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The importance of rural. UHI inaugural professorial lecture
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Why bother about ‘rural’?
Inaugural Professorial Lecture of Frank Rennie
Beautiful landscapes also have people!
What do we really mean when we say the word ‘rural’? Is it a very
narrow, or a very broad focus on life?
Is ‘rural’ a fixed state, or a relational geographical point?
We know it when we see it 2008 marks the tipping point between rural and urban residents
More than 66% of Earth’s land surface is rural
“I was never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems) civilisation ….. the sea, islands, islanders, the island life and climate, make and keep me truly happier” RLS
Where I live
What are the labels of rural areas?
resident
crofter
academic
environmentalist
educator
Community activist
Being ‘rusticated’ was a punishment
As a species we had 100 million years of fine tuning….
It is barely 5,000 years since cities came together
What is the status of a rural resident?
Images of cultural stereotypes
Biotopes and habitats
http://tinyurl.com/37qeaw6
Stereotypes of rural place and rural people
Some are harmless, and some are…..
Economic development by itself does not constitute progress ….
GDP as an indicator of development has severe limitations
The basic entitlements of health, education, and political liberties are features of well-being
Urban identity lies in the overweening concern for the primacy of political economy
Perceptions the natural environment are also socially constructed
Pluriactivity as a survival strategy
Is there a link to the genetic diversity of natural systems?
Pluriactivity as a response to economic volatility
The characterisation of rural life in literature…
Sunset Song
Grapes of Wrath
The creation of mythical rurality
Neil Gunn
John BuchanScholar Gipsies
A kinship with nature
Walden - Thoreau
Rural bliss versus urban materialism?
Sustainable Development = economic, social, environmental, and social equity evaluations
Homo sapiens…. as a physical mass
… as a living organism … in the ecosystem
As a cultured human being …. Interacting with the environment ........
a result of this is the re-invention of the countryside…..
The landscape is sanitized and reconstructed to appear in an image …. valued more highly than .. reality
Our images of the rural identity
The cultural landscape is a mythical heterogeneous image….
“Beyond the farmers’ frontier, there is no such thing as countryside. Instead, there is wild, raw nature, a wilderness.”
Faith in progress is itself some kind of religion
Both kinds of arcadia, the idyllic as well as the wild are landscapes of the urban imagination
Fabricating nature
The importance of grain in fuelling urban growth and power should not be underestimated
“in 123 BC, Rome assumed the responsibility of distributing a monthly ration of corn – free – to every eligible citizen (not including women, children, and slaves of course!”
It was the success of the rural economy that allowed the urban dream
It was the commoditisation of agriculture that initially enabled urbanisation
The natural environment itself has become regarded as natural capital
The concept of the foodshed
We are entering an age when localism is seen as a modifying factor to the debilitating effects of globalism
Foodmiles
Grow your own
Photo by Katy Walters www.geograph.org.uk/photo/527766
There is a case that rural communities are inherently more sustainable than urban ones
but
We currently face powerful drivers in the form of trans-national agribusiness, and their desire to extend and consolidate their global empires….
A man in Assynt
This level of connection to
the rural ecosystem has been
progressively obscured for
most cosmopolitans
The food web at the centre of popular awareness
The debate on GM foods is a striking example of this
The Precautionary Principle
The non-farming component of rural areas is almost totally lacking a strong political voice
It is not a question of ‘development versus conservation’ or that ‘development’ equals ‘progress’
Conservation IS a form of development
Memes relating to rurality…
We need to become better ecological accountants
becoming native to place, a sort of ‘place-based-learning’
The ideas that perpetuate themselves will survive, those that don’t will not, regardless of how intrinsically ‘good’ or ‘moral’ these ideas might be
The really BIG idea for the 21st century is the management of sustainable development that is relevant to localized human communities
promote an appropriate balance between the individual ego and the good of the wider community
So what is development?
An ethnocentric myth frequently propagated by urbanites is the assumption that the urban life style is "at the centre of things"
the arrogant assumption that urban difference inevitably means ‘better’ rather than simply alternative
If rurality is simply defined as distance from the urban, how does that understanding alter with distance-shrinking technologies that allow me to video-conference to a meeting 1000 miles away ?
the possibilities would seem to exist for combining the convenient hyper-connectivity of urban areas with the high quality aspects of rural lifestyles.
Globally, 50% of the population is under 25 years of age
digeratti
Homo zappiens
In the last 60 seconds, 1000 mobile phones have been sold
Is it possible that rural areas will come to be defined by the opportunities and entitlements of the rural space rather than simply by the distance from centres of dense population?
Island to island education – in the Pacific
there is no ONE rural type, no single image of rurality
to focus upon the urban areas as definitive of the politics, culture, landscape, or economy of a country is self-evidently limiting and erroneous
it is the non-urban areas of a country that characterize and differentiate the nation-state or region from the heterogeneous similarity of humanity that the urban zones exemplify
there are six main reasons why rural areas are important
As sources of biodiversity
As a reliable source of food supply
As vital sources of natural resources and capital
As important localities of cultural reserves
As resources for human recreational activities
As new work spaces for the digital, online age – with the benefits of space and place.
"On our way to a loch, two miles from Inveruplan,Three of us (keepers) read the landscape asI read a book. They missed no word of it:Fox-hole, strange weed, blue berry, ice-scrape, deer's hoof-print.It was their back yard, and fresh as the garden in Eden(Striped rock 'like a Belted Galloway'). They saw what ISaw, and more, and its meaning. They spoke like a nativeThe language they walked in. I envied them, naturally....“
from Norman MacCaig’s poem - Among scholars