Resurgent back-to-the-land and the cultivation of a renewed countryside
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4445779 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Edvin Sandström (0000-0002-5006-3160, Department of Urban and Rural Development Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) Uppsala Sweden, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 544-563 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociologia Ruralis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0199 • E-ISSN: 1467-9523 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/soru.12406 |
| OpenAlex | W4303987171 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 20 |
| References cited | 30 |
In connection to concerns about, for example, climate change, peak oil, pandemics and the depopulation of many rural areas, there has been a counter-migration from urban to rural areas in past decades. An important part of this counter-migration is the so-called 'back-to-the-land' migration of former urban residents who move to rural areas and adopt primarily agrarian lifestyles. Through a review of 48 migration letters in which migrants write about their experiences of moving from urban to rural areas to commence agriculture, this article explores the underlying ideals and agricultural practices of the back-to-land phenomena and discusses what significance this form of agricultural migration may have for understanding broader sustainability transformations and contemporary rural change. Important questions concern: What kinds of motives, practices and ideals underpin back-to-the-land migration? What relevance does "back-to-the-land" have for how we comprehend rurality and how the current food landscape is changing? Based on the letter reviews, this article illuminates four interconnected themes with regard to back-to-the-landers practices and ideals. Back-to-the-land as (i) rebelling against payroll work and meaningless lives in the cities, (ii) reinvention and retrotopia, (iii) reconnecting with nature and cultivating resilient alternatives and (iv) resistance and silent revolution. The article argues that the current back-to-land migration contributes to the construction of a renewed rurality-a reinvented form of rurality-that are adapted to suit both present and future needs in a world that is perceived as becoming more unruly. The article further suggests that, although back-to-the-land migration may not yet have any significant material implications on the current food system, the ideals and practices the back-to-the-landers profess, provide an important imaginary of how we can comprehend an alternative 'rurality' that reconnect people, land and food in more sustainable ways, through, for example, benign ways of practising agriculture and organising the food system. In this light, the current back-to-the-land phenomena can be seen as a particular form of sustainability migration of voluntary peasantry that is based on retrotopian ideals of a rural past that is paired with progressive sustainability practices of the present
Agrarian society · Agriculture · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Land use · Political science · Resistance (ecology) · Rural area · Rurality · Sociology · Sustainability · Urban sprawl · Urbanization · Ecology · Law · Organic Food and Agriculture · Rural development and sustainability · Urban Agriculture and Sustainability
Living a one planet life
Growing utopia – undoing risk through self-sufficiency and urban gardening
When City Meets Village
Creative newcomers and local food culture
Entrepreneurial Back‐to‐Landers
Saving, sharing and shaping landrace seeds in commons
Fantasmatic narratives of past and present Swedish back-to-the-land movements
Entrepreneurial back-to-landers
Psychological health among livestock owners, the potential effect of large carnivores
A narrative study of why young people go ‘back-to-the-land
Learning legitimacy in context
Mutual reinforcement of economic and social exchanges between new farmers and rural communities in China
Agri-tech startups in India
Career Change Into Farming
Conditions of Possibility for Deep Social Change—Imaginaries Concerning Normality in a Finnish Online Discussion on Self‐Sufficiency
Cultivating Farm Spaces
Repopulating peripheral rural areas? The approach of the Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas
Narratives of the future
Permaculture and back-to-the-land migration
Engagement of new entrants in mountain farming through the lens of generativity
Den gröna drömmen
Peasants and the Art of Farming
The New Peasantries
Moving to the Countryside … and Staying
To revitalise counterurbanisation research? Recognising an international and fuller picture
Why return migrants return
New farmers’ efforts to create a sense of place in rural communities
Translocal practices and proximities in short quality food chains at the periphery
Leaving Athens’
Back-to-the-house? Gender, domesticity and (dis)empowerment among back-to-the-land migrants in Northern Italy
Nurturing proximities in an emerging food landscape
The stock market and the steppe
From dropping out to leading on? British counter-cultural back-to-the-land in a changing rurality
Back‐to‐the‐land in the Twenty‐first Century – Making Connections With Rurality
Towards a Deeper Understanding of Agricultural Production Systems in Sweden – Linking Farmer’s Logics with Environmental Consequences and the Landscape
Capitalism and Its Discontents
The Good City
Trial by space for a 'radical rural
Growing a Radical Ruralism
Cultivating Back-to-the-Landers
Enhancing Adaptive Capacity in Food Systems
The peasantries of the twenty-first century
The political economy of agroecology
Food sovereignty and new peasantries
| Unique citing works | 20 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 6,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 18 |