Sylabus
Requirements:
- Outline of core arguments of the compulsory reading (300-600 words, send per email 3 days prior to each session)
- Oral presentation of one compulsory reading (=literature in italics) and one complementary text of the respective session
- Active participation
- Final essay (4000 - 5000 words)
* Session 1: Introduction
Introduction of the syllabus
Allocation of oral presentations
Group reflection: To me, rural life is, feels, means …
* Session 2: Doing the village
Goodwin-Hawkins, Bryonny (2016): Morris dancers, matriarchs and paperbacks: Doing the village in contemporary Britain. In: Ethnography 17(3), 309-325.
Galani-Moutafi, Vasiliki (2013): Rural space (re)produced - Practices, performances and visions. A case study from an Aegean island. In: Journal of Rural Studies 32, 103-113.
* Session 3: Creative Commodification of rurality
Bardone, Ester; Rattus, Kristel; Jääts, Liisi (2013): Creative Commodification of rural life from a performance perspective. A study of two south-east Estonian farm tourism enterprises. In: Journal of Baltic Studies 44 (2), 205-227.
Baylina, M.; Gunnerud Berg, N. (2010): Selling the countryside. Representations of rurality in Norway and Spain. In: European Urban and Regional Studies 17 (3), 277-292.
* Session 4: Gender relations in post-productivist rural spaces
Wright, Wynne; Annes, Alexis (2014): Farm Women and Agritourism. Representing a New Rurality. In: Sociologica Ruralis 54 (4), 477-499.
Brandth, Berit, Haugen, Marit S. (2010): Doing farm tourism, The intertwinnung practices of gender and work. In: Signs: Journal of women in Culture and Society 35 (2), 425-446.
Brandth, Berit; Haugen, Marit S. (2005): Doing Rural Masculinity - From Logging to Outfield Tourism. In: Journal of Gender Studies 14 (1), 13-22.
* Session 5: Contested rural identities: The example of conflicts over landuse
Mischi, Julian (2012): Contested rural activities: Class, politics and shooting in the French Countryside. In: Ethnography 14(1), 64-84.
Krange, Olve/Skogen, Ketil (2011): When the lads go hunting: The ‘Hammertown mechanism’ and the conflict over wolves in Norway. In: Ethnography 12(4), 466-489.
Brownlow, Alec (2000): ‘A wolf in the garden: Ideology and change in the Adirondack landscape’ in C. Philo and C. Wilbert (eds.): Animal Spaces, Beastly Places. New York, 141-158.
* Session 6: Europeanization and marginalization in rural ‘New Europe’
Aistara, Guntra A. (2014): Actually existing tomatoes. Politics of memory, variety, and empire in Latvian struggles over seeds. In: Focaal 2014 (69), 12-17.
Mincyte, Diana (2011): Subsistence and Sustainability in Post-industrial Europe. The Politics of Small-scale Farming in Europeanising Lithuania. In: Sociologia Ruralis 51 (2), 101-118.
Welz, Gisela (2017): Pure Products, Messy Genealogies. The Contested Origins of Halloumi Cheese. In: Sarah May, Katia L. Sidali, Achim Spiller, Bernhard Tschofen (ed.): Taste | Power | Tradition. Geographical Indications as Cultural Property. Göttingen, 23-34.
* Session 7: Crafting localized food: Power, regulations, imaginations
Paxson, Heather (2010): Locating Value in Artisan Cheese: Reverse Engineering Terroir for New-World Landscapes. In: American Anthropologist 112 (3), 444-457.
May, Sarah (2017): Shaping borders in Culinary Landscapes. European Politics and Everyday Practices in Geographical Indications. In: Sarah May, Katia L. Sidali, Achim Spiller, Bernhard Tschofen (ed..): Taste | Power | Tradition. Geographical Indications as Cultural Property. Göttingen, 51-64.
Sarah May (2013): Cheese, Commons, and Commerce. On the Politics and Practices of Branding Regional Food. In: Ethnologia Europaea 43 (2), 62-77.
Grasseni, Cristina (2014): Family farmers between re-localisation and co-production. In: Anthropological Notebooks, 49-66.
* Session 8: Rural Lifestyle-Migration: Authenticity and Distinction
Benson, Michaela (2013): Living the “Real” Dream in la France profonde? Lifestyle Migration, Social Distinction, and the Authenticities of Everyday Life. In: Anthropological Quarterly 86 (2), 501-525.
O’Reilly, Karen, Benson, Michaela (2009): Lifestyle Migration: Escaping to the Good Life? In: O’Reilly, Karen, Benson, Michaela (Hg.): Lifestyle Migration. Expectations, Aspirations and Experiences. Farnham, 1-13.
* Session 9: Move! Rural Youth and the imperative of mobility
Farrugia, David (2016): The mobility imperative for rural youth: the structural, symbolic and non-representational dimensions rural youth mobilities. Journal of Youth Studies 19 (6), 836-851.
Haukanes, Haldis (2013): Belonging, Mobility and the Future. Representations of Space in the Life Narratives of Young Rural Czechs. In: Young 21 (2), 193-210.
Farrugia, David et al. (2015): Affective Topologies of Rural Youth Embodiment. In: Sociologia Ruralis 56 (1), 116-132.
* Session 10: Urban agriculture: Class and Distinction
Aptekar, Sofya (2015): Visions of Public Space. Reproducing and Resisting Social Hierarchies in a Community Garden. In: Sociol Forum 30 (1), 209-227.
Lyson, Helena C. (2014): Social Structural Location and Vocabularies of Participation. Fostering a Collective Identity in Urban Agriculture Activism. In: Rural Sociol 79 (3), 310-335.
* Session 11: Urban agriculture II: Activism, Subversion and Neoliberalism
Adams, D.; Hardman, M. (2014): Observing Guerrillas in the Wild. Reinterpreting Practices of Urban Guerrilla Gardening. In: Urban Studies 51 (6), 1103-1119.
Rosol, Marit (2012): Community Volunteering as Neoliberal Strategy? Green Space Production in Berlin. In: Antipode 44 (1), 239-257.
* Session 12: Closing session
Final discussion
Planning outline of final essays
Anotace
Migration, Europeanization, digitalization, neoliberalisation and the rise of aesthetical capitalism are just some of the overall societal developments that profoundly transform everyday-life, identity, and livelihood-production in
Europe’s rural regions. These processes bring new social groups into rural communities, they transform gender relations, power distribution and techniques of governance, and they produce new areas of conflict and resistance.
Whereas the boundaries between urban and rural everyday-life often appear to be blurring, rurality stays a highly normative concept that is associated with healthiness, safety, authenticity, nature, community and tradition. As an emotional category, rurality recently experiences a new wave of commodification i.e. in the fields of agricultural and rural cultural heritage tourism, localization of food and the (re-)invention of rural traditions and events.
The seminar is conceptionalized as an entrance point into the emerging field of contemporary rural anthropology and aims at critically reflecting how rurality is done, experienced and lived in a rapidly changing world. Drawing on recent ethnographic literature from various (and predominantly European) contexts, focus is put on exploring practices, materialities and social imaginaries of contemporary rural life.