Rural Representation Research Articles

Chinese consumers: The Romantic reappraisal

Drawing on evidence from Anshan City, Liaoning Province, the People’s Republic of China, we argue that the recent commodification and proliferation of idyllicized representations of rurality, a trend that runs directly counter to the symbolic infrastructure of China’s mass urbanization and industrialization, indicates a paradigm shift in Chinese consumer perceptions. We explore a theory of the ‘Romantic reappraisal of Chinese consumer values’, drawing upon the reappraisal of values ascribed to the ‘Romantic period’ which followed the industrial revolution in Britain and Western Europe in the late 18th century. Similarities and differences with this earlier shift are explored. One of the authors has spent several lengthy periods of ethnographic investigation in Anshan since 2005, drawing on networks from a wide range of social spheres.

Reading Rural Consumption Practices for Difference: Bolt-holes, Castles and Life-rafts

Based mostly on evidence from the UK, this paper challenges the rural’s usual association with predominantly conservative politics and practices. It advocates showing awareness of ambiguity in how representations, and specifically in this paper rural representations, and their numerous associated consumption practices are interpreted. A focus is given on the possibility of interpreting these practiced rural representations in the context of responses to the negative features within everyday life identified by writers such as Lefebvre. Drawing specifically on the “postmodern Marxism” of Gibson-Graham (2006), and particularly beginning to deploy what they term “reading for difference rather than dominance”, the paper introduces three “styles” of consuming the rural. These are expressed via the metaphors of bolt-hole, castle and life-raft, and it is argued that they can be read as expressing critique of urban everyday life. In the concluding section, the lessons learned from reading rural consumption practices for difference in this way are brought together to suggest that not only can the rural today be regarded as an active “heterotopia” but that this alternative status could be used to underpin an urban-focused social movement for reclamation of what Lefebvre termed “every-day life”.

The Political Economy of Ethnicity in Yunnan's Lijiang Basin

The present article explores how post-1949 political economic changes and changes in representations of cultural identity have been experienced by both the village residents of Longquan and the town residents of Dayanzhen in north-west Yunnan's predominantly Naxi Lijiang basin. Longquan is now at the epicentre of the new ‘Shuhe’ epic tourism village development complex, whereas the gucheng (or ‘old town’) part of Dayanzhen (or Lijiang Town) was essentially the epicentre for an even earlier epic tourism town development project. The impact of this recent large-scale (primarily domestic) ethnic tourism is contextualised within the entrenched urban–rural divide that lies between these two locales. Implications for state, popular culture and local representations of Naxi ethnic identity, gender, rurality and class are examined.

The village in the mind: Applying Q-methodology to re-constructing constructions of rurality

In recent years rural studies have focused on the analysis of different notions of ‘the rural’ and how they are constructed in expert discourses as well as in everyday life. Dealing empirically with such patterns of meaning, poses special challenges to social science. In this article I want to explore Q-methodology that approaches subjectivity in a particular way. Instead of beginning with the individual – as it is done in case study approaches – or with socio-demographic categories – as surveys usually do – Q-methodology attempts to put the focus of inquiry on the content of subjectivity itself, i.e. the integral views and their internal frame of reference. Q-methodology can be conceived as a hybrid of qualitative and quantitative methodology since it combines mathematical procedures like factor analysis with a genuine constructivist and interpretative approach to ‘reality’. An example of a study in which Q-methodology was applied is presented. The aim of this analysis was to explore the different views of village development and community life that existed in a municipality of the exurban hinterland of Hamburg. As a result of this study three distinct perceptions of rurality are identified: an idyllic, a reform-oriented and an anti-conservationist view. Based on a structured comparison of these three views it is shown how Q-methodology can contribute new perspectives and insights to the debate about social representations of rurality.

