Rural Space Research Articles

Militarized policing in the hinterlands: A Blackwater training ground and the cultural conceptions of security

AbstractResearch in recent decades shows that private military and security contractors have reshaped the tenor and reach of US military power abroad while also accelerating the militarization of domestic policing. Previous work on militarized policing has primarily centered on urban environments. This article examines Blackwater North, a facility in a rural Illinois community, which provided privatized, militarized police training from 2007 through 2010. Drawing from newspaper accounts, government records, and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the community after the facility's closure, I analyze residents’ recollections of the local support of and opposition to Blackwater North. I argue that local supporters promoted a culture of perpetual preparedness that positioned militarized policing as a rational form of harm reduction, as well as one that could yield economic benefits to struggling host communities. I also examine the opposition and analyze the insider/outsider divides that emerged within the debate surrounding Blackwater North. At stake for both supporters and opponents were differing cultural conceptions of what increases, and what erodes, security. This case study focuses on rural spaces’ role in the landscape of militarized policing and illuminates the cultural processes by which privatized military power and militarized policing become accepted and resisted at the community level.

Educational transformations, territorial transformations: on the expansion of school formative experiences in the intercultural rural space of Misiones (Argentina)

En este artículo reconstruimos el proceso de expansión de experiencias formativas entre el pueblo Mbya Guaraní en la provincia de Misiones (Argentina). Desde un abordaje histórico-etnográfico que privilegia una lectura histórica y contextual de la relación entre la escuela y el espacio social rural intercultural, abordamos los vaivenes históricos de “la escuela” de Jakutinga a través de una trama histórica compleja en la que la iglesia católica, las políticas educativas estatales y los hombres y mujeres indígenas se hacen visibles como actores de un proceso en el que se entrelazan la cuestión territorial y las demandas educativas. Así, damos cuenta de la transformación de esta institución que originalmente fue una escuela para alfabetizar a adultos indígenas Mbya-Guaraní, que en 2009 pasó a ser una escuela secundaria con orientación artística exclusivamente para jóvenes Mbya, que retomando la pedagogía de la alternancia pasó a denominarse “EFA de Jakutinga” y desde 2015 habilitó la incorporación de estudiantes no indígenas, y finalmente, a partir de 2020 cambió su orientación de Arte a Agroambiente.

Nuove ecologie / Nuovi significati

In December 2022, the COP15 for Biodiversity approved the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, a protocol for the protection of planetary ecosystems that complements the Paris Agreement on Climate Change with the aim of preventing the collapse of the biosphere. A global network of areas with different degrees of naturalness and anthropization, capable of halting the loss of biodiversity and reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is projected to extend over 30% of the Earth by 2030 to be further consolidated by 2050. The agreement raises a multiplicity of issues that landscape design engages: the conservation of species and ecosystems of the biosphere; the environmental requalification of degraded terrestrial and marine areas; the equitable management of ancestral lands and the rights of indigenous populations; the protection of cultural landscapes and the support of local communities; the abandonment of both the unsustainable exploitation of territories and the musealizations and vernacularizations at the service of global tourism; the enhancement of the ecological contributions of degraded, exploited or underutilized areas, on the inhabited margins or in the operational hinterlands of planetary urbanization; the stwewardship of contemporary anthro-ecological systems towards new forms of equilibrium, conventionally defined by the terms of sustainability and resilience. In short, the Kunming-Montreal agreement requires us to imagine new forms and structures for the evolution of urban and rural space and, at once, new areas for the resurgence of nature. In the colossal, collective undertaking envisaged, the trans-disciplinary design of the contemporary landscape seems to have the opportunity to conquer vast fields of operation and a key role that goes beyond both the technical action of environmental engineering and the taxidermy of natural and cultural conservation. The design of the landscape is in fact called upon to implant a new meaning on portions of the planet, tiny fragments hidden in forgotten interstices, vast settlement or productive expanses, logistical corridors or segments of natural systems. This issue of Ri-Vista collects reflections, experiences, and cases, from the local to the geographical scale, in which the landscape design is capable to establish new ecologies and new ecosystemic balances, while transcribing in situ new narratives and new topologies, scenarios of re-signification of places and dynamics between society and nature, and, with that, new meanings of our living on Earth.

