The importance of rural. UHI inaugural professorial lecture

1. Why bother about
„rural‟?
Inaugural Professorial Lecture of Frank Rennie

2. Beautiful
landscapes
also have
people!

3. Is „rural‟ a
What do we really
fixed state,
mean when we
or a
say the word
relational
„rural‟? Is it a very geographical
narrow, or a point?
very broad
focus on life?
We know it when we see it 2008 marks the
tipping point
More than 66% between rural and
of Earth‟s land urban residents
surface is rural

4. “I was never fond of towns, houses, society, or
(it seems) civilisation ….. the sea, islands,
islanders, the island life and climate, make and
keep me truly happier” RLS

5. Where I live

6. What are resident
the labels educator
of rural Being
areas? „rusticated‟
was a
environmentalist
punishment
Community academic
crofter activist

7. As a species we Biotopes and
had 100 million habitats
years of fine
tuning….
It is barely 5,000
years since cities
came together
What is the Images of
status of a cultural
rural stereotypes
resident?

8. Stereotypes
of rural
place and Some are
harmless,
rural people
and some
are…..
http://tinyurl.com/37qeaw6

9. Economic
development by
itself does not
constitute GDP as an indicator of development
progress …. has severe limitations
The basic Urban identity lies
entitlements in the overweening
of health, concern for the
education, primacy of political
and political economy
liberties are
features of Perceptions the natural environment
well-being are also socially constructed

10. Pluriactivity as a survival strategy
Pluriactivity as a
Is there a link response to
to the genetic economic
diversity of volatility
natural
systems? Grapes of
The
Wrath
characterisation
of rural life in
literature…
Sunset Song
The creation of mythical rurality

11. Neil Gunn
John Buchan
Scholar Gipsies
A kinship with
nature
Walden - Thoreau
Rural bliss versus urban materialism?
Sustainable Development = economic, social,
environmental, and social equity evaluations

12. Homo sapiens…. as a physical mass
… as a living
organism … in the
ecosystem
As a cultured human
being …. Interacting with
The landscape is
the environment ........
sanitized and
reconstructed to appear
in an image …. valued
more highly than .. reality
a result of this is the re-invention of the countryside…..

13. Our
images The cultural landscape is a mythical
of the heterogeneous image….
rural
identity
“Beyond the farmers‟ frontier, there is no
such thing as countryside. Instead, there is
wild, raw nature, a wilderness.”
Faith in progress Both kinds of arcadia, the
is itself some idyllic as well as the wild
kind of religion are landscapes of the
urban imagination

14. Fabricating
nature

15. It was the success of the rural economy
that allowed the urban dream
“in 123 BC, Rome assumed
the responsibility of distributing
a monthly ration of corn – free
– to every eligible citizen (not
including women, children, and
slaves of course!”
The importance of grain in fuelling urban growth and
power should not be underestimated

16. It was the
commoditisation
of agriculture
The natural environment
that initially
itself has become
enabled
regarded as natural capital
urbanisation
The concept of the foodshed
Foodmiles
We are entering an age when
localism is seen as a modifying
Grow your own factor to the debilitating effects
of globalism

17. Photo by Katy Walters www.geograph.org.uk/photo/527766

18. There is a case that
rural communities
are inherently more
sustainable than A man in
urban ones Assynt
but
We currently face powerful drivers in the form of
trans-national agribusiness, and their desire to
extend and consolidate their global empires….

19. The food web
This level of at the centre of
connection to popular
the rural awareness
ecosystem
has been The debate on GM foods is
progressively a striking example of this
obscured for
most
cosmopolitans
The Precautionary Principle

20. The non-farming component of
rural areas is almost totally
lacking a strong political voice
It is not a question of „development
versus conservation‟ or that
„development‟ equals „progress‟
Conservation
IS a form of Memes relating to rurality…
development
We need to become better
ecological accountants

21. The ideas that
becoming native
perpetuate
to place, a sort of
themselves will
„place-based-
survive, those that
learning‟
don‟t will not,
regardless of how
The really BIG idea intrinsically „good‟ or
for the 21st century „moral‟ these ideas
is the management might be
of sustainable
development that is promote an appropriate
relevant to localized balance between the
human communities individual ego and the good
of the wider community

22. So what is An ethnocentric myth frequently
development? propagated by urbanites is the
assumption that the urban life
style is "at the centre of things"
If rurality is simply
the arrogant defined as distance from
assumption that the urban, how does that
urban difference understanding alter with
inevitably means distance-shrinking
„better‟ rather than technologies that allow
simply alternative me to video-conference
to a meeting 1000 miles
away ?

23. the possibilities would Globally, 50% of the
seem to exist for combining population is under
the convenient hyper- 25 years of age
connectivity of urban areas
with the high quality digeratti
aspects of rural lifestyles.
Homo zappiens
In the last 60
seconds, 1000 Is it possible that rural areas will
mobile phones come to be defined by the
have been sold opportunities and entitlements
of the rural space rather than
simply by the distance from
centres of dense population?

24. Island to
island
education
– in the
Pacific

25. there is to focus upon the urban areas as
no definitive of the politics, culture,
ONE landscape, or economy of a
rural country is self-evidently limiting
type, and erroneous
no
single
image
of it is the non-urban areas of a
rurality country that characterize and
differentiate the nation-state or
region from the heterogeneous
similarity of humanity that the urban
zones exemplify

26. there are six main reasons why rural areas are
important
As sources of biodiversity
As a reliable source of food supply
As vital sources of natural resources
and capital
As important localities of cultural reserves
As resources for human recreational activities
As new work spaces for the digital, online age – with
the benefits of space and place.

27. "On our way to a loch, two miles from Inveruplan,
Three of us (keepers) read the landscape as
I read a book. They missed no word of it:
Fox-hole, strange weed, blue berry, ice-scrape, deer's hoof-
print.
It was their back yard, and fresh as the garden in Eden
(Striped rock 'like a Belted Galloway'). They saw what I
Saw, and more, and its meaning. They spoke like a native
The language they walked in. I envied them, naturally....“
from Norman MacCaig‟s poem - Among scholars