Exciting countryside and city: back to Jorwerd

Media and science have recently been delving into the contradictions between urban and rural areas. Things are not going very well between the Randstad and the Randland. The seeds for this already seem to have been sown in the XNUMXs, when the spread of employment was seen as not very successful and the city became central as a place of value creation.

Away from Aunt Truus and off to the city. When Pim Fortuyn subsequently pointed out the problems in the poor neighbourhoods, this led to even more government interest in the city, partly through the approach in the so-called Vogelaar neighbourhoods. In the meantime, economies of scale continued in the countryside and facilities closed. At least that is how the Groene Amsterdammer recently summarized the development.

Tension between countryside and city
So it's time to get Geert Mak's 'How God disappeared from Jorwerd' out of the closet. Also because the book was published exactly 25 years ago and Mak recently gave his opinion about the countryside in various interviews. Undoubtedly also to promote a reissue, in which Jorwert is now written in Frisian with a t. Apparently pride in one's own language has grown in the meantime.

“The tension between the countryside and the city was one of the most hushed up, and at the same time one of the most sensitive hotbeds of conflict in twenty-first-century culture,” Mak wrote. Although it is of course of all times, according to Plato it already played out with the ancient Greeks. Mak places a strong emphasis on the loss of peasant culture due to the increase in scale (with land consolidation) after the Second World War. And the increase in efficiency thinking, now that investments and borrowing had to be made to keep up with modernization.

Increase in scale to reduce costs
This did not only apply to farmers. The truck driver, the painter, the carpenter, the blacksmith: they disappeared from the village. Just like the village shops. In my opinion, this was not only due to the decline in the number of farmers and agricultural workers, but to the underlying trend of increased prosperity, which caused labor costs to rise everywhere. This led to economies of scale to increase labor productivity and reduce costs.

When prosperity made the car accessible for many, the large shops in Leeuwarden were just a bit too close for the Jorwerters. The SRV man couldn't compete with that. The rapid changes also brought with them the necessary arguments about how to proceed in the village. Mak writes fascinatingly about it by placing the developments among the inhabitants of Jorwerd in the larger social trends. The book became an international bestseller, also in countries where the problem of rural depopulation had been on the policy agenda for some time.

Decay has stopped
From a recent interview with the writer in the magazine Binnenlands Bestuur I conclude that Mak thinks that the decline of the village center has stopped. Although, the primary school is now also closed. "You can't have a bakery in Jorwert either, the village is simply too small for that. In surrounding core villages, the facilities have remained reasonably stable." And Jorwert has now been reassigned to Leeuwarden, of which Mak thinks the municipal council and civil servants are much better with less favoritism. Apparently, scaling up also has advantages.

But Mak is more critical than ever about the landscape. According to him, the government is letting the landscape go to the 'gallemies'. In the interview, the chain of suppliers, food companies and banks has to suffer. This has the farmer in a bind, it is a fortress of interests, an 'Agricultural RAI financed with investment subsidies and tax deductions'. At the same time, the sociologist Mak sees parallels in Friesland with the problem of closing the mines, as in England. 

Changes continue
The modernization of the countryside has not yet come to an end, although that concept will be given new meaning. Changes continue. Geert Mak's work shows how ordinary people have to find their way in these powerful social developments. Sometimes that results in something beautiful, sometimes quarrels, and often something is lost that is nostalgically longed for later. Not least in the Randstad, where nostalgia and a romantic image are all too often the basis for an opinion about the Randland.

Krijn J. Poppe

Krijn Poppe worked for almost 40 years as an economist at LEI and Wageningen UR and now holds a number of advisory and management positions. For Boerenbusiness he dives into his bookcase and discusses current developments on the basis of studies that have become classic.

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