Bordi periurbani e sincronicità nel paesaggio. Un progetto di ri-significazione per il Vallone San Rocco nel Parco delle Colline di Napoli

As part of design research that investigates new balances between man and ecosystems, the theme of the margins between metropolis and rural spaces represents an important field of experimentation. These borders appear as pulverized and discontinuous urban fabrics, made of abandoned places, agricultural areas, fragments of a landscape whose components are difficult to identify and whose unveiling, in habitable forms and new typology ecosystem logics, is precluded by a dense system of barriers and fences. The article explores these themes starting from some consolidated bibliographic and design approaches, going through a proposal for the re-signification of the edges of the Vallone San Rocco, a naturalistic area in the northern part of the city of Naples included in the Metropolitan Park of the Hills, through the recovery of interrupted ecosystems and the rediscovery of a cultural landscape of great importance for both the city and the region.

Twelve Tips for Engaging Medical Students in Rural-Focused Research

Background The future of rural healthcare depends on training the future rural health workforce, and on rural health research that can guide clinical and policy decisions in rural spaces. Promotion of rural healthcare careers usually focuses on clinical aspects of care, and research may be seen as a lower priority. Supporting students to be involved in rural focused research offers the opportunity to broaden the pool of potentially rural interested students, and to develop research and scholarship skills and capacity in the future rural workforce. Aim and method We identify twelve tips that medical schools can adopt to foster medical student participation in research and promote student interest in rural healthcare and rural medical practice. These recommendations are based on a review of literature and our personal experience of conducting rural-focused research activities with medical students. Conclusion Through these twelve tips, we provide a practical framework for enhancing undergraduate medical student exposure to rural-focused research to foster research capacity. This has potential to inspire student interest in future rural medical practice and could contribute to alleviate workforce and research gaps in rural areas.

Construction and Optimization Strategies for Rural Residential Spatial Models Based on the Concept of Resource Metabolism: A Case Study of Rural Areas in the Shandong Plain

Rural communities can be conceptualized as spatial organisms interconnected by optimized resource utilization systems. Investigating the efficient utilization of rural resources and spatial construction methods grounded in resource metabolism is a pivotal step toward achieving the ecological transformation of rural spaces. This paper examined rural settlements in the Shandong Plain as a case study, exploring the relationships among three scales: village, neighborhoods, and courtyards. This analysis was based on elucidating the interaction mechanisms between “space and resource” and the integration of key resources and spatial elements. From the perspective of resource circulation and metabolism, this study aimed to elucidate the equilibrium of each resource element within three resource metabolism subsystems: the agricultural production system (core element), the ecological technology system (technological link), and the human life system (spatial carrier) in Shandong Plain’s villages, considering general climatic conditions. To achieve this, this research utilized the resource production volume, the utilization and transformation volume of resource metabolism technology facilities per unit area, and the average per capita resource consumption as fundamental measurement units. The concept of a rationing relationship is introduced to clarify resource allocation. Combining the aforementioned research on spatial resource metabolism in ecological villages in Shandong Province with the material flow analysis method, this study constructed a bottom–up spatial model of resource metabolism at three scales, courtyards, neighborhoods, and villages, under various resource metabolism scenarios. This study is anticipated to significantly contribute to the theoretical understanding of rural habitat environments, offering novel methods and perspectives for constructing ecological rural settlements.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL AREAS IN THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA THROUGH INCREASING THE EFFICIENCY OF THE LAND RESOURCE USE IN THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

