RHN 42/2026 | Event
Organisers: Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung
28 - 29 May 2026, Hamburg Germany
Politics of Land. The Politicization of Rurality in Europe since the late 20th Century
Suggestions to explain this development are discussed in various disciplines. The workshop at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research will bring perspectives from different fields of research together and embed the topic in a broader conceptual framework. The aim is to raise new questions about the connection between the politicization of rural areas, the current loss of legitimacy of political representation and changes in land use. On the one hand, it is necessary to clarify what sustained the fabric of political relationships, the disruption of which is said to have provided the urban-rural divide with new significance. On the other hand, it needs to be discussed which material developments have shaped the current portrayal of economic and social conflicts in political categories of the rural.
Previous studies have emphasized the relational nature of the concepts of city and countryside and placed their changing meanings in recent decades in the context of globalization and Europeanization. The discussions of the workshop will build on these findings and link them to the question of the conditions under which “the countryside” could become a resource for political mobilization. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the aim is to go beyond short-term analyses of the present and examine how changes since the last third of the 20th century have made possible new representative claims that feed on the contrast between city and countryside.
Programm
Thursday, 28 May
1:30 Philipp Müller (Hamburg): “Introduction. Politics of Land in 20th and 21st Century Europe”
1:45 Michael Woods (Aberystwith): “Spatial Justice, Disruptive Politics and the Future of Rural Land in Europe”
2:30 Natalia Mamonova (Trondheim): “Extremely Dangerous Overlap: Farmers’ Protests and Right-Wing Populism in Europe”
3:45 Anette Schlimm (Hannover): “Bootstrapping out of Backwardness: Rural Spaces in the Neoliberal Age”
4:30 Jaume Franquesa (Buffalo): "The Construction of Empty Spain: A Term in Search of Political Meaning"
5:15 Piotr Zuk (Helsinki): “Planetary Justice and Multispecies Justice in Food and Energy System Transitions in Rural Areas”
Friday, 29 May
9:00 Édouard Lynch (Lyon): “The Policizations of the French Countryside and Agricultural Trade Unionism in the 20th Century”
09:45 Domenico Perrotta (Bergamo): “Anti-Environmentalism, Anti-Europeanism, and(or) the Crisis of Medium-Sized Farms. Emerging Topics and Debates in the Italian ‘Tractor Movement’ (2024-2025)”
11:00 Susana Narotzky (Barcelona): “Farmers’ Environmental Unrest: Struggles Over the Protection of Resources and the Rural Right in Murcia”
11:45 Judith Miggelbring (Leipzig): “Rural populism and the ‘Urge to Transform’: Observations from Lusatia”
12:30 Giacomo Loperfido/Christopher Banditt: Round Table Discussion
Kontakt
carolin.mueller@his-online.de
Further information: https://www.his-online.de/
Source: H-Soz-Kult