Empowering People and Enterprises with Strong Cultural and Territorial Identity: A Case Study of Setomaa, Estonia

As put by Dahrendorf (1959): to be successful means to be liked, and to be liked means, in many ways, to be alike. This chapter describes how to use cultural identity as a tool of economic development through the empowerment of local enterprises and people “as reported by Friedmann (Empowerment: The Politics of alternative development. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)”. Cultural particularities might once have been considered a disadvantage in the modernist standardized world; but cultural assets are now increasingly being viewed as quite the contrary –a source for new regional economies, boosted by the current media-driven world to present difference and alternatives. This case study of Setomaa shows that cultural uniqueness can now be envisioned as a ‘regional advantage’. This innovative approach means that a location ‘on the geographic periphery’ is no more a sign of hopelessness but – in the case of some traditional well preserved amenities – instead is a resource for local enterprises. This is also a challenge to the conventional approach which states that population growth is a lead indicator for regional prosperity: Setomaa is expected to contract in terms of population in the future, however, continued economic development is still possible for the region, due to the focus on leveraging its ‘wealth’ of cultural identity.