The evaluation of the agricultural land in the Republic of Moldova represents the main factor in the sustainable rural space development and it emphasizes economic criteria for the efficiency of land resources. The hedonic price in the sales-purchase transactions of parcels in agricultural land may be the scientific innovation and originality of the geographically weighted regression methodology with the spatial approach in the used econometric model. The price of agricultural land used parcels in Maiovca village, Ocnița district were evaluated by using the data from transactions registered in 2022 and the results of the geographically weighted regression stands up the suitable conclusions of the licensed assessors in the field. The autocorrelation coefficient value evaluated by SAR is ρ = 0.072 according to Cobb Douglas model confirms the high quality of the regression techniques carried out and the used spatial methodology can be implemented in cadastral practice for the taxation in the agrarian sector. The geographically weighted regression utility proposed in this methodology has advantage in research area because of the similar evaluation techniques carried out in the countries of the European Union that are adjacent to the Republic of Moldova.

“Dengue fever is not just urban or rural: Reframing its spatial categorization.”

Infectious diseases exploit niches that are often spatially defined as urban and/or rural. Yet spatial research on infectious diseases often fails to define “urban” and “rural” and how these contexts might influence their epidemiology. We use dengue fever, thought to be mostly an urban disease with rural foci, as a device to explore local definitions of urban and rural spaces and the impact of these spaces on dengue risk in the provinfine urban and rural locales. Interviews conducted from 2019 to 2021 with 71 residents and 23 health personce of Esmeraldas, Ecuador. Ecuador, like many countries, only uses population size and administrative function to denel found that they identified the availability of basic services, extent of their control over their environment, and presence of underbrush and weeds (known in Ecuador as monte and maleza and conceptualized in this paper as natural disorder) as important links to their conceptions of space and dengue risk. This broader conceptualization of space articulated by local residents and professionals reflects a more sophisticated approach to characterizing dengue risk than using categories of urban and rural employed by the national census and government. Rather than this dichotomous category of space, dengue fever can be better framed for health interventions in terms of specific environmental features and assemblages of high-risk spaces. An understanding of how community members perceive risk enhances our ability to collaborate with them to develop optimal mitigation strategies.

The "Sernur text" in the lyrics by Zoya Dudina

This work is carried out within the framework of the current direction of modern philological science related to the study of local supertext (local text) in the national literatures of Russia. The subject of the research in the article is the "Sernur text" in the lyrics of the modern Mari poet Zoya Dudina, considered by us on the material of her poems included in the collection "Kuanyshym, kuemndal..." (Rejoiced, hugging a birch...) (2012). In this aspect, the lyrical works of this author are studied for the first time in the Mari literary science. The article identifies, describes and analyzes the main components of the "Sernur text" (images, motifs, artistic details, author's assessments and the ideological and conceptual component of individual lyrical texts and the collection as a whole), their place in the artistic structure of Zoya Dudina's lyrics. The methodology of the research consists of a historical-genetic and structural-semantic analysis of the author's lyrical texts, which allows us to identify and describe the structural and semantic levels of the "Sernur text", textual elements of the local subtext, revealing the author's concept of the world and man, the character of the lyrical heroine. The most important textual elements of the "Sernur text" in Zoya Dudina's lyrics are toponyms and anthroponyms and related spatial and character images – reconstructing/ transforming their primary etymological or real meanings, expressing one or another author's axiology. The main meaning of the "Sernur text" is summarized in the very title of the book (rural space, the land of ancestors, the Mari world), which carries the idea of the lyrical heroine's "merged" life with the Mari world and the world of nature. The structural and semantic levels of the "Sernur text" and textual elements of the local subtext (images and motifs, artistic details, documentary realities, framework components, etc.) reveal the author's concept of the world and man, imbued with respect for folk mythological culture and ancestral memory, their reflection in modernity, as well as the character of the lyrical heroine Zoya Dudina, marked by a genuine and grateful love for his native land.

