Watermelon production as the driver of community resilience: More-than-human agency and the transforming rural assemblage

Abstract

The dynamics of rural change are often linked to frameworks of ‘rural community resilience’, a body of literature associated with various aspects of society including social capital, community initiatives, and governance. Drawing on emergent literature, this study aims to explore how assemblage approaches may disseminate resilience thinking via dissolving structure-agency and bounce-back-transformative divisions. The paper explores how deliberate, and often policy-orientated actions, are intertwined with ‘non-intentional’ activities and processes that are deeply embedded in daily rural life. The paper further illustrates rural development processes through a case study of the watermelon-producing community of Medgyesegyháza, Hungary: a community that, in recent years, has been praised for its endurance throughout a period of socio-economic turbulence.The aim is to demonstrate how assemblage theory may explain the emergence of intermingling human and non-human agency. It was observed that the resilience of the rural community assemblage is embedded in daily practices, and emerges from relations between two main components: humans and watermelons. By applying the concept of territorialisation, this paper examines how components of the assemblage become aligned as provisional stability is established. The paper contends that the engagement with non-humans establishes community identity, but changes in relations de-territorialise the assemblage and trigger new contingencies. The precarious nature of human-watermelon relationships have repercussions on stability as they may serve as drivers of change.