Post-Agrarianism and De-Urbanization. a New Look at the Non-Urban Perspective: History, Models and Theoretical Approaches

The paper deals with the philosophical and cultural origins of “anti-urbanism” (presented by Theocritus, Virgilius, Rousseau, Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, Tolstoy), characterized with the aid of using the choice to create a set of values primarily based at the consciousness-cleaning effect of nature and rural labor. The paper highlights the long development of this discourse in both classic and modern works, discussing urbanites’ and rural residents’ social life, in particular, its phenomenology. It is proven that nowadays society, typically in Russia, the metropolis more and more demonstrates the tendency of centrifugal migration and the go out of city citizens to the so-called “small territories” and lengthy distances from the megalopolis. This process is seen as potential major social change and is the main focus of the presented study.

Meanwhile, the territories, typically within the Near North of Russia and within the Non-Black Soil (“Chernozem”) Region, having in large part misplaced their former dominant agricultural purpose, are beginning up new horizons of post-agrarianism primarily based on new kinds of modern type (typically online) labor, ecologization, and recreation.

These data and tendencies open a probable destiny prospect of a brand-new hypostasis of urbanization dialectically transitioning into its opposite, which is mentioned as postagrarian.
Based on the social drivers of rural changes (rural crisis and urban expansion, community effects, and social effects of economic activity), two models of migration to the rural areas are examined — agricultural-archaic and post-agrarian-recreational, each with specific personal goals and subjective senses of migrants’ urban life. The paper also mentions the common postagrarian transition of Russian rural landscapes tendencies and speculates on the ways postagrarian changes may be witnessed in the future. Particular attention is paid to the interaction between communities of citizens leaving megacities and local residents, and rural tourism issues and other recreation forms are discussed.