Available Formats
On the Rural: Economy, Sociology, Geography
By (Author) Henri Lefebvre
Edited by Stuart Elden
Edited by Adam David Morton
Translated by Robert Bononno
University of Minnesota Press
University of Minnesota Press
9th August 2022
United States
General
Non Fiction
Political economy
Human geography
307.76
Paperback
304
Width 140mm, Height 216mm, Spine 38mm
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 Lefebvres 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 Lefebvres key works on rural questions, including the first half of his book Du rural lurbain 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 translationsupplemented with extensive notes and a substantive introductionto cement Lefebvres central contribution to the political economy of rural sociology and geography.
"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
Henri Lefebvre was a noted Marxist sociologist and philosopher whose writings on urbanism and space have been widely influential. His books include The Production of Space and (all from Minnesota) The Urban Revolution; State, Space, World: Selected Essays; Dialectical Materialism; and Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment.
Stuart Elden is professor of political theory and geography at the University of Warwick. He is the author of numerous books, including Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty (Minnesota, 2009) and The Birth of Territory.
Adam David Morton is professor of political economy at the University of Sydney. He is the author of various books, including Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development and Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis (with Andreas Bieler).
Robert Bononno has been a translator from French for more than twenty years. His recent nonfiction translations include Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment, by Henri Lefebvre, and Speech Begins after Death, by Michel Foucault and Claude Bonnefoy (both from Minnesota).