The Methodology of Political Economy: Studying the Global RuralUrban Matrix

(Hardback)

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The importance of the global rural-urban matrix is often overlooked due to urban-normativity. But sometimes agrarian populism and a pastoral rural imaginary result in the equally fallacy of a rural-normativity, as in Jeffersonian nostalgia for a lost way of life that never existed. The nature of rurality in North America is important to study, but as Alessandro Bonanno makes clear, we cannot limit ourselves to the study of one or two nation-states. We must take a global perspective when it comes to the bio-physical environment and the nature of the world capitalist system. This collection takes such a perspective. The editor frames the contributions with a Meta-Paradigm called the New Political Economy Perspective (NPEP) and explains the roots of that approach in Classical Political Economy and the Canadian Political Economy Tradition of Harold Adams Innis. There are chapters by an anthropologist, a geographer, two generalist sociologists and a group of rural sociologists. There is also a chapter on psychiatry and mental health; and, another chapter which discusses pedagogy. The use of an inter-disciplinary framework to study global issues makes this a stimulating book which provides a window on issues that are often overlooked.

Reviews

This book argues persuasively for the importance of rural society in the context of the urban world, together making up a system of historic struggles and transformations. A set of distinguished scholars of rurality review their careers to show how the personal is also the global. The reader will find intellectual connections all the way from the German Historical School to the tradition of Canadian political economy. Altogether, a combination of the world-historical past and the future of the socially-constructed environment. -- Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania
This elegant volume brings together ten provocative essays by veteran scientists, combining elements of their personal lives with their life of scientific research and writing, under the skilled editorial hand of Prof. Hans Bakker, to advocate for a new perspective to understand the global urban-rural matrix of our contemporary life.They call for an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary view of Planet Earth, our "shared lifeboat," so that we may more fully grasp and appreciate the interdependent web of existence, and our common destiny. -- John Johnson, Arizona State University

Author Bio

J.I. Bakker is the 20142015 Stanley Knowles Distinguished Visiting Professor in Public Policy at Brandon University. He is member emeritus of the American Sociological Association and the Rural Sociological Society.