Selling the countryside: Representations of rurality in Norway and Spain

This paper analyses how rurality is represented in two lifestyle magazines about country living: LevLandlig in Norway and Vivir en el Campo in Spain. Since material, imaginative and practised ruralities are intertwined and research indicates that representations of the rural affect residential preferences and other consumption activities, we argue that it is important to critically investigate potentially influential representations. Given that the majority of works on representations of the rural in mass media originate mainly from the United Kingdom and the United States, we aim to add the perspectives of a Scandinavian and a Mediterranean country. Furthermore, we analyse the gendering of the visions of the rural. We reveal that the ‘rural idyll’ is the main vision ‘sold’ in both magazines, and in both the same four sub-themes — ‘home’, ‘family’, ‘nature’ and ‘how to make a living in a rural area’ — stand central in the idyll. The gendering of the idyll and the meanings attached to the sub-themes vary between the Spanish and the Norwegian magazines, thus illustrating the contextual character of knowledge about rurality.

The Political Economy of Agricultural Market Reforms in Developing Countries

Abstract We study the determinants of agricultural market reforms in developing countries. What prompted the governments in these countries to abruptly begin deregulating their agricultural markets in the late 1980's? We answer this question by constructing a completely new dataset based on agricultural market regulations in 88 developing countries from 1960 to 2003. Our results suggest that the sudden and strong decline in the international price of agricultural commodities played a crucial role in destabilizing the financial equilibrium of marketing boards. In addition, changes in the rural representation in the political arena and government ideology also played significant roles in breaking up the status quo.

Experiencing and writing Indigeneity, rurality and gender: Australian reflections

This paper has two interrelated aims. The first is to contribute to knowledge about rurality, gender and Indigeneity. This is undertaken by the first author, Bebe Ramzan, an Indigenous woman living in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. Bebe shows similarities across rural and remote areas in Australia and details her knowledge and experience of home, rurality, rural communities, land and gender. The second aim of the paper is to examine issues surrounding the involvement of academic white women in Indigenous research. Writing from the position of feminist white women Barbara Pini and Lia Bryant reflect on theories of whiteness as cultural practice and in this paper contest representations of rurality in rural studies as white.

De rurale paradox - Geschiedschrijving en het post-productivistische platteland

The rural has always been an established field of historical research. However, over the course of the twentieth century, the countryside was subject to significant changes in its spatial and social structure. These transformations made ‘rurality’ an increasingly problematic notion and encouraged a debate regarding definition in which mainly social scientists, geographers, and planning experts were engaged. In this article, the author attempts to evaluate changing views of the rural in the academic milieu. The different approaches through which the countryside has been studied may serve as signposts for historians of the twentieth century. It is argued that investigating the evolving discourse and the social representations of rurality – within multiple societal spheres and amongst a variety of actors – is very fruitful for contemporary historical studies, especially when examining highly urbanized countries such as the Netherlands or Belgium. This strand of research is not a futile or purely theoretical exercise; on the contrary, it will allow historians better to understand the social, cultural, economic, and political processes operating in the twentieth-century countryside.

Why do medical graduates choose rural careers?

This study is based on the metaphor of the 'rural pipeline' into medical practice. The four stages of the rural pipeline are: (1) contact between rural secondary schools and the medical profession; (2) selection of rural students into medical programs; (3) rural exposure during medical training; and (4) measures to address retention of the rural medical workforce. Using the rural pipeline template we conducted a literature review, analysed the selection methods of Australian graduate entry medical schools and interviewed 17 interns about their medical career aspirations. The literature was reviewed to assess the effectiveness of selection practices to predict successful gradation and the impact of rural pipeline components on eventual rural practice. Undergraduate academic performance is the strongest predictor of medical course academic performance. The predictive power of interviews is modest. There are limited data on the predictive power of other measures of non-cognitive performance or the content of the undergraduate degree. Prior rural residence is the strongest predictor of choice of a rural career but extended rural exposure during medical training also has a significant impact. The most significant influencing factors are: professional support at national, state and local levels; career pathway opportunities; contentedness of the practitioner's spouse in rural communities; preparedness to adopt a rural lifestyle; educational opportunities for children; and proximity to extended family and social circle. Analysis of selection methods: Staff involved in student selection into 9 Australian graduate entry medical schools were interviewed. Four themes were identified: (1) rurality as a factor in student selection; (2) rurality as a factor in student selection interviews; (3) rural representation on student selection interview panels; (4) rural experience during the medical course. Interns' career intentions: Three themes were identified: (1) the efficacy of the rural pipeline; (2) community connectedness through the rural pipeline; (3) impediments to the effect of the rural pipeline, the most significant being a partner who was not committed to rural life Based on the literature review and interviews, 11 strategies are suggested to increase the number of graduates choosing a career in rural medicine, and one strategy for maintaining practitioners in rural health settings after graduation.

