1. The Rural in the American Geographical Imagination
Cheryl Morse
University of Vermont Geography Department

2. One and a Half Minute Writes
Please write about a rural place you have experienced.
Name the place and describe it as if you were explaining it to a Martian.

3. One and a Half Minute WritesB.
Please describe what immediately comes to your mind when I say “Vermonter”. Describe this person: their age, attire, occupation, setting, actions, race, gender, etc.
Again, you are writing to a Martian, so be descriptive.

4. Is the Rural an important subject of geographical study?

5. Geographical Imagination
Our mental maps of places; and the ways we render spaces and places
“a lot of geography is in the mind”
Doreen Massey
What we expect of a place, even before we experience it for ourselves.
what we expect of other social groups within specific spaces.

6. the importance of a “geographical mind”

7. Discourse How do we develop our Geographical Imaginations?
A collection of ideas, beliefs and understandings that inform the way in which we act, and which are expressed in the material, taken-for-granted, everyday world. They are always partial and contested views of the world.
(Woods, M. 2005)
Lay (everyday)
Media
Academic
Social construct: a social concept or idea (such as race, class, gender, age) that is institutionalized and normalized within a culture to the extent that people behave as if it were a ‘real’ or a pre-social given (Woods, M. 2005)

8. Defining the Rural At 3 scales of analysis: Global United States
Vermont
Iceland photo: Florence Lynds

9. Common Attempts to Define the Rural
Population-Based Definitions
Socio-cultural Definitions (descriptive)
Defining the Location and What is Done There
Social Representation

10. The Global Rural
New Zealand photo: Ben Fleishman

11. Global Demographic and Economic Trends in Rural Places
Bergen, Norway photo: UVM Student Ashley Barnes

12. The Global ‘North’
Vernazzo, Italy

13. …and the Global ‘South’
Three Villages, Ghana photo: Justine Jackson

14. Rural in the United States
Lay Discourses: What did you come up with in your writing exercise?

15. Media Discourses

16. America’s Favorite Rural Representative: Kenneth!
In case you haven’t yet met Kenneth Parcells from NBC’s 30 Rock :
Clogging!
Here’s what we learn about New Yorkers’ views of the rural when Jack and Liz visit Stone Mountain:

17. Academic Discourses, part 1
Wild Nature – Social Culture continuum (W. Cronon)
Geographies of Exclusion – marginalized people are often located in marginal spaces, and aligned with dirt (D. Sibley)
Rural norm is coded as male, white, working-class, heterosexual, conservative
Bias against rural in the Academy (urban is the assumed norm)

18. What do we learn about the rural from Rango?

19. Mr Foxworthy, tell us about Rednecks

20. Academic Discourse, part 2
Redneck is code for poor rural whites (Jarosz and Larson)
Obsolete
Unsophisticated
Not quite white
Racist
‘lowest’ class / white trash
There are hierarchies of whiteness

21. The Rural and Identity
The rural/urban opposition generates not only political and economic conflict, but social identification as well. (Creed and Ching)
Our identities are crafted from and developed in opposition to place identities
These place markers can travel

22. Detachment of the Sign from the Place

23. The Rural in Vermont
Who was that “Vermonter” you imagined at the beginning of class?

24. Bumper stickers of VT

25. Or are we becoming more urban and more rural at the same time?
Vermont County Population, 2010
Two Vermonts:
One Rural and One Urban?
Or are we becoming more urban and more rural at the same time?
GRAND
ISLE
6,970
FRANKLIN
47,746
ORLEANS
One of every four Vermonters lives in Chittenden County
ESSEX
6,306
LAMOILLE
24,575
CHITTENDEN
156,545
CALEDONIA
WASHINGTON
Chitt. County’s population is 2.5 times larger than the next most populated county, Rutland
ADDISON
36,821
ORANGE
WINDSOR
RUTLAND
61,642
POPULATION
6,000-7,000
24,000-62,000
BENNINGTON
156, 545
loss of pop since 2000
WINDHAM
Data: US Census

26. Rural – Urban Differences in Vermont
Population (2009 est)
413,705 (66.5%)
205,055 (33.5%)
Per Capita Income (2008)
$37,480
$41,139
Earnings per Job (2008)
$35,867
$46,043
Poverty Rate (2009 est)
12.0%
10.5%
Not completed High School
14.5%
11.5%
Completed College
27.0%
34.8%
Data: USDA Economic Research Service

27. Media Discourse on Vermont’s Rural Culture and Landscape
1947: Vermont Life is Born

28. The Co-Dependence of Rurality and Tourism in Vermont
photo and logo: VermontVacation.com

29. Sabra Field
Woody Jackson
Phyllis Chase
Contemporary Representations of Vermont Landscapes – How Media Reproduces Constructs

30. Vermont’s Media Discourses
Rusty DeWees
One of Vermont’s Rural Representatives

31. Summary
‘Rural’ is a social construct, that like race and gender, spatializes social, political, and economic differences
There are many ‘rurals’
The ‘rural’ plays a powerful role in the construction of geographical imaginations, and in the formation of identities