The Hegemony of the Urban/Rural Divide

Abstract

The urban/rural divide constitutes a socially pervasive lived space, corresponding to what Cresswell calls a moral geography. In modern society, the symbolic association of urbanism, globalism, and mediatization defines the dominant metaphysics of flow, which can be distinguished from the more sedentarist metaphysics of fixity, largely representing rural values and life conditions. This article provides an empirically based account (survey data and qualitative interviews) of how these metaphysics are linked to popular understandings of “the city” and “the countryside” in contemporary Sweden, and how such moral geographies are affected by mediatization processes. The findings suggest that although “the city” occupies a culturally dominant position as the mediated center (Couldry), this position evolves through the mutual interplay between the two metaphysics. Ultimately, it is argued that the mediatized reproduction of an urban/rural divide holds a hegemonic function in contemporary society, annihilating conditions that are neither “urban” nor “rural.”

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