Government Policies and Urban-Rural Behavior in the Puno Region, Peru

Objective: The purpose of this study was to analyze the elements that make up the urban-rural behavior of the inhabitants of the 13 provinces of the Puno region today. Theoretical framework: The present research had the need to contribute through a social anthropological proposal on urban and rural behavior in the Puno region of Peru. Method: To this end, the documentary design and the qualitative method were used, documents related to the subject of the research and the selection of informants according to the criteria of the research were analyzed, as well as semi-structured interviews were applied to 13 representatives of the provinces of the Puno region. Results and discussion: The results revealed that in the Puno region the population dynamics tend towards the growth of the city and the abandonment of rural areas, which is caused by bad government policies in relation to rural spaces, also the authorities differentiate rural areas and city areas through the recognition of the population in terms of access to education, to economic participation. Implications of the research: Pollution and lack of economic diversification are the reasons that have ended up shaping the urban image of the Puno region, the response to these problems, being a region with centralized services and that it redefined in a mandatory way. Research implications: The research contributes to the understanding of human development, both epistemologically and geographically, and as a consequence the reinterpretation of coexistence, social groups and the perception of traditions and customs.

Affective spaces of the rural: A praxeological analysis of the “spatial pioneers” of Upper Lusatia (Germany)

While many rural regions in Germany are facing a downward socio-structural spiral, there is a growing societal yearning for rurality and the practices associated with it. By creating a network for individuals who migrate from urban centers to a peripheral rural area, the self-proclaimed “spatial pioneer” movement of Upper Lusatia operates at the convergence of these realities. Through an ethnographic inquiry into this movement, we study the social practices of these spatial pioneers, particularly focusing on affective practices that evoke emotional responses within individuals. We identified five dimensions that shape the spatial pioneers' rural lifeworlds — nature, work, community, simplicity, and self-efficacy. From the perspective of the spatial pioneers, rural spaces are not necessarily ‘ideal’ via their discursive representations. However, rurality as a lifestyle (as a way of living) becomes desirable via the (affective) practices it enables. The singularity of structurally weak rural areas lies in the fact that they offer opportunities for living the ‘good life’ that, due to limiting material and cultural structures, are unavailable elsewhere (e.g., in urban settings). In applying the concept of affective spaces, we aim for a deeper understanding of the spatial pioneers' bodily-affective experience, perception, and practice-based production of space. By doing so, we provide insights into practice-based, affective (re-)productions of rurality and rural spaces.

The multifunctionality of rural space: Agriculture and pedagogical rural tourism in the southernmost region of Brazil

The article addresses pedagogical rural tourism developed by farmer families in the southernmost region of Brazil. Three agricultural production units were evaluated, which host students and teachers for classes on agroforestry, agroecology, and natural resource conservation. It is noted that farmers play an important role as educators, highlighting the multifunctionality of rural space and agriculture.

Mapping Secular Choirs in Sweden

Abstract The role of religion in Western societies has gained renewed attention in recent years. While choirs have been studied to varying extents in the social sciences, the geography of choirs has received little attention, particularly in human geography. Using questionnaire responses from secular choir members, this exploratory study examines the possible differences and/or similarities of secular choir’s sacral and/or secular activity in urban and rural spaces in Sweden. The study reveals two primary findings. First, it reveals that secular choir members engage in a mixture of secular and sacred activities, suggesting that these activities can be considered postsecular. Second, the data challenges the geographical perception of rural environments as more sacred/traditional, as they have a high proportion of secular activities. Likewise, the results questions the geographical perception of urban environments as secular/modern, as they demonstrate an even distribution of sacred activities.

Gendered Dichotomies in African Youth Language and Language Practices: Urban and Rural Spaces, Virtual and Real-Life Gendered Discourses, by Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.)

Gendered Dichotomies in African Youth Language and Language Practices: Urban and Rural Spaces, Virtual and Real-Life Gendered Discourses, by Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.)

Rural gentrification, the booming B&B industry and linked migration in China: To what extent can gentrification contribute to rural revitalisation?