Non-Urban Noirs: Rural Space in <i>Moonrise</i>, <i>On Dangerous Ground</i>, <i>Thieves’ Highway</i>, and <i>They Live by Night</i>

Despite the now-traditional tendency of noir scholarship to call attention to the retrospective and constructed nature of this genre— James Naremore argues that film noir is best regarded as a “mythology”— one feature that has rarely come under question is its association with the city (2). Despite the existence of numerous rural noirs, the depiction of urban space is associated with this genre more consistently than any other element. Even in critical accounts that attempt to deconstruct the solidity of the noir genre, the city is left as an implicit inclusion, and the country, an implict exclusion. Naremore, for example, does not include the urban environment in a list of the central tenets of film noir that he calls into question: “nothing links together all the things described as noir—not the theme of crime, not a cinematographic technique, not even a resistance to Aristotelian narratives or happy endings” (10). Elizabeth Cowie identifies film noir a “fantasy,” whose “tenuous critical status” has been compensated for “by a tenacity of critical use” (121). As part of Cowie’s project, to revise the assumption that noirs are almost exclusively male-centered, she cites character types, visual style, and narrative tendencies, but never urban spaces, as familiar elements of noir that ought to be reconsidered. If the city is rarely tackled as an unnecessary or part-time element of film noir in discursive studies, it is often the first trait identified by critics in the kind of formative, characteristic-compiling studies that Cowie and Naremore work against.

Producing Postman Pat: The popular cultural construction of idyllic rurality

This paper concerns the popular cultural representation of English rurality. It focuses upon Postman Pat, a popular cultural phenomenon which has come to be routinely cited as exemplary and iconic of contemporary imaginings of the English countryside as idyllic. The idea that Anglocentric popular culture (re)produces this sort of ‘rural idyll’ – and that these idylls are particularly laden with cultural and ideological baggage – has been well rehearsed. However, this paper considers a question which has too often been overlooked or taken for granted: how, exactly – and I mean literally, actually, in detail, in practice – does this sort of idyllic rurality come to be constructed? Through conversations with two key figures in the creation of Postman Pat, the paper begins to develop an understanding of some of the everyday, banal, nitty gritty practices, decisions and encounters which must be understood as fundamentally part of the production of (this) ‘rural idyll’.

Contingency management: perspectives of Australian service providers

Given the very positive and extensive research evidence demonstrating efficacy and effectiveness of contingency management, it is important that Australia explore whether contingency management has a role to play in our own treatment context. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 30 experienced alcohol and drug practitioners, service managers and policy-makers in Victoria. Interviewees were selected to represent the range of drug treatment services types and included rural representation. A semi-structured interview schedule, covering their perceptions and practices of contingency management was used. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using N2 qualitative data analysis program. The majority of key informants were positively inclined toward contingency management, notwithstanding some concerns about the philosophical underpinnings. Concerns were raised in relation to the use of monetary rewards. Examples of the use of contingency management provided by key informants demonstrated an over-inclusive definition: all the examples did not adhere to the key principles of contingency management. This may create problems if a structured contingency management were to be introduced in Australia. Contingency management is an important adjunctive treatment intervention and its use in Australia has the potential to enhance treatment outcomes. No unmanageable barriers were identified in this study.

THE ‘BUOYANCY’ OF ‘OTHER’ GEOGRAPHIES OF GENTRIFICATION: GOING ‘BACK‐TO‐THE WATER’ AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF MARGINALITY

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on the motives underpinning the formation and (re)production of a marginal social group residing in houseboats within Shoreham‐by‐Sea, South‐east England. It is contended that the ‘boat‐people’ represent a unique example of going back‐to‐the‐water, which is tied to a predilection for a self‐sufficient and sustainable lifestyle, anti‐consumerism, a sense of community, and closeness to nature and natural elements. The discussion points to the importance of idyllic rural representations of the South Downs, which render positive cultural readings of the river, coast, water and tides. It is also noted that the houseboats provide an economic ‘loop‐hole’ into the wider gentrified housing markets of Brighton and Hove. Focusing on recent socio‐cultural and economic transformations, and linked to the regulation and commodification of the alternative lifestyles and living arrangements, the case study provides an example of the ‘purification’ of manufactured, atypical gentrified spaces. The findings therefore disrupt ideas of gentrification being synonymous with conventional residential spaces, and extend understandings of the diversity of ‘other’ geographies of gentrification to more fully embrace sociocultural marginality.

