Conceptualizing Rurality with Michel de Certeau

Interrogating (Rural) SpaceInterrogating (Rural) Space
with Michel de Certeau:with Michel de Certeau:
Hybrid Epistemologies and
Igniting the Cultural Turn
Presented by: Scott
Spring 2014

things to remember:
look at the cultural collage
that exists in our modern
city – a city that extends
from our ‘utopian’ urban
dream… now think about
what might lie beneath our
‘idyllic’ representations of
the contemporary
countryside…
Let’s start with Michel de Certeau’s influential chapter…
“The gigantic mass is immobilized before the eyes. It
is transformed into a texturology in which extremes
coincide— extremes of ambition and degradation,
brutal oppositions of races and styles, contrasts
between yesterday’s buildings, already transformed
into trash cans, and today's urban irruptions that
block out its space. Unlike Rome, New York has never
learned the art of growing old by playing on all its
pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in
the act of throwing away its previous
accomplishments and challenging the future.” (p. 91)
An excerpt: the author writes about the hustle
and bustle of the contemporary mega-city:
“Walking in the City”:

Another excerpt: de Certeau writes that the city founded by utopian discourse and
administered by the strucuralist organization repeatedly produces effects contrary
to those at which it aims. These ‘waste products’ can perhaps be reintroduced into
administrative curcuits but the profit system nevertheless generates a loss that is
lived in space.
“…the functionalist organization, by privileging
progress (i.e., time), causes the condition of its
own possibility—space itself—to be forgotten;
space thus becomes the blind spot in a scientific
and political technology. This is the way in which
the Concept-city functions; a place of
transformations and appropriations, the object of
various kinds of interference but also a subject that
is constantly enriched by new attributes, it is
simultaneously the machinery and the hero of
modernity.” (p.95)
things to remember:
Interrogating this ‘blind
spot’ helps us to not only
understand how systems
actually appropriate the
individual experience, but
can reveal leverage points
for emergent strategies
that seek reappropriation
and empowerment.

One more excerpt: the author writes about the contradictory movements
that take place in these “blind spots,” and how these movements overcome
the administrative organization. For me, it is a hopeful passage:
“…we have to acknowledge that if in discourse the city serves
as a totalizing and almost mythical landmark for
socioeconomic and political strategies, urban life increasingly
permits the re-emergence of the element that the urbanistic
project excluded” … “the city is left prey to contradictory
movements that counterbalance and combine themselves
outside the reach of panoptic power. The city becomes the
dominant theme in political legends, but it is no longer a field
of programmed and regulated operations. Beneath the
discourses that ideologize the city, the ruses and
combinations of powers that have no readable identity
proliferate; without points where one can take hold of them,
without rational transparency, they are impossible to
administer.” (p.95)
What about rural space?
How is it becoming a
landmark for socioeconomic
and political strategy?
How is rural space
represented by power
structures and what does
this mean about the
importance of our own
individual representations,
experiences and opinions?

“Walking in the City”: So what does all of this mean?
“Walking in the City” is a chapter from Michel de Certeau’s “The Practise of
Everyday Life” in which he articulates opportunities for ordinary people to
subvert and reappropriate the representations and rituals that structures of
power seek to impose upon them.
He calls the use of these opportunities “tactics”. Tactics are used by individuals
who are acting in environments that are governed by the “strategies” of
institutions and structures of power.
A popular example from “Walking in the City”: using a shortcut in the city
is a “tactic” that undermines the strategic, mapped and intended
grid of the street.
My example: utilizing public transportation and the grid of the city but
lying about status to obtain a cheaper fare.

But why is thinking in terms of “tactics”
and “strategies” important or useful?
“Given the interwovenness of domination and resistance, we must abandon
the view that the space of resistance mirrors that of domination. Resistance
must be examined in its own terms rather than derived automatically from the
nature and forms of domination.” (Ngai-Ling Sum, 2005)
Thinking in these terms can shed light on issues of agency and
resistance. Although tactics cannot produce major structural change,
they can provide the basis “for the emergence of social movements
that combine tactics with longer-range, more encompassing
strategies” (Ngai-Ling Sum, 2005).

