Mobilities and Ruralities: An Introduction

Abstract

The rural is on the move, now as always. In rural studies, however, there has long been a bias towards imagining the rural as stable. The old gemeinschaft– gesellschaft continuum saw the rural as the realm of long-standing ascriptive ties of family, community, place, and ethnicity, in contrast to the achieved statuses of urban life. Where there was mobility in rural life, it was to leave it behind for the competitive uncertainties of life among strangers in cities. Social mobility meant spatial mobility and little social mobility was recognised in the rural, with all its traditionalism. Adoption-diffusion theory – perhaps rural sociology’s most widely diffused and adopted contribution, even if rural sociology is rarely recognised as its source – similarly rested on the image of a stable rural, resistant to innovation, except among those few, sought-after early adopters. Far more of the rural population were late adopters of change or even laggards. Where change has been recognised in the rural it has generally been as part of a narrative of protection, defending the rural from the ravages of capital, gentrifiers, pollution and other emanations of the urban: the rural as victim. The rural has rarely been envisioned as a source of activeness on its own. The victim has also become a villain through its stabilities, confounding culture with idyllic myths of order and old virtues in much social constructionist work. In light of this bias it may seem curious that the rural has long relied on extensive mobility in both economic and social life. But mobility is central to the enactment of the rural. Markets, employment, shopping, socialising, schooling, attending church, seeing a doctor, visiting parks: these all require traversing space, often great reaches of it, whether one lives in a rural place or is travelling to one. From this perspective it is reasonable to claim that the rural is at least as mobile as the urban, if not more so. Rural scholars are starting to develop this appreciation of a mobile rural, as this special issue manifests, itself a product of the 2007 meetings of the European Society for Rural Sociology on the theme of ‘Mobilities, Vulnerabilities and Sustainabilities: New Questions and Challenges for Rural Europe’. After the long season of urbanisation, in which we largely envisioned the rural as a reservoir that was draining away, our attention shifted to counter-urbanisation (Champion 1998), the return of urban people to the countryside. We did not see this as ruralisation, for the most part. Rather, Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Journal Code: SORU Proofreader: Elsie Article No: 518 Delivery date: 14 May 2010 Page Extent: 6