Differentiating countryside: Social representations and governance patterns in rural areas with high social density: The case of Chianti, Italy

One of the key factors for the success of development strategies in rural areas is the setting up of appropriate governance patterns, whose main outcome is a fluid communication between public and private organisations and an effective integration of objectives and policies. Through a ‘post-rural’ approach, this paper aims to analyse an attempt to reconfigure patterns of governance taking place in a well-known rural area, the Chianti (Tuscany, Italy). The Chianti can be considered as a typical example of a post-rural area, characterised by a highly complex civil society, with a large number of organisations representing their constituencies’ interests, which strongly characterise the local social and economic processes. In this area wine is the most important industry, both for its weight in terms of added value and employment but also for the multiplier effects that its reputation has on the overall economy, and local wine elites have historically had a strong hold on local society. Along with rural change leading to social and economic diversification and growing administrative complexity, the dominance of wine elites is challenged by a coalition of actors led by the mayors of the local municipalities. The resulting struggle for hegemony is played out through an intense inside/outside interaction, which contributes to continuous attempts to redefine local identities. The paper explores the role that the building of social representations of rurality by local elites plays in the creation of new rural governance patterns in the area.

‘You can get away with loads because there’s no one here’: Discourses of regulation and non-regulation in English rural spaces

Using qualitative data from a research project investigating contemporary rural identities in England this paper examines the apparently contradictory discursive claims that are made on rural spaces. It looks in particular at the ways in which these are narrated – through the notions of rural space as a site of safety, orderliness and community on the one hand and as a site of freedom, anti-order and non-regulation on the other. While the former is a familiar, entrenched and critiqued representation of rurality, the latter narrative has a more marginal and ambivalent place in the dominant rural imaginary. Drawing on Foucault’s concepts of panopticism and heterotopia the paper demonstrates the ways in which the rural is a highly labile concept and emphasises its continual ‘unfinishedness’. However, alongside this, the paper suggests that the tensions and contradictions of the orderly and anti-orderly discourses are underpinned by a particular coherency that is driven by senses of community, belonging and self-regulation. While these do not resolve the contradictions of the discursive claims the potency of such drivers are sufficient to produce a particular inclusive spatiality which is able to accommodate and incorporate the different discursive positions and the practices that are associated with each.

Protest against centralisation in Norway: The evolvement of the goal for maintaining a dispersed settlement pattern

Norwegian regional policies emphasise geography and demography more than structural factors such as business development, unemployment or income conditions, which are more important in the rest of Europe. The background for the particular Norwegian case is revealed in this article, through a discourse analysis of selected political and academic texts. During the 1960s a rural movement surfaced, articulating demands on behalf of the rural population. The mismatch between the rural mode of living and the government policy was revealed, mainly through the work of the sociologist Ottar Brox. This new approach to rurality, where an alternative modernisation scenario was introduced, formed the academic and political basis for claiming better protection of rural communities against the hegemonic strategy for modernisation. However, the articulations of this movement triggered other symbolic issues in Norway in the radical 1970s and policies came to be about much more than rural communities and particular rural interests. Working against centralisation became synonymous with working to preserve Norwegian culture and nature. In this article the widespread and continued support for a distributed settlement pattern is explained on the assumption that meaning springs from the representation of rurality to the represented rural condition, more than the other way around.

