Publish at February 23 2022 Updated May 01 2025
The rural exodus is a phenomenon of abandonment of the countryside and associated lifestyles. It has contributed to the development of "modernity" and industrialization, transforming farmers into specialized workers. In so doing, it has been accompanied by a systematic reshaping of landholdings (land consolidation) and landscapes, simultaneously increasing agricultural yields, standardizing crops and intensifying pressure on natural resources.
Historians, economists and experts will judge the quantitative and qualitative benefits and drawbacks of this orientation, as well as the side-effects on languages, cultures, the art of living together and territorial dynamics.
According to Ipsos, two million working city dwellers in France have already taken the plunge and moved to a rural commune. Reasons for this include the search for a better quality of life, the desire for a fresh start or the desire to reconnect with family roots.
In a country like France, 100,000 English and Dutch people have also been attracted by the most natural landscapes. To these should be added 3 million who have moved away from the big cities to live on their outskirts. So what some call urban exodus is often a relocation to the suburbs. This phenomenon of disaffection with city centers is affecting Europe and the Western world as a whole, at a time when urbanization is on the rise, but paradoxically leading increasingly to a civilization of the car, and even of mobility, given the distances to be covered in rural areas.
This pendulum swing between city and village or small town is nothing new. With the hippie wave of the 70s, young people fled the cities to settle in the countryside and adopt more sober consumption patterns. For some, this return to the land was an opportunity to experience other things, to experience community life, to get away from what some would call the routine of "metro, work, sleep" and later, in a less rhyming way, "shitty jobs", in other words jobs that keep the economic machine running but have no other meaning than to exhaust oneself consuming between traffic jams, giant screens and raunchy shows.
Today, in a reversal of the trend exacerbated by covid, the figures show a gradual abandonment of the metropolitan ideal and the pleasures of the big city, and a growing popularity of medium-sized towns and even rural or hyper-rural areas. The neo-rural are settling in rural wastelands, either because they're too poor to live in the city, or because they can afford to live in both the city and the country and commute. It's a semi-exodus that's taking place, not entirely depopulating the major metropolises, but driving up property prices in intermediate-sized towns. These neo-ruralites would be welcomed by existing rural dwellers, as they contribute to village life and their presence justifies the provision of services.
What's different from the 70s is the availability of high-speed transport and increased mobile telephony, with greater acceptance of telecommuting. In other words, material resources and broader social acceptance to satisfy aspirations to mobiquity.
The meeting of these neo-ruralites with their urban habits and the natives, heirs to local cultures, could well produce new social, economic and cultural dynamics in territories deserted by the State. What if the fertilization of knowledge produced a neo-peasant common sense, a blend of the quality of living on a territory and the effort of symbolization and conceptualization developed in densely populated areas?
Farmers are said to have a great deal of common sense. This is probably due to an ability to work with nature rather than against it, to observe it, to take cautious steps, to move forward by trial and error, using one's whole head, because in a moving brain, it's ideas that move forward, and lastly, not to hurry.
What characterizes learning in a sparsely populated environment is social learning based on observation, trial-and-error, mutual aid, a strong sense of the terroir that determines learning landscapes, and the existence of time-tested landmark traditions. Together, these specific features contribute to good farming sense. But what is sense, and a fortiori common sense in farming?
The "science of meaning" has been particularly studied. Sense combines interactions and the observer's perspective. According to Larsson (1997): "In order to exist, meaning must contain a cognition or conceptualization that is subjectively recognized, codified and memorized by at least two speakers".
Meaning is thus made up of social exchanges. This is what makes the hybridization of rural and urban cultures so interesting, and it's the neo-ruralists who are the driving force behind the emergence of new meanings. Practices, values and ways of seeing the world rub up against each other, giving rise to new questions and solutions. The resources of each and every one of us have the opportunity to combine and, why not, create a neo-common sense.
This would be a combination of points of attention and shifted resources, complementary views that build a new perspective, with the obvious of one constituting the blind spots of the other. For example, one person trusts in time, takes into account nature's energies, surpluses and whims, understands distances and has consequently learned to anticipate; the other seeks fluidity, the rapid satisfaction of a need, the support of a technique or concept or a specialist to solve problems. Each has its own tools for thinking, its own habits and its own heuristics[search and discovery procedures].
The third places that are currently being invented could well be at the confluence of these ways of thinking, inventing short distribution circuits, internet-based networking methods, and the consideration of projects, resources and ideas that go beyond immediate proximity.
Sources
Educavox. What makes rural areas learning, inspiring and enterprising?
https:// educavox.fr/accueil/interviews/qu-est-ce-qui-fait-de-la-ruralite-un-territoire-apprenant-inspirant-et-entreprenant
Wikipedia neo ruraux - https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A9oruraux
Ipsos - Neo ruraux portraits of city dwellers who have moved to the countryside https://www.ipsos.comrura/fr-fr/neo-ruraux-portrait-des-citadins-venus-sinstaller-la-campagne
France inter https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/le-debat-de-midi/le-debat-de-midi-du-lundi-23-aout-2021
France inter. Urban exodus Why do people never really leave the city and its surroundings?
h ttps:// www.franceinter.fr/societe/exode-urbain-pourquoi-ne-quitte-t-on-jamais-vraiment-la-ville-et-ses-alentours
Larsson, B. (1997). Common sense. Remarks on intersubjective (re)cognition in the epistemology and ontology of meaning. https://lucris. lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/17663944/Le_Bons_Sens_Communs_oa.pdf
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