Short Abstract

Thinking from the “places that don’t matter”, this panel invites anthropologists to engage with cosmopolitanism and nativism as windows onto the multipolar politics of the rural in the 21st century.

Long Abstract

Rural areas have often been seen as hotbeds of rising populism. Yet, these ‘places that don’t matter’ (Rodriguez-Pose 2018) have their own peculiar forms of social and political polarization. These include nativist concerns over who counts as a genuine autochthon and mobilizations against immigration and refugee resettlement, but also practices of rural cosmopolitanism and humanitarian efforts at welcoming Others or aiding their movement across borders (Woods 2018, Fassin and Defossez 2025). Approaching these responses as neat or mutually exclusive opposites however risks reproducing stereotypical imaginaries of rurality predicated upon a series of dichotomies: the romanticization vs. denigration of rural life and ideals, isolation vs. connectedness, overtourism vs. depopulation, conservative vs. progressive politics. Without downplaying the processes of marginalization that rural places have historically undergone during colonization, industrialization and globalization, this panel invites anthropologists to complicate understandings of rurality by discussing cosmopolitanism and nativism as windows into the multipolar politics of the rural in the 21st century.

We are interested in contributions addressing (but not limited to) the following topics:

Rural nativist and/or progressive indigenous movements

Conflicts and commonalities among rural nativism and cosmopolitanism

Human and more-than-human cosmopolitanisms and nativisms, e.g. in relation to preservation of ‘natural’ heritage, ideas of rural commons

Rural politics of (un)belonging, exclusion and inclusion

Experiences of rural remoteness and marginalization, but also of mobility and global connectedness

Concerns over de-, re-, and over-population as they relate to nativist or cosmopolitan stances

Temporalities of the rural, e.g. emphasis on the past vs. futurity

Propose paper