Rural human capital in the conceptual optics: Continuum and/or post-ism?

Abstract

In explanatory dictionaries, “post” is interpreted either as a prefix that has the same meaning as the word “after” (the most obvious and well-known examples from the social sphere are post-imperialist or post-colonial (world), post-Soviet (period), post-socialist (countries), etc.), or as the first part of compound words, denoting what exists/happens based on the second part of the word (post-impressionism, postmodernism, post-industrial, etc.) [see, e.g.: 4]. On aggregator websites of definitions from different dictionaries [see, e.g.: 13], “post” is interpreted mainly as a prefix denoting something that occurs after something, but in relation to philosophical trends of the end of the 20th century (postmodernism, postpositivism, poststructuralism, etc.), it is not only about “after”, but also about a kind of (not dialectical or negative) denial of immediate predecessors - as changing (or destroying) the accepted ideas about the hierarchy of attitudes and methods, which can be applied to human activities beyond philosophy (post-capitalism, postcommunism, post-Fordism, etc.) [see, e.g.: 15]. The lexical and research legitimacy of the prefix “post” has not been questioned for a long time, it is taken for granted in scientific and official discourses; however, the question is whether this “tool” of analytical conceptualization is universal or it has a distorting effect on research “optics” and “rhetoric” and, accordingly, a discriminatory effect on the corresponding objective realities, given the heterogeneity of most contemporary social-economic and other processes. In particular, whether we can use concepts with the prefix “post” to assess the state and prospects of the so-called “human capital”, considering its variability on the conditional but already traditional “rural-urban continuum”. The article presents an attempt to provide a preliminary assessment of the universality (or limitations) of the concepts with the prefix “post” in the study of the rural “cluster” of human capital.