ARTICLE IN PRESS Journal of Rural Studies 23 (2007) 125–141 www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud Trial by space for a ‘radical rural’: Introducing alternative localities, representations and lives Keith Halfacree Department of Geography, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK Abstract This paper is concerned with bringing together and drawing out some diverse strands of thought and action that are striving—from within a broadly green anti-capitalist agenda—to produce a rural space that is different from and a challenge to the mainstream trajectories that the production of the rural is taking in the global North. First, I outline the main elements of a new model for thinking about rural space in general that tries to incorporate three different facets of ‘space’ that have been teased out through geographical scholarship. This draws inspiration from work by Henri Lefebvre. After demonstrating this model in respect of the post-1945 productivist rural, I introduce it to debates about the emerging contours of the post-productivist countryside. Drawing predominantly on British examples, the second half of the paper develops one element within the heterogeneous potentiality of this post-productivism to consider some key aspects of what I term an example of ‘radical’ rural spatiality. This examines its perceived localities, conceived formal representations and partially lived everyday lives. The final main section gives brief consideration to opportunities now being presented to this radical rurality but also notes the considerable challenges that lie ahead. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Rural space; Rurality; Post-productivism; Green radicalism; Utopia; Theory 1. Introduction: getting to grips with rural change The structure of the paper is as follows. First, I introduce the model for thinking about rural space, one that tries to Throughout much of the global North today, challen- incorporate the different facets of ‘space’ so beloved of ging and critical questions are being asked with respect to theoretical geographical debate. Second, I operationalise how the ‘rural’ parts of these countries are developing and, this model in the context of debates about the changing perhaps still more importantly, should or could be spatiality of the British countryside. I develop one under- developing1. This reflects a strong feeling that rural change, researched and under-conceptualised element within the although something that has of course always been with us, heterogeneous post-productivist countryside by examining has intensified in terms of both pace and persistence, and a (potential) ‘radical’ rural spatiality. I then go on to that this change is also seen as being increasingly total and consider some of the opportunities and challenges facing interconnected (Woods, 2005). The key aim of this paper is any production of such a radical rurality in the present day. to use a recently developed model of rural space to This paper is set within a resurgence of interest in illuminate currents within this changing rurality that inject ‘utopian’ ideas within geography (e.g. Harvey, 2000), albeit a politically radical spatial challenge to the predominant that these have been strongly ‘urban’ to date (e.g. Baeten, scripting of the countryside that is emerging. 2002), perhaps partly reflecting a failure to appreciate the rural’s potentially radical ‘message’ (Halfacree, 2003a). Opening up the debate about our future rural(s) argues against teleology, inevitability, and unidirectional or E-mail address: [email protected]. 1Of course, the rural South is also in considerable transition but, singular models of socio-spatial change. Some element of without wishing to exaggerate a North-South dualism, the detailed our (rural) future is always there for the making. The paper changes here are in many ways quite different. also implicitly cautions against premature writing-off of 0743-0167/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2006.10.002 ARTICLE IN PRESS 126 K. Halfacree / Journal of Rural Studies 23 (2007) 125–141 the ‘rural’ as a relatively distinctive spatial category, not urban in his own life and work but his ideas can still be least at the level of everyday life, where it retains ‘an unruly used to re-interrogate the former. and intractable popular significance’ (Whatmore, 1993, Lefebvre’s model of space has, of course, been outlined p.605). and developed in numerous locations (e.g. Gregory, 1994; Merrifield, 1993, 2000, 2002; Shields, 1999). One of its core 2. A model for interrogating rural change elements is its attempt to transcend the dualism of conceived/abstract versus perceived/concrete to incorpo- The country is a foreign land. It shouldn’t be, yet it is rate its embodiment as lived (Elden, 2004, pp. 187–90); its (Perec, 1997 [1974], p. 68). entanglement with everyday life. I now consider each element in terms of my own understanding2. Critics may 