Gendered Rural Spaces research network
This research network was formed in May 2005. Our members are postdoctoral researchers and post graduate students from five universities, whose themes belong to gendered rural spaces. We organise working seminars twice a year. In addition to our permanent members we will later invite also other post graduate students, who have common research themes with us to participate in our working seminars. Other planned forms of activities are an international symposium (December 2006) and a publication (2007). This network is financed with a scholarship from the Finnish Cultural Foundation (2005).Interest in issues of space and place has continued to grow in ethnology and anthropology. For us the countryside is not a neutral space, but is loaded with different cultural, economic, social and political codes and meanings. Countryside has become an arena of different discourses and views: it is not considered merely a geographic location, or background, for human activities and daily life, but is also seen as a complex structure consisting of time-stratified meaningful experiences. Our starting point is to study the countryside in terms of gendered spaces. We focus on developmental processes in rural areas. What are these processes, and how do the people living in these areas experience the changes? What solutions and strategies have they developed in response?
Within this project we feel it is important to consider rural changes and processes from the viewpoint of the individual and the local community. The same processes are ongoing in different parts of Europe. These include the meaning of locality and the relationship between the environment and the local inhabitants. The question of the urbanisation of rural areas is multifaceted and global in scope, and there are various individual solutions and strategies.
Our publication, Gendered Rural Spaces, edited by Pia Olsson & Helena Ruotsala, has been published by Finnish Literature Society; see: http://kirjat.finlit.fi/index.php?showitem=2271