Contribution to Book
Engagement with the land: Redemption of the rural residence fantasy?
Rural Change and Sustainability: Agriculture, the Environment and Communities
(2005)
Abstract
Many assessments of the contribution of rural amenity migrants to rural sustainability have been rather bleak – or have considered the possible contributions of these migrants in terms of pessimistic opportunism. Although many who move to rural places to consume an amenitized rural lifestyle contribute significantly to the maintenance of these rural landscapes, the landscape that has resulted from their residential, rather than productive, use of rural areas poses some difficulties for environmental planners (Gertler, 1994; Troughton, 1995). For planners and residents interested in facilitating the negotiation of rural sustainability, it is important to identify ways in which rural in-migration supports, obstructs, or transforms the sustainability of the rural landscape. We could improve our attempts to navigate the contentious relationship between the increasing popularity of rural residence and the widespread condemnation of ‘sprawl’ by better understanding rural residential practices that contribute to the balance of ecological and human processes of the rural landscape. The amenitization of post-productivist agriculture provides a parallel to rural residence useful for looking at the shortcomings of both, and at how they could play a more constructive role in sustaining the rural landscape. Post-productivist agriculture and rural residence share location, symbolic content, and even a vocabulary of debate, especially relating to countryside change. The popularity of rural living and boutique agriculture share a sense of connection to nature that is apparent as a concern for the environment and a desire to incorporate ‘nature’ into daily life. This is manifested in green living environments, a pleasant commute, and organic food. However, these manifestations of a connection to nature also tend to share a certain superficiality. The problem with this aesthetic superficiality is elaborated by Philip Krang (2002) in his use of Marx’s (1906) idea of ‘commodity fetishism’ (a belief in seemingly magic, unworked-for appearances of desired ends) to account for what has happened to expectations of both agriculture and rural residence. The fetishization process has involved the packaging of a series of ideas into representative symbols that are consumed as a proxy for thinking about, or participating in, those processes which the symbols have come to represent. As connection to nature has become increasingly valued, and as the demand rises for consumables which promise this connection, terms such as ‘rural’ and ‘organic’ have become highly valued symbols of desirable outcomes such as good health and environmental sustainability. However, the supply of organic food has been increased by the very industrial techniques against which ‘organic’ initially defined itself. Acting as a proxy for the complex set of practices and ideology embodied in the term, ‘organic’ has become available as a consumable, promising good health and environmental sustainability, while obscuring access to practice and ideology. The term ‘organic’ thus transforms agriculture, pushing the boundaries of industrial agriculture to include organic production, while being itself transformed, as a term, into something more accessible by purchase than practice. Vigorous discourse about these transformations in both mainstream and alternative media has helped to maintain awareness of, and engagement in, the political processes of naming and marketing, especially as the meaning of organic standards has been negotiated. Authors who point out the social construction of the natural, such as Michael Pollan (2001; 2002a; 2002b) and William Cronon (1995), have played an important role in these negotiations in the United States, particularly in their New York Times Magazine stories. In his colourful cover stories, Pollan criticizes industrial organic production, challenging, although at the same time sympathizing with, the easy option of consuming ‘certified environmentalism’ – an environmentalism someone else will do for you, and that allows your resources to be produced without tarnishing your idea of nature. Cronon’s (1995) critique of privileging wilderness over everyday landscapes highlights a similar obstacle to what might otherwise redeem the rural residence fantasy: by encouraging conceptions of nature and the countryside that do not include human work and residence, we prevent ourselves from coming to terms with the processes which support everyday life. Consequently, we also cultivate blindness to the environmental degradations upon which we depend but from which we alienate ourselves by offloading them to what Lawrence Summers infamously called the ‘underpolluted’ countries (Mokiber and Weissman, 1998).As geographers, and often vocal participants in the discourse on sprawl, it is important that we, like Pollan, help to keep this discourse open against the tendency to polarize the debate into pro-market and anti-sprawl ‘sides.’ We should thus remain open to an understanding of the desires of the millions of homebuyers who have made the countryside residential. Just as industrial organic agriculture provides a paradoxical means to achieving a desirable future for farming, rural amenity residents provide a paradoxical way of maintaining the rural landscape by stretching the definition of sustainability to suit as many parties as might possibly support it.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2005
Editor
Essex, S., Gilg, A., and Yarwood, R.
Publisher
CABI
Citation Information
K. Valentine Cadieux. "Engagement with the land: Redemption of the rural residence fantasy?" CambridgeRural Change and Sustainability: Agriculture, the Environment and Communities (2005) p. 215 - 229 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/kvalentine-cadieux/17/