2.1. A three-fold model of space feel that such use of Lefebvre’s ideas takes liberties but, as Merrifield (2000, p. 173) has observed, this is in many ways A few years ago, in a report on social exclusion, in the spirit of his own wide-ranging inquiries. It can also Shucksmith (2000, p. 6) observed how ‘Most people in be noted that my appropriation here is not atypical of Britain know little about rural areas beyond a purely visual Anglophone geographers’ interpretations of Lefebvre’s appreciation’. He went on to suggest reasons for this: ‘Seen work on space, such as Harvey (1987), Merrifield (1993) through a car window, or a TV screen, it is easy to see rural or even Soja (1996); cf. Elden (2001). areas as idyllic and changeless y [especially when we] First, there are spatial practices. These are the actions carry a picture of an imagined countryside where farming that ‘secrete’ a particular society’s space, facilitating both families till the same land as their forebears, where material expression and societal reproduction. Spatial everyone knows and supports one another in ‘commu- practices are inscribed routine activities and their expres- nities’, where life is slower and somehow better’ (p. 6). sion bears similarities with the concept of locality (Half- Moreover, this powerful representation of the rural is often acree, 1993). They are associated with how we perceive not challenged in the daily lives of many rural residents, ‘real’ (Elden, 2004, p.190) space. whose quotidian practices centre on working in the city and Second, there are representations of space. These formal for whom the rural is reduced to a ‘lifestyle’, the village a conceptions of space, as articulated by businesspeople, mere ‘dormitory’. We have what the radical French farmer planners, scientists and academics, refer to space as Jose´Bove´(quoted in Bove´and Dufour, 2001, p. 125) conceived or ‘imagined’ (Elden, 2004, p.190). They are disparages as a ‘cardboard-cutout countryside’. abstract and expressed through signs, plans, blueprints, Recognising the partiality of having such a perspective jargon, codes, etc. on the rural, whilst also acknowledging the central role of Third, there are spaces of representation. These diverse representations, daily lives and practices (all noted in the and often incoherent images and symbols are associated paragraph above), leads me to advocate the model of rural with space as directly lived—the spatial performance of space summarised below. This model is rooted in earlier everyday life. Although clearly linked to perceived and work (e.g. Halfacree, 1993) but now adds inspiration from conceived space—the ‘real-and-imagined’ (Elden, 2004, the late Henri Lefebvre (especially Lefebvre, 1991 [1947]). p.190)—spaces of representation refer to more symbolic Lefebvre was, of course, a social theorist (and much more) generations and appropriations by users into quotidian who recognised and promoted the importance of the meanings and local knowledges. Spaces of representation critical study of everyday life (e.g. Lefebvre, 1991 [1974]) can be subversive when they result in space being throughout his work (see appraisals in Elden, 2004; substantially (re)appropriated by marginal groups. Merrifield, 2000; Shields, 1999). One of Lefebvre’s most influential theorisations, at least to date in Anglophone interpretations (cf. Elden, 2004), is 2Lefebvre’s work has been very little used in Anglophone rural studies his seminal ‘conceptual triad’ for understanding space. This to date; as such, the introduction of his spatial conceptualisation here is, it is hoped, useful in its own right. This neglect is particularly notable given model attempted to bring together the diverse interpreta- Lefebvre’s early career as a rural sociologist (see Elden, 2004, Chapter 4; tions we have of space, which are all too often inadequately Unwin, 2000) and the inspiration he got from the rural throughout his life problematised (see Massey, 1992), into a unitary social (e.g. Merrifield, 2002; Lefebvre, 1991 [1947], pp. 131–132, Chapter 5). theory (Shields, 1999, Chapter 10). Although coming to Indeed, although Unwin (2000, p. 15) argued that Lefebvre ‘had very little fruition in a strongly urban context in the 1970s that to say about rural life’, some of his work on the rural is starting to come through in English translation (e.g. Lefebvre, 2003, pp. 111–120) and reflected, for example, the highly prominent, dynamic but appreciating this context helps us to understand more broadly how his contested character of urbanisation Lefebvre noted in ideas of space developed. (As one referee usefully noted, there is still very numerous works, the model can be applied to the rural if much at least a paper to be written on Lefebvre’s rurality.) One noted we see the latter as a category that can emerge—not as a exception to the neglect of Lefebvre in rural studies is Phillips’s (2002) dualistic ‘response’ to the urban (see Lefebvre, 1996, pp.