Paper short abstract:

This presentation aims to show the results of our investigation work on the urban reinvention discourse around rurality. We start to discuss its dimensions (political, cultural and commercial) and the arguments behind its consensual aura, which are related to the contemporary heritage and nature cultural sacralization. Then, we will be able to deconstruct the urbanity of the values, interests and causes that legitimate and support its power. We shall finish in the city body searching for places of rural thematization, to better understand the hegemonic expectations and dreams, that trough the influence power of the reinvention discourse mold "real" territories and, thus, precipitate the landscapes of the emergent consumable countryside.

Paper long abstract:

In several social life spheres the idea, that trough the use and promotion of the rural heritage (natural and cultural) localities can reverse the crisis situation, seem to be recurrent. In fact, there is a hegemonic discourse which encourages the transformation of rural areas in objects for urban consumption. This discourse has a political dimension, materialized by the rural development policies that discourage the dependence on agriculture and stimulate the commoditization of rural places; a cultural dimension, as it works as an established set of positive representations around rurality (the Countryside Ideal); and a commercial dimension, visible in what concerns the dynamics of rural products (and of countryside as a product) promotion. This consumable rurality project is supported by the patrimonialist values that sacralize the cultural and natural heritages and, consequently, confer to the rural territories the mission of preserving everything that is supposedly jeopardized in the cities and in occidental societies in general. The romanticized rurality preserves the past, identities and traditions, at the same time as it guarantees the future, nature and sustainability. So it appeases urban anxieties and constitutes a refuge-value, making sense as an alterity to the city and as a symbolic landscape, molded by its expectations and needs. It is the urban gaze that centralizes this rurality; it is to the urban consumption that the countryside is promoted; it is by its expectations that the local ambitions orient themselves and, therefore, the rural territories.