Still surprises in store. Revisiting the ordinary in rural geography

Abstract

Since at least the early 1990s, one of the most exciting and productive areas of work within rural geography, notably in Britain but also elsewhere, has been in «neglected rural geographies ». Such work, influenced prominently by postmodernism and the «cultural turn», seeks to build up a fuller picture of the diversity and variety of lives and experiences found in rural areas today. The present paper, whilst being highly sympathetic to this work, argues that it must not lead to the neglect of the more «ordinary» in the countryside today, or what Chris Philo (1992) famously caricatured as «Mr Average». Although the lives and experiences of Mr Average may initially appear mundane, in the spirit of Henri Lefebvre’s critical engagement with the everyday, we can often find within this ordinariness more engaging, even extraordinary truths. The paper develops this argument for the study of «ordinary rural geographies » by examining the ordinary, extraordinary, and extraordinary ordinary within counterurbanisation. However, as reiterated in the conclusion, it advocates the search for the extraordinary within the ordinary across the breadth of rural geography.

Keywords

• everyday
• rural geography
• ordinary
• counterurbanisation
• Lefebvre