The 2017 Rural Symposium was diverse and informative, and I have a few reflections about it that are relevant to this blog’s Rural Geography discussion.
In this piece I discuss the trends in rural research, and the field in which all this research belongs. For a more focused look at one particular research project, see another recent post of mine: Why one ag research project requires the expertise of many
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Research Review: what was discussed at the 2017 Rural Symposium?
I started off by browsing through a few researchers’ poster presentations at the 2017 Rural Symposium. Posters that particularly drew my attention included
–KTT in a Digital Age (Knowledge Translation and Transfer – i.e. extension)
-Transitory Experiences of People Immigrating to Rural Ontario
-a project observing iodine concentrations in groundwater and in Ontario milk
See abstracts for these and more presentations
I did a bit of reading of these posters, and, drawn to the conversation of migration started discussing with with a classmate some of the realities of moving into a new rural community. The consensus was that there are challenges for any person or family moving into a rural community, though those challenges may be much greater for a new Canadian resident (recall the Off the Grid News Article discussed last week).
As I was considering the trends of the research being shown in this room, I overheard one professional at the conference talking with their co-worker. Now, this was a passing conversation, and I’m grateful to the (unknown to me) conversers for bringing up an interesting discussion. Some of the research had been framed as rural development, and some people were unsure why.
“I don’t know how I feel about calling it rural development.”
A snippet of their thoughts- all I heard, really. But it brings up great questions.
Why call it rural development? Is that phrasing accurate? Or relevant? Many topics were discussed at the conference that could be related to development. For example…
-the development of technologies such as KTT (see Michelle Linington‘s abstract)
-Improving access to broadband internet (Mamum Chowdury, MBA, PMP)
-Developing better decision-making processes for sustainable resource management (Scott Brown and Lissel Hernandez)
(using frameworks, lenses and talking about community capital- sounds like development to me)
Is this development?
Social improvement, resource management, technological advances… these could all fit into the “development” field. So why wouldn’t it be accurate to call this a discussion of Rural Development?
- I’m not really sure.
Certainly a few questions arise for me
–Is there a negative connotation with considering this a discussion of rural development?
We wouldn’t call it urban development- but urban planning, design, public health, the diverse topics arising from questions of “Urban” would incite (I think) a term more like “critical studies”
-Does “development” imply a disparity between urban and rural that may or may not exist?
We have learned that the rural urban dichotomy is unclear and at times seemingly arbitrary –though there are distinct differences, the two-bin categorization is lacking. With that said, I wonder if a conference title such as “Rural Development” is inaccurate and implies that…
- the dichotomy is clear and distinct
- the main difference is a socio-economic one (with the less-privileged rural communities requiring development). Put another way, the term “international development” to me implies an imbalanced relationship- one party with power, privilege and finances, and one party without.
My conclusions:
1. Just and accurate language is really important in conveying ideas (I am definitely just learning to apply this), and perhaps “Rural Affairs” would be just as accurate a description for our discussions at the conference.
- The conference was great! The confluence of diverse thinkers in really important matters was incredible to see, and I loved the interrelatedness of the multiple research projects. To me, describing the research as Rural Development is acceptable, and necessarily broad: a product of the diversity of discussions fostered during the day.
If you are sparked to discuss any of this, please let me know. I think everybody in the class was at the conference at some point during the day, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
MT
For a bit of follow-up, check out twitter #ruralsym17
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