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The importance of the global rural-urban matrix is often overlooked due to urban-normativity. But sometimes agrarian populism and a pastoral rural imaginary result in the equally fallacy of a rural-normativity, as in Jeffersonian nostalgia for a lost way of life that never existed. The nature of rurality in North America is important to study, but as Alessandro Bonanno makes clear, we cannot limit ourselves to the study of one or two nation-states. We must take a global perspective when it comes to the bio-physical environment and the nature of the world capitalist system. This collection takes such a perspective.
The editor frames the contributions with a Meta-Paradigm called the New Political Economy Perspective (NPEP) and explains the roots of that approach in Classical Political Economy and the Canadian Political Economy Tradition of Harold Adams Innis. There are chapters by an anthropologist, a geographer, two generalist sociologists and a group of rural sociologists. There is also a chapter on psychiatry and mental health; and, another chapter which discusses pedagogy. The use of an inter-disciplinary framework to study global issues makes this a stimulating book which provides a window on issues that are often overlooked.
List of contents
1.Introduction: J. I. ("Hans") Bakker
The Methodology of a New Political Economy: Studying the Global Rural-Urban Matrix
2.Alessandro Bonanno
Globalization and "Research Nationalism in Rural Sociology
3.Archibald ("Arch") Haller and William ("Bill") Haller
A Rural Sociologist and a Sociologist
4.Sonya Salamon
An Anthropologist in Rural Sociology
5.Douglas ("Doug") Constance
The Doctors of Society: Making a Difference with Rural Sociology
6.Alex McIntosh
A Privileged Life
7.Anthony ("Tony") Fuller
From Part-Time Farming to Multifunctionality: Reflections of a Social Geographer
8.Ken Bessant
Theorizing Community as Relational Social Life
9.Tom Sørensen, Robert Kleiner and Andreas Sørensen
Social Psychiatry on the Path of Rural Sociology: A Trip to the Lofoten Islands of Norway
10.Alexander ("Alex") Stingl
The Rural Imaginary: Integrated Interdisciplinarity in the Study of the Political BioEconomy
11.Carol Jenkins
The Insights of Rural Sociologists: My Journey as a Professional Pedagogist
12.Conclusion: J. I. ("Hans") Bakker
The New Political Economy Perspective
About the author
J.I. Bakker is the 2014-2015 Stanley Knowles Distinguished Visiting Professor in Public Policy at Brandon University. He is member emeritus of the American Sociological Association and the Rural Sociological Society.
Summary
This academic book explores anthropological, geographical and rural sociological ways of studying rurality and the global rural-urban matrix under the contemporary world capitalist system. The main theme of these contributions by senior scholars is that the study of the rural is worthwhile and should not be ignored due to urban-normativity.
