Document Type

Contribution to Book

Publication Date

2005

Publication Title

Rural Change and Sustainability: Agriculture, the Environment and Communities

ISSN/ISBN

978-0851990828

First Page

215

Last Page

229

Publisher

CABI

Publisher Location

Cambridge

Keywords

exurbia, urban fringe, urban planning, urban agriculture, hobby farms, sprawl

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.

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