AbstractAccompanying the functional transformation of rural areas from productivism to postproductivism, the rural areas with scenic views surrounding megacities are re‐evaluated in terms of their importance as destinations for visitors, especially in the case of booming bed and breakfast (B&B) industry in contemporary rural China. While private investment has generally led to improvements in the physical space and economic development of these villages, there is also concern about the negative effects of rural gentrification, such as the commercialisation of rural space, the alienation of rural culture and the displacement of indigenous residents. This study examines the multifaceted nature of rural gentrification by observing two villages within the Moganshan Mountain area—the birthplace of rural B&Bs in China, and explores how these processes have been leveraged to promote rural revitalisation. Research findings suggest that disparities in original resources and property rights allocation underpinning the B&B industries among the first‐wave gentrifiers and the local villagers, when viewed through the lens of linked migration, may lead to different socioeconomic outcomes. The B&B industry's growth can either be exclusive, primarily favouring gentrifiers, or complementary, fostering mutual benefits and learning opportunities for both gentrifiers and local villagers. Moreover, forming a collaborative network of rural villagers, returning migrants, and external elites can contribute to rural revitalisation through gentrification. These findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of rural gentrification by adding evidence from the Global South and provide insights to inform Chinese rural revitalisation policies, especially alternatives to traditional state‐led revitalisation projects.

Evolution Process and Land Use/Land Cover Response of Urban–Rural Space in Wuhan under Polycentric Structure

Polycentric development facilitates urban–rural spatial reshaping and land use/land cover (LULC) protection. Previous studies have predominantly focused on urban areas, with spatial delineation methods biased towards the macro-level, lacking a holistic perspective that situates them within the urban–rural spatial framework. This study proposes a spatial delineation framework that is applicable to the polycentric structure, taking into account the social, economic, and natural characteristics of urbanization. It employs semivariance analysis and spatial continuous wavelet transform (SCWT) to analyze the effects of polycentric development on the urban–rural space of Wuhan from 2012 to 2021 and applies a land use transition matrix, landscape indices, and bivariate spatial autocorrelation to quantify the responses and differences of LULC within urban–rural space. The results indicate that 600m×600m is the best scale for exhibiting the multidimensional characterization of urbanization. The polycentric structure alleviates the compact development of the central city, and it drives rapid expansion at the urban–rural fringe, exacerbating the spatial heterogeneity in LULC change pattern, spatial configuration, and urbanization response within urban–rural spaces. The overall effects of urbanization on LULC are relatively weak along the urban–rural gradient, experiencing a transition from positive to negative and back to positive. This study employs a novel spatial delineation framework to depict the polycentric transformation of metropolitan areas and provides valuable insights for regional planning and ecological conservation in the urban–rural fringe.

Resilience and Vulnerability: Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Women Managing LGBTphobia in Rural Israel

Neoliberal discourses associate resilience with active stances and independence. Conceptualizing the relationship between vulnerability and resilience, this paper discusses lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LBT) women’s experiences of LGBTphobia in Israeli rural space. Addressing the 67th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) challenge to describe intersectional issues, this paper reveals alternative negotiations of LBT women’s vulnerabilities. Using a theory of vulnerability, we claim that LBT women express resilience even in situations of marginalization and vulnerability. The paper shows how resilience, embedded within vulnerability, is constructed through the management of LGBTphobia via three strategies: construction of alternative spaces, advocacy, and direct resistance to acts of violence.

