been empowered with the right to solve their own problems, and the current structural adjustment model of rural community development needs autonomy. However, unlike the United Kingdom, Australia’s rural development still lacks any continuous and comprehensive policy.
文章显示，澳大利亚的治理方式与英国和欧洲大致相同。乡村地区的人们已经被赋予了解决自身问题的权利，目前乡村社区发展的结构调整模式需要自治。但是，与英国不同，澳大利亚的乡村发展仍然缺乏持续、全面的政策。

For those who advocate the development of rural autonomous action, the fundamental strength of rural development lies in its empowering potential. The starting point for community development is that individuals begin to realize the connection between them and their potential community. A strong and cohesive neighbourhood, whose members must recognize their common identity and common destiny, and be willing to work for the common good of all, is regarded as the key to the revival of rural Australia. Researchers often refer to community development as the first step in economic growth, and it is also the key to the bottom-up sustainable development approach that xis strongly advocated nowadays.
对于那些主张发展乡村自主行动的人来说，乡村发展的根本力量在于它的赋权潜力。社区发展的起点是个人开始意识到自己与社区之间的潜在联系。一个强大的、有凝聚力的邻里关系，其成员必须认识到他们的共同身份和共同命运，并愿意为大家的共同利益而努力，这被认为是澳大利亚乡村复兴的关键。研究人员常常把社区发展称为经济增长的第一步，这也是当今大力提倡的自下而上的可持续发展方式的关键。