ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have focused on the discursive and the material construction of the ‘rural’. It has been argued that the ‘rural’ exists primarily as an imagined category, a social construct that is brought into being through the production and reproduction of discourses that make claims about what the rural is, where it is, and how it should be managed. Yet, as the preceding chapters also demonstrate, the rural is also grounded and given material form. The materiality of the rural is both a product and a refl ection of prevailing discourses of rurality, and can also serve to constrain and inform the discursive construction of the rural. The family farm, for instance, is a key motif in many imaginings of the rural, but it is also a distinctive material entity. As a material entity, the family farm has impacts on the local rural economy, rural environment and rural society, which in turn infl uence the discursive reproduction of the rural.
