On being "rurban": A Nordic academic conference

The theme will be "Rurbanity in Nordic Landscapes" when Nordic Geographers meet in February, 2022, in Joensuu, Finland. Abstracts are due by Nov. 12.

 

Here's a description of the concept "rurban."    

The dichotomy of the rural and the urban is one that has been cultivated and reproduced for a long time. One concept is defined by the other and their contestation affects everyday practices, biographical decisions and even institutional arrangements and political agenda. The concepts have long been in the focus of geographers in different research contexts. This session, however, is interested in the mingling of the two and calls for contributions that theorise and inquire empirical data through the prism of rurbanity. Rurbanity (Masuda & Garvin 2008) here is understood not only as a territorial indication, but also includes fusion of practices, movement, lifestyles, interactions, assemblages, hybridities etc. Thus, we call for papers that would assess enacted and experienced rural-urban differences and coexistences.

 This can include community relations, mobilities, narratives, mnemonic practices, heritage management, landscape change, bordering dynamics, institutional reforms, ruralisation of the urban as well as urbanisation of the rural. We encourage the papers to delve on the following questions:

• Do we still have rural and urban landscapes or is it more beneficial to tackle them as rurban landscapes as the logic behind their operation is similar? 

• How has the development of mobilities changed the structural and spatial processes in rural and urban areas? 

• Do these mobilities reproduce the concepts and make them more distinct or do they blur the conceptual borders between the two? 

• What are the relations between everyday practices and the rural/urban conceptualisation? 

• How are the recent social and technological developments affecting the community relations in the context of the rural/urban borders? 

• How are the people sensing these borders? 

• How are migration processes shaping the understanding of the rural/urban borders? 

• How are the contemporary urban elements shaping the rural everyday and what rural elements are affecting the urban lives? 

• How have institutional reforms been shaping the urban/rural dichotomies? 

• How much have institutional regulations been driven by these opposites? 

• How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected the rurban dynamics? 

• Have the borders between rural and urban sharpened or blurred? Why?