SURF Seminar: Why Rural (Still) Matters: Planetary Politics, Populism, and Spatial Justice (Online Attendance)

Join us for our first Sustainable Rural Futures Leverhulme Scholarship Programme (SURF) seminar!  
Guest Speaker: Professor Michael Woods (Aberystwyth University)

Around a decade ago, urban scholars began to advance the idea of planetary urbanisation, arguing that the whole of global society had become urbanisation and could be studied through urban theory. Yet, the rural has proved to be remarkably intransigent. This talk proposes an alternative vision of planetary rural geographies, in which the rural is recognised as central to planetary crises. This centrality is reflected in rural support for populist and disruptive politicians, who exploit fears over rural futures and perceptions of rural-urban spatial injustice, as will be illustrated with examples from research in Britain, Europe and the USA. Among other things, rural populism asserts a nostalgic futurism that threatens to derail efforts to address planetary crises through the rural; yet, dismissing rural opinion and pushing through urban-led reordering of the rural risks accentuating perceptions of injustice and increasing political polarisation. Resolving this dilemma requires adopting a normative approach to rural spatial justice that connects local concerns and planetary needs and goes beyond the capacities of urban theory.

Michael Woods is Professor of Human Geography at Aberystwyth University. His research over the last 30 years has explored many dimensions of change in rural areas, including developing concepts of the ‘global countryside’, ‘planetary rural geographies’ and the ‘politics of the rural’. He currently leads the Rural-Spatial-Justice project investigating connections between rural discontent and disruptive politics in the UK, EU and USA through a spatial justice lens, and is Director of the Rural Wales Local Policy and Innovation Partnership (Cymru Wledig LPIP Rural Wales). He was formerly editor of the Journal of Rural Studies and is author of Rural (2011) and Rural Geography (2005).