What is the “Cultural Turn” and how can we ground Michel de Certeau’s
“tactics” and “strategies” in current debates and relevant literature in the
context of rural studies?
The “cultural turn” can be used as an alternative approach to conceptualizing
rurality. It reasserts the importance of space, and foregrounds “cultural
questions of meaning, identity, representation, difference and resistance in
social science” (Cloke, 2006, 22).
If the “functional” and the “political-economic” conceptualizations of rurality
prove to be inadequate on their own, what we might need is a theoretical
framing that involves social constructions of rurality;
“Regarding rurality as socially constructed suggests that the importance of
the 'rural' lies in the fascinating world of social, cultural and moral values
which have become associated with rurality, rural spaces and rural life.”
(Cloke, 2006, p.21)

What is the “Cultural Turn” and how can we ground Michel de Certeau’s
“tactics” and “strategies” in current debates and relevant literature in the
context of rural studies? (continued)
“…accounts both supportive of and critical of the cultural turn implicitly suggest
that the cultural turn has principally been about cities—about re-imagining, re-
mapping and re-populating the urban”…“most studies inspired by the cultural turn
have taken place quite deliberately outside the perceived intellectual boundaries
of rural studies” (Cloke, 2006, 23-24). Rural studies can embrace the cultural turn
by reappropriating theory that has roots in utopian urban discussions.
It is crucial that we do qualitative research and theory that is implicated – directly,
clearly, actively – in the wider politics of rural space. Unfortunately, “in many ways it
seems that rural policy and politics have been leading the academic community rather
than the other way around” (Cloke, 2006, 25). We need to escape from traditional
epistemologies and move towards a dynamic reclamation of lost constitutive
connections of politics and place.

“Ideas, representations or values
which do not succeed in making their
mark on space, and thus generating
(or producing) an appropriate
morphology, will lose all pith and
become mere signs, resolve
themselves into abstract descriptions,
or mutate into fantasies”
(Lefebvre,1991 [1974], 416-417)
A starting point for solidarity, resistance, and social movements…
We need to understand resistance in
the language of those who are
resisting. We need to do strong
qualitative research that looks to
understand the “tactics” of the
oppressed and recognizes the collage
of individual experiences,
understandings, and representations
that constitute rural space. We need
conceptualizations that recognize the
extremes of ambition and
degradation that not only exist in the
urban (see slide #2), but in the
diverse, dynamic and increasingly
fragmented contemporary rural. We
need to do action-research that aligns
the substance of everyday life with
real avenues for change.
Action Research initiatives which
concentrate on the ‘knowing how’
rather than on the ‘knowledge’ can
help us to uncover how ideas,
representations and values can
more effectively make a mark on
rural space.

Thanks for reading! Happy researching!
And PLEASE check out the cited authors for some good reads!
Academic Sources
Cloke, Paul. 2006. “Conceptualizing Rurality.” In Handbook of Rural Studies, edited by
Paul Cloke, Terry Marsden, and Patrick Mooney, 18-28. London: Sage.
De Certeau. 1985. Practices of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lefebvre, H. 1991 [1974]. The Production of Space. Oxford, Blackwell.
Sum, N-L. 2005. Towards a Cultural Political Economy: Discourses, Material Power and
(Counter-) Hegemony. (Spot Paper). DEMOLOGOS.
Image Sources
http://www.stepbystep.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Difference-Between-Urban-and-Rural-
Community1.jpg
http://www.ppt-backgrounds.net/travel/3691-newyork-city-skyline-backgrounds
http://www.pptback.com/grass-tag.html
http://lovelifeandsoul.com/things-to-keep-in-mind-while-working-on-a-private-blog-network/
*all emphasis is mine (except slide #8)

Conceptualizing Rurality with Michel de Certeau

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