The territorial dimension and management approach

This study has the objective of developing a methodological model directed at detecting the possibilities of development present in communities of the rural environment, based on the behavior of the system of functions and economic, social, environmental and institutional relations from an approach of territorial management. The notion of development proposed refers to a process that provides growth and wealth generation to the community, as a result of processes sustained of social and territorial cohesion, and of analysis of the social actors, who through their diversity, interests and values influence the dynamics and conformation of the territory itself.

Development management in the territory is a process that is present; however, the effects are limited with regards to a real influence on the conditions of its habitants, as well as its resources. This provokes for the configuration of the territory to address marginally the problematic regarding the needs and its potentials, which leads us to consider that the problem is located in two senses; on the one hand, the influence present on territorial development, through the actions of public policies, specifically those related to the planning of development. On the other hand, the territory’s possibility, specifically the actors, of configuring and managing its development, taking advantage of internal potentials, as well as public and private initiatives that have an impact on its development.

A model composed by thematic dimensions that contemplates a review of the effect of public or private investment is proposed (which we call influence), exerted through the programs that are applied in the communities and incorporating as an indicator the exploitation of the resources available. It is based on a concept of integrality which, as is pointed out in the methodological model applied by the ^{INCA Rural (2009:8)}, implies considering the economic organization of the territory as a functional structure of multi-sectorial character where a diversity of institutions interact based on the cultural, political and historical heritage of territories. The individual is addressed from his/her collective perception, which entails social interaction with his/her environment, regulations, customs, and common interests, expressed in the experiential territory. These relationships that are established from social (participation, actors and institutions) and territorial (location factors, regional indicators and local resources) attributes are known as socio-spatial interactions. In this same sense, ^{Claude Grasland (2013)} points out that for human geography, the relationships between places, whether these are cities, regions or the state, refer to localized social or economic aggregates, most times heterogeneous, composed by individuals (people, couples, enterprises, …) that do not dispose of the same income, the same capacities for mobility, or the same information on the distant opportunities for relation²

The rural territory is the space appropriated, produced and endowed with meaning. It is a spatial unit collectively negotiated, resulting from historical processes and actions led by actors, whether agents or subjects at any level, on the social appropriation of spaces built around the use and exploitation of the resources in the place. In these cases the development policies act as a strategy for the use of these resources and the promotion of capacities in different fields of action, through programs in charge of favoring the relationships between actors and promoting interactions between common territories. However, the agreement between government programs applied and development in rural territories is not clear if we consider persistent difficulties, such as the abandonment of communities and the low productive profiles in which producers of these areas are found.

The proposal we set out seeks to re-dimension the rural territories beyond them being mere owners of natural resources, for which their analysis is taken up again through an approach to the potentials they have and the way that they are linked to the actions implemented by public policies through handout and rural promotion programs, in terms of being vehicles for the development of communities.

We understand as territorial potentials the capacities of the territory’s inhabitants, the networks with which the processes of work and life are linked, as well as the participation of local institutions in the configuration of development and daily activities, with participative and inclusive schemes. According to ^{Horton Douglas (2008)}, the potential stems from the fact that knowledge, abilities, attitudes, values, relations, motivations and conditions allow individuals, organizations, social networks, sectors and institutions the performance of their functions as well as reaching objectives set out for their development, although development elements also make up the territory’s structure, starting from physical features to identity elements that define and distinguish characteristics of one territory from another. They refer to the resources, the distribution of livelihoods in society, the availability of adequate specialized knowledge, the efficiency of local administration, the efficacy of connections between territories, and the relative capacity of people to participate in national and international markets.

Calculating the territorial potential of a place is based on the consideration of a hypothesis of socio-spatial interaction as a measure of accessibility that points to evaluating the favorable variation of the amount of local opportunities in function of the location of the place or the region and of the internal capacities developed.

The determination of the potentials in each place derives from integral territorial diagnoses in their functional dimension, although differentiated in terms of the processes that should be addressed. According to ^{Coraggio (2004:16)}, a methodological problem that is present when performing a diagnosis is to determine what concrete segment of the social reality will be the object of analysis and under which criteria will it be carried out. Therefore, in the first place, it is about recognizing the type of relations and social factors that give specificity to each program, addressed here as potentials for the territory. In the second place, it is about typifying a set of social actors inserted in such relationships or situations, in relation to which the concrete intervention would be produced. We speak in this case of representative economic actors from each activity identified in the communities of study. In the sense that Coraggio suggests, the diagnosis becomes a fundamental element of the territorial management process when recognizing differentiated difficulties and causalities that should be addressed through processes that are also specific to each situation.

