Chairs:
Dr. Annett Steinführer
Institute of Rural Studies
Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute (vTI), Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forestry and Fisheries
Bundesallee 50
38116 Braunschweig
GERMANY
E-Mail: annett.steinfuehrer(at)vti.bund.de
Dr. Thilo Lang
Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (IfL)
Schongauerstr. 9
04328 Leipzig
GERMANY
E-Mail: t_lang(at)ifl-leipzig.de
In spite of long-lasting scholarly attempts to overcome the rigid distinction between cityscape and countryside, metropolis and village, the rural-urban divide continues to be a strong border. Research and entire disciplines in many countries are organised around these classic categories. A large part of rural research still legitimates itself with an agrarian background while urban studies often come along without any reference to the wider socio-spatial or political context of the subjects under investigation. Any clear distinction between rural and urban modes of life started to fade away in urbanising parts of the world in the early 20th century the latest. Yet, ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ remain strong and distinct attributes to what is perceived as separate modes of spatiality.
On the other hand, ideas like ‘rurbanity’ or Zwischenstadt (in the scientific realm) or commuters between rural residential areas and urban workplaces or ‘urban farming’ (in daily life) question the very idea of such a clear divide. Globalisation leads to ambiguous consequences of both further vanishing existing urban-rural differences (e.g. with regard to life styles and mobility behaviour) and deepening them (e.g. by endeavours to maintain at least a non-urban image of certain places). Further, process-based understandings of spatiality also lead to new research questions about in-between spaces and phenomena which are not clearly linked to categories such as ‘urban’, ‘rural’, ‘metropolitan’ or ‘peripheral’.
In the proposed session we are interested in research from different countries and world regions dealing with questions beyond a classic rural-urban distinction that opens new perspectives in theoretical and/or empirical terms. We particularly welcome papers that focus on (a) concepts that bridge different modes of spatiality and/or (b) approaches that leave the static notion of ‘the urban’ or ‘the rural’ behind and rather take into account the process character of the production of space as well as the continuous nature of this production.
Please submit your abstract until 8 January 2012 at www.igc2012.org
Veranstaltungsort:University of Cologne
