Ruraal, bestaat het nog?

In het boek dat ik hier gisteren besprak staat ook een column van Jonathan Rigg met de fraaie titel “Where in the world is the rural”. Hij constateert zoals zo velen dat het onderscheid tussen platteland en stad aan het verdwijnen is. New urban classes are colonizing the country side. De laatste alinea van zijn column gaat over Thailand en is te mooi om niet in zijn geheel te citeren:

“It is not unusual to find rural households in Thailand where land is no longer worked; where the thread of farming knowledge between the generations has been broken; where young man and women live away from home but entrust their children to their grandparents; where sons and daughters are registered as resident in one place but live in another; where villages surrounded by rice lands are supported and sustained by income from factory work; and where the buffalo is memory. There is a deep sense that the pace and character of change in the Asian countryside is such that scholars are playing theoretical and explanatory catch-up, while governments are attempting to manage a process that they do not fully appreciate, rarely understand and, often, do not particularly like.”

Jonathan Rigg “Where in the world is the rural” in: A. Amin and M. O'Neill: Thinking about almost everything, Durham University / Profile books, 2009