Territorial management must go through a process that leads actors and agents towards the appropriation of their potentials, their reproduction and the incorporation of elements of technological, productive and social innovation. It goes from being a government administrative task to a process of participation, coordination and negotiation of the agents in the territory on the basis of their potentials. The incorporation of these changes in the management implies the adoption and development of innovations in the structure of the territory, constituting a process of social, organizational and cultural change, as ^{Albuquerque (1994: 316)} points out, beyond technological changes in the production.

Territorial planning and management requires that the analysis and interventions on the territory develop with a vision according to the organization of the territory from multidisciplinary approaches. The territorial management mechanisms will be participative and not just normative, integrating physical planning and economic development.

Public actions directed at rural territories are determined by information and, in particular, by indicators that do not agree with the scale of needs and contributions that rural territories have and make; therefore, the methodology contemplated addresses the productive activities of people immersed in the rural context and their action and interaction as components of the territory system. To reach this purpose, a diagnosis of the potentials that the communities selected have is carried out and it is later linked to the actions of the programs that are applied, in order to be able to identify in which way they participate in the development process of the communities of study³.

The analysis scheme addresses rural development from the territorial approach, suggesting the situation of a territory and its dynamics, just as the following authors point out: ^{Sepúlveda et al. (2003)}, ^{Delgadillo (2004)}, ^{De Janvry and Sadoulet (2004)}, ^{Schejtman and Berdegué (2004)}, ^{Quispe (2006)}, ^{Echeverri and Echeverri (2009)}, among others, who consider the territory as the result from a multifactorial process composed of the conditions in which the resources are found, the distribution of the livelihoods of the society, the availability of adequate specialized knowledge, the efficiency of the local administration, the efficacy of the links between territories, and the relative capacity of people to participate in local, national or international markets.

Selection of the territorial units and methodological selection

The territorial management approach described in section two is also added for the analysis and the definition of the methodology, the Territorial Economic Development (TED) approach, based on what was proposed by Francisco ^{Alburquerque in 1994} and modified by the author in ²⁰⁰⁷, who defines that economic development depends on the ability to integrate the exploitation of the available and potential resources, in order to satisfy the needs and basic problems of a territory. The collection of information that contributes elements for the analysis of the potentials for territorial economic development is considered, as well as the actions for the construction of an innovating environment, and the phases and actions in support of the activities that generate economic growth and productive employment. The analysis is composed of objectives, resources available, agents that promote development and the planning process in itself.

The objectives are fundamentally improving employment and the quality of life of the population and increasing social equity. Their achievement depends on a transformation of the territorial productive system, promotion of productive diversification and increase of the added value. In terms of the resources available, they must be used adequately based on a coherent strategy and both for the objectives and for the use of resources it is necessary to consider environmental sustainability.

As ^{Alburquerque (1994:322)} establishes, for the planning of economic development it is considered that there are real and potential resources, in addition to the needs as orienting elements of territory planning. From the valuation of the potentials for development and the local resources, the territorial socioeconomic and institutional environment is shaped, whose identification turns out to be significant.

Characterization of the units of analysis

The determination of the units of analysis stems from the hypothesis that the studies carried out in the territory used in the design of public policies reveal in a limited way the interactions that are found inside them and between common territories. For the observation, an inter-territorial comparison was established from two territories located in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, specifically in the municipalities of San Juan del Río (San Juan) and Tecpan de Galeana (Figure 1). The first of these, according to the socio-spatial relationships and the size of their population, contemplated the whole geographic and administrative area of the municipality, while in the second case two localities were chosen: San Luis de la Loma and San Luis San Pedro, identified as the San Luises in the region and because of their inhabitants. The research subjects, that is, the actors, are the inhabitants that perform productive activities that characterize each one of these territories.

Source: authors’ elaboration.

Figure 1 Location of the territories of study. 

