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