On the Rural: Economy, Sociology, Geography

by Henri Lefebvre, Stuart Elden (Editor), Adam David Morton (Editor), Robert Bononno (Translator)

Overview

A collection of previously untranslated writings by Henri Lefebvre on rural sociology, situating his research in relation to wider Marxist work

On the Rural is the first English collection to translate Lefebvre’s crucial but lesser-known writings on rural sociology and political economy, presenting a wide-ranging approach to understanding the historical and rural sociology of precapitalist social forms, their endurance today, and conditions of dispossession and uneven development.  

In On the Rural, Stuart Elden and Adam David Morton present Lefebvre’s key works on rural questions, including the first half of his book Du rural à l’urbain and supplementary texts, two of which are largely unknown conference presentations published outside France. On the Rural offers methodological orientations for addressing questions of economy, sociology, and geography by deploying insights from spatial political economy to decipher the rural as a terrain and stake of capitalist transformation. By doing so, it reveals the production of the rural as a key site of capitalist development and as a space of struggle. 

This volume delivers a careful translation—supplemented with extensive notes and a substantive introduction—to cement Lefebvre’s central contribution to the political economy of rural sociology and geography. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781517904692
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Stuart Elden is professor of political geography at Durham University.

Table of Contents

From the Rural to the Urban and the Production of Space

Stuart Elden and Adam David Morton

Notes on Translation

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction to From the Rural to the Urban (1969)

2. Problems of Rural Sociology: The Peasant Community and its Historical-Sociological Problems (1949)

3. Social Classes in Rural Areas: Tuscany and the mezzadria classica (1950)

4. Perspectives on Rural Sociology (1953)

5. Social Relations, Population Phenomena, and Labor Problems in the Agricultural Sector of Underdeveloped Countries (1954)

6. The Village Community (1956)

7. The Theory of Ground Rent and Rural Sociology (1956)

8. The Marxist-Leninist Theory of Ground Rent (1964)

9. Introduction to the Psychosociology of Everyday Life (1960)

10. The New Urban Complex: Lacq-Mourenx and the Urban Problems of the New Working Class (1960)

11. Experimental Utopia: For a New Urbanism (1961)

12. The Valley of Campan: A Study in Historical Sociology (1963)

Publication History

Index

Editorial Reviews

"On the Rural is a remarkable collection. Lefebvre wrote as a historian, a sociologist, a geographer, a political-economist, and a philosopher. This makes for challenging reading at times but there are also brilliant passages that will goad readers on to the next page. "—Cleveland Review of Books

From the Publisher