Producing rural spaces for consumption: proper states of mind

Abstract

By drawing from rural, tourism and working life studies, this article constructs a framework for understanding the concurrent processes of production and consumption in a rural space. In the specific context of the Finnish countryside, the article investigates the practices of the self-employed who run firms providing rural spaces for practising dog sports. Those practising dog sports, in particular, seek functional spaces, adapted to their needs to train dogs and spend their leisure time. In addition to providing this physical resource, the entrepreneurs in this study, as service-sector workers, must also provide their customers with a certain state of mind. Using interviews and observations of six firms, this article demonstrates how space and state of mind are produced simultaneously and, consequently, entrepreneurs' personalities are entirely invested in their labour, challenging theoretical assumptions of rural areas as places of specific types of consumption only.