Sustainable Spatial Development of Multifunctional Villages: A Case Study of Eastern Poland

The decline in the role of agriculture as the basis for the livelihood of rural residents has led to the development of new directions for rural transformation. In Poland, the concept of multifunctional development has gained the most popularity. However, it does not have a defined spatial development model. There has also been no research into how the development of non-agricultural functions affects spatial development and to what extent this development is sustainable. Therefore, the aim of this study is to show and compare the changes that have taken place over the last 40–50 years in the spatial arrangements of development in traditional agricultural villages and in villages with different non-agricultural functions (tourist, industrial, and service functions). At the same time, we want to indicate which of these functions have contributed to the development of the most sustainable spatial arrangements. To this end, we selected three indicators of sustainable development of rural space: compactness of buildings, continuation of traditional rural layouts, and availability of services, and then carried out an analysis of changes in these indicators on the basis of archival and current cartographic materials and data on service facilities. We conducted the research for four municipalities in eastern Poland (50 villages). The results indicate the predominance of negative spatial phenomena such as the deterioration of the accessibility of services and spatial development contrary to historical spatial layouts. There is a spillover of development in the form of discontinuous, chaotic clusters of buildings often having the character of suburbia and, consequently, the disappearance of village centres, worsening walkability, and blurring of village boundaries. The only positive change is an increase in the compactness of buildings—mainly in villages that previously had a dispersed character. It is difficult to identify village functions that would unequivocally favour spatial sustainability. The service villages showed slight advantages in terms of social (availability of services) and environmental (compactness of buildings) factors. In contrast, the development of agricultural villages was more favourable in cultural terms (traditional village layouts). In all aspects, negative changes were recorded in industrial villages and (the worst results) in tourist villages. However, the trends were similar in all municipalities, which draws attention primarily to the lack of a rational spatial policy related to multifunctional village development.

Spatial evolution and influencing factors of water-town settlements in Southern China: evidence from 942 villages in Zhongshan City

ABSTRACT Zhongshan, a city characterized by its profound historical heritage and distinctive rural civilization, has been consistently influenced by traditional agricultural practices throughout its history. This research conducts an in-depth exploration of Zhongshan’s unique rural spaces, systematically examining the evolutionary trends and determinants of Zhongshan’s water-town settlements across different historical epochs through the application of multidimensional spatial analysis techniques. The results indicate that these settlements exhibited cohesive spatial distribution characteristics across five historical periods. Notably, there was a significant clustering effect during the Ming and Qing dynasties, while Before the Qing dynasty, the spatial distribution of the settlements presented a pattern with multiple core areas coexisting. After the Qing dynasty, the spatial layout of these principal core areas stabilized and gradually diffused to surrounding areas, forming a balanced and continuous distribution pattern. Throughout the study period, the spatial pattern of the water-town settlements exhibited characteristics of five primary core areas and several secondary core areas. Concurrently, the centroid of the water-town settlements consistently shifted southeastward. When examining the intensity of influence on spatial evolution, the study found that socio-economic (q = 0.345) and accessibility factors (q = 0.356) exert a greater impact on the spatial distribution of rural settlements than do natural environmental factors (q = 0.136). However, the interaction between natural environmental factors and socio-economic and accessibility factors provides greater explanatory power than the interactions within natural factors alone. This suggests that in a specific socio-economic context, the impact of the natural environment on water-town settlements is enhanced. Furthermore, multivariate linear regression analysis demonstrates that the rural population, regional economic status, proximity to urban centers, and the distribution of water bodies positively influence the spatial evolution of water-town settlements.

Variegated urban and rural spaces: Defining village types in China

China’s system of territorial spatial planning requires an integrated layout of ecological, agricultural, and urban functional space. This paper examines urban and rural villages and finds that villages can be classified into five types: urban villages, suburban villages, rural villages, semi-ecological villages, and eco-villages. These villages have multiple functions such as ecological services, agricultural production, and town services, according to the relationship between villages and territorial space. Urban villages refer to villages within the urban space, which have certain urban socio-ecological service functions; suburban villages are villages located at the junction of urban and agricultural spaces, which adapt their functions to the needs of the town; rural villages refer to villages located in the vast agricultural space, which are dominated by large-scale agriculture, and which need to undertake the function of guaranteeing food security; semi-ecological villages refer to villages at the junction of the agricultural space and the eco-villages, which can develop diversified ecological services; and eco-villages refer to villages that are in, or essentially in, eco-space, and have an important role to play in the maintenance of natural ecosystems.