Rural Inventions

As news of an impending COVID-19 lockdown emerged in March 2020, rumours abounded on social media that the A6 autoroute du soleil out of Paris would be gridlocked. Again, in October, as a second lockdown loomed, the southern newspaper La Dépêche fearfully anticipated an epidemic influx of Parisians, noting almost 400km of traffic jams around the capital. This pandemic urban escape story was a lingering symptom of ‘the farmhouse bug’ afflicting city-dwellers since the 1960s, with second homes in the countryside a long-cherished antidote to the modern city (p. 38). Yet, as Sarah Farmer later relates in retelling the story of photographer Raymond Depardon’s journey along that same A6 autoroute du soleil, clashing views of shopping centres and acacia-clad farmhouses seen from the car window tell their own story of ‘modernization, dislocation and departure’ (p. 116). In a compelling and timely treat for historians of modern France, Farmer’s book explores the complex relationship between city and countryside, the renegotiation of these spaces in the post-war world, and the often controversial migrations between the two

Archaeology · Economic history · Media studies · Modernization theory · Newspaper · Political science · Rural area · Sociology · World War II · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Literature and Culture Studies