Șase limite ideologice în reprezentarea omului rural contemporan
Six Ideological Limitations in the Representation of the Contemporary Rural Human

Summary/Abstract: To set out with the aim of performing an exercise of reflection on the topic of the contemporary rural human implies a double deconstruction. The first is triggered by the assumption of the rural human’s existence as an identifiable and analysable character in the field of thinking and representation. Ranging from symbolic valorisation to the simple deictic gesture, the existence of the rural human cannot be subjected to understanding unless it undergoes a deconstruction exercise. On the other side, a second deconstruction is generated by a positioning issue in the critical field: to what extent are we still contemporary with the idea of rural human in the peasant sense of country life? Further, which are the update conditions of rurality in terms of roles and profiles that may set a so-called common place of the rural human? Once these two deconstructions have been operated, other two interrogative lines emerge as the result of our interpretative effort for reconfiguring a possible discourse on the contemporary rural human. First, it is necessary to understand if reconfiguring the contemporary rural human makes the subject of an update matter of a rural anthropology. And, particularly here, we need to walk very carefully since such a project oscillates between a recovery mission (especially of the rural tradition) and a reinvesting activity (modernizing the rural life in the context of globalization). Secondly, we should avoid placing this type of reconstruction in the urban centrist discourse within the urban–rural relationship. The rural–urban symbolic and spatial continuum is not defined by the antinomic accents of the urban–rural relationship, and, under no circumstances, involves a hierarchy. We need a different approach and understanding of the rurality, rural fact, and rural human in this urban–rural continuum. Which are our speculative resources necessary for such an endeavour? First, we need to identify the mental frameworks we use for representing the rural human. The limits ideologically drawn for understanding and perceiving the rural human. Six of these limits, the most relevant ones, are being discussed in this paper. Their relevance is given by their symbolic and ideological effects and their power of structuring the representations and discourses about the contemporary rural human. It concerns the rural–urban relationship, the rural categories (peri urban, medium, and deep rural), the difference between community and association, the rural human’s bond with the agricultural activities, new ruralism, and the relationship between peasant and rural human.

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