Rural places share a set of challenges, including outmigration of young people, concentrations of older people, constrained economic opportunities, difficulties attracting specialist workers, low volume, but ongoing demand for health, social and transport services. At the same time it is suggested that social enterprise could help rural communities to respond to deal with social and economic challenges and become more resilient.  However, are social enterprises and collective action of social entrepreneurship an ideal solution for rural places?

It might be considered that rural areas represent a perfect nurturing ground for social enterprise and social entrepreneurship because of the existence of reciprocity, collective activity and generally those aspects which are associated with being part of a rural community. It could be surmised that social enterprise might therefore build on this extant solidarity. Conversely, however, there are a number of reasons why rural areas might be particularly difficult locations for developing social entrepreneurship. At an operational level such areas are challenged by isolation, lack of economy of scale, transport issues and staff recruitment and retention.

Although social enterprises and social entrepreneurship activities of the third sector organisations and communities are prevalent in rural areas, research evidence in relation to rural social entrepreneurship and rural social enterprise is scattered. Consequently, and as there is a lack of reliable good quality academic publications in this field, we propose to organise a special issue addressing the existing knowledge gap.

Working together with the Journal of Rural Studies, Dr Artur Steiner from the Yunus Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University, Prof Jane Farmer from LaTrobe University and Dr Gary Bosworth from Lincoln University invite to explore the highlighted issues through editing  a Special Issue on “Rural Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship” . The special issue seeks to explore the significance of context when enacting social enterprise and social entrepreneurship in rural areas and focused on the following themes:

• Examples of rural social enterprise best practice in establishment, operation, outcomes and impacts
• Rural social enterprise as a response to public service retrenchment
• Opportunities and challenges for social enterprises delivering rural services and/or producing goods for sale
• Operating social enterprise within the realities of social and economic life in rural places
• Social enterprise operations, functioning and governance in remote, rural and regional contexts
• Social enterprises and their relationships with commercial businesses in rural places
• Outcomes of rural social enterprises – e.g. resilience, capacity, wellbeing
• Technology and rural social enterprise
• Novel ways of measuring social enterprise impact in rural context
• Communities and/or individuals as rural social entrepreneurs
• Examples of rural social entrepreneurs – how they work, are motivated and how they navigate rural social, cultural and economic realities
• Social entrepreneurship qualities and skills
• Innovation and rural social entrepreneurship

Rural social enterprise and social entrepreneurship – Journal of Rural Studies call for papers (2)

For more information about the Special Issue on “Rural Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship”, please contact Artur Steiner (Artur.steiner@gcu.ac.uk).

MMM is a three-seminar series sponsored by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and jointly organised by GCU and University of Liverpool. The main purpose of MMM was to bring together ethics and economics perspectives on the questions of: what types of health care system do we want to have; and how best to organise such systems.

Seminars have been held at the University of Birmingham, GCU and, in May 2016, at Liverpool’s London Campus. As in previous meetings, GCU researchers were prominent, with Cam Donaldson presenting on the need to recognise market failure in explaining why we have an NHS and Rachel Baker and Helen Mason presenting on their MRC-funded work on how to elicit societal values about what should count in health care priority setting and focussing on views of life-extending technologies for patients with terminal illnesses http://www.gcu.ac.uk/endoflife/.

Plans are underway to continue the MMM series, including an edited volume of proceedings. You can view the MMM website at: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/psychology-health-and-society/research/mmm/ If you want to know more, please feel free to contact us here at the Yunus Centre (Cam.Donaldson@gcu.ac.uk or Rachel.Baker@gcu.ac.uk).

Registration is now open for the 3^rd and final meeting of the AHRC funded network “Medicines Markets and Morals”, in London on 26^th-27^th May.   Speakers include Jonathan Wolff, Richard Taunt, Chris Newdick, Alyson Pollock, Rudolf Klein, Rachel Baker and some exciting new work from early career researchers Leah Rand, Therese Feiler, Ruben Andreas Sakowsky and Mary Guy.  Timetable and registration here:    bit.ly/1UlTVZm #mmmnet

A team of health economics researchers at the Yunus Centre have contributed a chapter to the following new book published by Springer International:

Jeff Round (Editor) Care at the End of Life – An Economic Perspective

http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783319282664

The GCU team draw on their MRC funded research project http://www.gcu.ac.uk/endoflife/ in Chapter 10:

Rohan Deogaonkar, Rachel Baker, Helen Mason, Neil McHugh, and Marissa Collins   Eliciting Societal Views on the Value of Life-Extending Treatments Using Q Methodology

The book is available as hard copy or e-book

Professor Rachel Baker and Dr. Neil McHugh recently visited the higher students at Cleveden Secondary School.  They led the RPMS (Religious, moral and philosophical studies) higher group in an interactive session on “Utilitarianism and health care decisions”