Burning issues: Whiteness, rurality and the politics of difference

In the past decade geographers have critiqued the exclusivity of idyllic representations of rurality and sought to explore the diverse experiences of Other social groups in the countryside. This paper builds upon that small but significant strand of research which has highlighted the whiteness of representations of rurality and the consequences of this for racialised minorities. These debates have been crucially important in forwarding our understanding of racially-exclusive constructions of idyllic country living; however, it is important that academics neither assume that such ideas are forever fixed, nor that they affect all minority ethnic groups in the same ways. This paper takes both the potential power and frailty of these ideas seriously, as it examines how the concepts of race, racism and rurality are deployed by different commentators as they debate the place of one specific minority ethnic group in the English countryside. The route taken into this is a consideration of print-media reporting of events in Firle, Sussex, where, in 2003, some white rural residents symbolically purged their village of Gypsy-Travellers by burning a mock caravan complete with effigies at their annual bonfire celebrations. In conclusion, the paper challenges the relative lack of attention to these issues within the white-dominated discipline of geography, and argues that it is imperative to trace the dynamic ways in which the whiteness of idyllic understandings of the rural are reinforced and challenged through contemporary social practice.

« La modernité est en bas » : ruralité et urbanité chez les habitants d’un gecekondu d’Ankara

On the basis of the ruralist image associated with the gecekondu in the sociological literature, this article argues that the concept of ‘urban village’ applied to this urban morphology characterising Turkish cities is not relevant. The ethnological analysis of a gecekondu district located in Ankara shows initially how and in how far former villagers appropriate the urban space of Ankara physically, symbolically and ‘cognitively’. However, this evidence of urbanity does not proof their ‘non – rurality’ and the irrelevance of the urban village’s concept: it is possible to live like a ‘townsman’ in an ‘urban village’. The paper then analyses why and how the village of origin is not a relevant social frame of reference any more for the inhabitants of this district. However, this village continues to evoke. Representations of rurality and urbanity are articulated to give birth to new and original cultural practices which explain the dialogue between urban and rural space in Turkey.

Tamworth, Australia's ‘country music capital’: place marketing, rurality, and resident reactions

Since the 1970s, Tamworth has become well known as Australia's ‘country music capital’. Its annual Country and Western Music Festival has become the leading event of its type in Australia, attracting over 60,000 visitors every year. The festival, and country music more generally, have become central to the town's identity and tourism marketing strategies. This article discusses the social constructions that have surrounded Tamworth's transition to ‘country music capital’—of the ‘rural’, and of ‘country’—within the context of debates about the politics of place marketing. Textual analysis of promotional material and built landscapes reveals representations of rurality (or ‘senses of the rural’). In their most commercial form, representations of rurality converge on a dominant notion of ‘country’, quite different from the ‘countryside’ and ‘rural idyll’ in England. This dominant, or normative ‘country’ forms the basis of imagery for the festival, the Town's marketing strategy, and associated advertising campaigns by major sponsors. It is predominantly masculine, white, working class and nationalist. But links between musical style and discourses of place are complex. Colonial British histories, Celtic musical traditions and North American popular culture all inform ‘country’ in Tamworth, dissipating nationalist interpretations. Normative constructions also contrast with other, heterogeneous ruralities in Australia, that include the lived experiences of rural Australians, and on stage—in country music—where multiple ‘ruralised’ identities are performed. Even those who stand to benefit from place promotion have been uncertain about country music and ‘the country’, because of associated discourses of Tamworth as ‘hick’ and ‘redneck’. In the final section of the paper, reactions of residents to constructions of Tamworth as country music capital are discussed, via the results of a simple resident survey. In contrast to previous studies of the disempowering politics of place marketing, Tamworth residents were on the whole supportive of the new associations and images for the town, despite ‘hick’ connotations, as it has become a centre for ‘country’, and for country music. Reasons for this are explored, and resistances discussed. The result is a complex and entangled politics of national identity, gender, race and class, where meanings for place are variously interpreted and negotiated.

Rural Areas in the Netherlands

According to the OECD standard, there are no rural areas in the Netherlands. Nonetheless, debate continues about the future of the Dutch countryside. In order to explore how Dutch inhabitants think about rural areas a survey was conducted by the authors, focusing on two topics: the kind of associations respondents to the survey have with respect to rural areas; and where they think rural areas are located in the Netherlands. The analysis shows that respondents’ representations of rurality are mainly formed along visual–figurative dimensions. It was also found that such representations of the rural differ by age of the respondents. Whereas seniors in general have more socio–cultural representations, young people see the countryside mainly as an agricultural production zone.With regard to the location of rural areas, respondents indicated that ‘genuine’ rural areas are to be found in the periphery of the country: the North. Opinions regarding the location of attractive and unattractive rural areas seem to differ between age groups.