With globalization primarily considered an urban phenomenon, its impact on rural areas tends to be neglected. This led Gayatri Spivak in “What’s Left of Theory?” to speak of the “spectralization of the rural” and to identify the rural as “the forgotten front of globalization.” In this talk, I will present part of the Introduction to a forthcoming edited volume titled Rural Imaginations for a Globalized World, co-authored with Tjalling Valdés-Olmos. 

The volume brings together academic voices from different disciplines across the humanities and social sciences, as well as artistic voices exploring the crucial role various social, political, economic and cultural imaginations play in determining what aspects of contemporary rural life do and do not become visible nationally and globally, and how this affects the ways in which the rural is politically mobilized, affectively encountered and artistically mediated. 

Rural communities from all over the world have claimed that their concerns– notably about globalization’s detrimental effects – are being ignored and have made themselves heard in protests, elections and referendums. In the process, they have often reaffirmed idealized imaginations of the rural and supported nationalist-populist agendas. At the same time, the rural’s undeniable role in engendering climate emergencies and epidemics (in humans and non-humans) is putting pressure on outdated notions of the rural as an idyllic, isolated space by demanding concerted action across urban-rural-wilderness borders and national ones. 

Asking why, in many places, people remain resistant to alternative imaginations of the countryside, especially when it comes to imaginations that acknowledge the rural’s implicatedness in colonial and other violent histories, is an important part of unearthing why so much about the reality of the rural is being denied, why certain rural actors, not least non-human ones, remain unseen and unheard, and how such realities and actors can be made part of new, more inclusive rural imaginations.

Mike's research interests focus on rural geography and political geography. He is Co-Director of the Centre for Welsh Politics and Society / WISERD@Aberystwyth, an interdisciplinary research centre bringing together geographers, political scientists, historians and other researchers. He is also Aberystwyth Co-Director of the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD), and Co-Director and Theme Leader for the ESRC WISERD/Civil Society Research Centre (2014-19). Mike holds a prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant, GLOBAL-RURAL, which investigates globalization and rural areas (2014-19) and is Co-ordinator of the €5m IMAJINE project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme to examine territorial inequalities and spatial justice (2017-2021).