There is too far afield between idyllic and provincial. On the one hand, rural communities are confronted with severe population decline and ‘dying villages’, on the other hand, the promise of a ›simple‹ life close to nature has unleashed deep longings by an urban view on rural spaces, not just since the artists’ colonies of modernism. Yet the early works of rural sociology and its efforts to achieve a more differentiated analysis of rural societies at the beginning of the 20th century already clearly stated that rural lifeworlds are more complex than the talk of the village community and the persistent (pre-)judgment of its backwardness compared to urban modernity would suggest. In fact, it is precisely the historical transformations of the village – and its stories – that open up a new perspective on the peripheries of modernity. It becomes apparent that ›rurality‹ in its material spatial structure as a (finite) resource, far removed from stereotypical romanticizations, represents a central arena in the history of socio-political conflicts and social differentiation. The ›rural‹ emerges from cultural interpretation schemes and aestheticizations, and rural ways of life also prove to be deeply shaped by social dynamics.

In winter 2024/25, the Mosse Lectures will take discursive excursions into the countryside and consider rural spaces as the subject of cultural imaginations as well as political and economic appropriations: How have rural ways of life changed in modernity, how has the “rural” been described and imagined in the multitude of its concrete forms as a scheme of interpretation (mostly shaped by the urban view)? Is the ›province‹ the venue for an alternative, anti-metropolitan politics? Where is the boundary between city and countryside as a cultural or natural space – and does it even exist considering the functional connections between the spaces? How does literature work on the construction, shifting or dissolution of urban-rural boundaries and what challenges does an increasingly urban society face with regard to the conditions and limits of ecologically sustainable agriculture?

PLEASE NOTE: The Mosse Lectures will take place in the Senatssaal of Humboldt University (Unter den Linden 6). The room is barrier-free accessible.