Le rural, une catégorie opératoire pour penser les mutations socio-spatiales françaises.La géographie rurale d’hier à aujourd’hui 

Abstract

The article focuses on the last century of rural geography. It is not our intention to retrace the entire history of the discipline, but to isolate some major shifts. We have chosen to discuss the emblematic urban-rural couple that has constantly resurfaced and has shaped the approaches of both rural and urban geography. First, we analyse how the urbanization of the countryside almost led to the disappearance of the rural category in the 1970s. Then we see that rural geography has been able to reinvent itself on the basis of a certain number of « reserved » themes. The last part will be devoted to the peri-urban, a (im)possible synthesis of the rural and urban.

Keywords

• Rural geography
• Nature
• Agriculture
• Rural
• Cities/countryside
• Periurban