San Juan del Río is located in the region of the Central Valleys of Oaxaca; it belongs to the district of Tlacolula de Matamoros, with an area of 108 km², which represents 0.12 % of the state’s total surface. It is located at an altitude of 1180 m, 95 km away from the capital city. The main supply centers for this community are the municipality of Tlacolula and the city of Oaxaca. The municipality of Mitla (outside the regional surroundings) also plays an important role since it is one of the main selling points of the products generated in the community.

According to the 13^th Population and Housing Census 2010 by INEGI, the total population of the municipality of San Juan del Río is 1231 inhabitants and is composed mostly by a population of Zapotec indigenous people, who speak the dialect variant from the valley. Despite not having tourist attractions developed or natural resources, this territory, in order to become a strong agricultural-livestock region, has a population that conserves the tradition of elaborating two products of artisanal origin, which are mezcal and crochet knits of various kinds, as some of their main productive activities. Despite this, the economic activities lack strength for their development and there is high migration.

With a high degree of marginalization⁴, the population depends to a great degree on the public transferences that are done through assistance programs. In this sense, SEDESOL programs are an example of this, which by 2013 influence the community with four programs, Oportunidades being the most relevant, with 147 beneficiary families recorded in 1999 and until 2012, and 41 % of beneficiary population in the community.

On the other hand, the municipality of Tecpan, in the state of Guerrero, is located 120 meters above sea level, southwest of Chilpancingo; it has 2537.8 km² of area that represent 3.98 % of the total surface of the state. It borders north with Coyuca de Catalán and Ajuchitlán del Progreso, east with Atoyac de Álvarez and Benito Juárez, south with the Pacific ocean, and west with Petatlán.

The San Luises are located at 20 m of altitude in average and at an approximate distance of 34 km from Tecpan, which is the municipal seat. Their main relations are with the neighboring locality of Nuxco and with Tecpan. The economic activities in the community are divided into two types, the traditional which have been part of their productive structure, which are the production of large livestock and the copra production of great relevance for the entity at large, while dairy processing and mango production are of recent incorporation, with high impact because of the importance in the region in their cultivation at the national level.

Adding the population from both localities, 9321 inhabitants were found in 2010, with a high degree of marginalization for that same year, according to CONAPO. The population receives backing from the Oportunidades program, which records 39 % of the population from the community as beneficiary, with 787 families; likewise, they participate in four more programs from SEDESOL.

In the territory, the inhabitants from the San Luises recognize a relationship that ties them intimately, since the basic infrastructure and equipment has been shared by their inhabitants practically since their formation. The main relationships of supply and production, as well as the supply of services (health and education, for example), are carried out with the cities of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo. Despite the journey to the city of Chilpancingo being longer, there is an important relationship derived primarily from the supply services and the need to resolve issues with the public institutions located there.

The instruments and application of the intervention model

The content of the research plan suggests the need to use quantitative and qualitative data, given that each component will be identified from the presence and perception in the inhabitants (productive actors) of the territories. The quantitative data contemplate the use of secondary sources, while the qualitative information results from the field research based on semi-structured interviews.

Descriptive analysis

The study is proposed at a descriptive level that identifies characteristics, forms of behavior and attitudes; it allows establishing concrete behaviors and uncovers and verifies the association between the research variables (^{Castillo de Matheus, Madriz, Márquez and Niño, 2007:118}). Therefore, the situation of the resources identified in each one of the dimensions is described, according to the favorable and unfavorable aspects in the development of the potential they have.

Given that we refer to the analysis of the process of social intervention, we start from the hypothesis that structural transformations require changes in the way of conceiving social processes and, consequently, in the practices of the subjects involved and in their forms of social organization; thus, a broad working scheme is proposed that considers for each of the potentials one dimension. As ^{Coraggio points out (2004:21-22)}:

An adequate conception of the processes about which there is a need to intervene to achieve development in function of the living conditions of the large majorities should lead to the establishment of integral objectives and policies, in the sense that they consider not only the aspects most directly linked to such conditions, but rather that they penetrate the complex mesh of relationships with a visualization of their procedural and reproductive nature.

Field research

The design of the field research is a non-experimental study which, as ^{Hernández, Fernández and Baptista (2001:267)} point out, consisted in observing phenomena, just as they take place in their natural context to later analyze them; in this model no situation is constructed, but rather situations that are pre-existing are observed. Likewise, a study of transactional or transversal nature is carried out, where data are collected in a single moment, at a single time, and which has the purpose of describing variables and analyzing their influence and interrelation at a given moment, which is why it constitutes the direct recollection of the situation of the productive actors in the territory.

