Deprivation and the rural-urban trap

• Departing from the idea that cultural mechanisms are capable of allowing for conceptual dichotomies to create oppression, this article challenges the engrained tradition of using ‘urban/rural’ as guiding labels in societal organization when seen through the prism of deprivation. Two Polish deprivation-ridden estates – one ‘urban’ and one ‘rural’ – were investigated. Having taken account of the residents’ everyday lives in the socio-economic, material and discursive dimensions, our results indicate that the notions of rurality and urbanity imbricate and leapfrog meaningful territories at the local level. Realizing the danger of deploying stereotypes as beacons in governance, from this richly contextualized account we draw that many problems today are space-independent and cannot be attenuated by following development paths reinvented in the name of some empirically questionable yet culturally sustained and politically ontologized spatialities. This, then, calls for rethinking both the discursivity and the elusiveness of rural-urban thinking in the context of deprivation.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Tvärvetenskapliga studier inom samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

rural

urban

deprivation

conceptual dichotomies

spatial thinking

Poland

rural

Human Geography

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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