The interview is applied based on a non-probabilistic sample through the “snowball” technique. The central idea of this is that each individual in the population can nominate other individuals in the territory, who have the same probability of being selected. The informants from the first sample are identified by direct reference from the interviewer, and in each interview it is established which new people from the population in study will be interviewed, in order to integrate the complete sample. The underlying assumption is that the members of the population that are not visible do not live in complete isolation, that is, they have at least a “social network” with which it is possible to contact them. The territorial actors (producers) are established as a unit of study, since they are the ones that have an integral vision of their territory, with the capacity to promote a broad range of activities and to develop the potentials.

Interviewing process

The field work was carried out in two moments, made up of two phases each, during July and August 2008. During the first phase, interviews were performed in the communities previously chosen through the method of directed selection of key actors where, having selected and established contact with the first key informant, he was requested to provide the name of another member of the community who performed an economic activity within the community, with the aim of having a general appraisal and being able to define, from this, which are the representative activities for the study. Likewise, interviews were carried out with local authorities that allowed visualizing, based on their opinion, the general landscape of the functional organization of the territory. In a second stage, a photographic appraisal was performed and the registry of natural resources, the status of housing (which allowed typifying them), as well as the inventory of basic infrastructure (water, electric service, drainage, among others), roads, equipment and services in general, with which the community undertakes its activities. This implied resorting to secondary informants, such as the ones in charge of the health center in each community, schools and libraries, for example. The first moment of this work consisted in the visit to the community of San Juan del Río where 15 interviews were carried out with key informants and around five informal interviews to obtain secondary data. The second moment was the field work in the San Luises, where 12 interviews of the first type were carried out and three of the second.

The interviews were applied in the households or workplaces, based to the convenience of the interview respondents, who were informed about the objectives of the research, who gave their approval to participating in the study voluntarily. In addition to the information obtained from interviews, there was the field diary, which considers the practices that communities perform and some situational conditions, such as information that was not collected through the instrument, but which reveals important data in support of the analysis and explanation of the work. Thus, each one of the dimensions is made richer by the contents of the interview.

Based on the objective of this study, it is sought for policies to be based on diagnosis and prognosis, and for them to recover the experience accumulated in the past, which is why the tasks of historical analysis, diagnosis and prognosis are grouped in the description of the phenomena (^{Coraggio, 2004:10}). For this purpose, the information that makes up the indicators for each of the dimensions comes in first instance from bibliographic sources (mainly statistical). The perceptions gathered with the interview and those elements that turned out to be relevant from observation were incorporated into this information.

Design in measuring potentials

The analysis procedure for each one of the six potentials or dimensions consists in describing the characteristics of each community and their main economic activities, stemming from the indicators that make them up (Table 2). The attention given to each activity is included, referring to public actions (programs or institutions that participate), private actions, in addition to other elements that respond to efforts performed by the communities without having external support, which was called territorial initiative.

Later, in order to define the impact of the programs found in the communities, the type of activity which it refers was included; in sum, the state of an activity according to its development, with regards to the result from the indicators and the support it receives. For this purpose, motor and potential activities were determined, where the proposal by ^{Castillo et al. (2007:120)} was used, calling motor activity the one that shows the situation of the community effectively. An example of this is that the economic sector that represents the economy of the territory is recognized as the development sector, for a relevant part of the current production of the locality is concentrated in it, and it has received public or private attention for its permanent production (Table 2 and Figure 3).

Source: authors’ elaboration.

Figure 3 Process for the determination of type of activity/resource. 

On the other hand, the potential activities are those that are also identified in the communities such as the ones in incipient development and which, following the previous example, are working but have not received the impulse necessary to become motor activities. In addition, the denomination of motor-potential activity was used for those representative resources, which being a motor also have high and promising conditions to increase their development.

What is being sought is to understand the impact of the proposals (public and private) at present, for the development of the communities. Therefore, the balance of the potentials estimates the individual capacities, those of organizations, networks and productive sectors, among others, that include the conditions in the communities for their implementation, as well as the methods, strategies and programs that contribute elements for the development of capacities (Table 3).