Rural Spatial Justice: Rural Discontent, Spatial Justice and Disruptive Politics in the 21st Century

From the election of Donald Trump to Brexit to rises in support for populist and right-wing parties in Europe and elsewhere, recent years have witnessed disruptive political movements and events that have commonly been presented as involving urban-rural or core-periphery polarization and drawing support from marginalized rural populations. Yet research examining disruptive politics is fragmented and partial and reveals significant gaps in our understanding of connections between rural discontent and disruptive political movements, the geographies of mobilization and significance of material and perceived inequalities. RuralSpatialJustice aims to establish whether and how rural discontent and perceptions of spatial injustice have shaped dynamics of disruptive politics, and, by extension, to reinvigorate the study of electoral geographies through new conceptual perspectives and methodological approaches. RuralSpatialJustice develops a novel spatial justice framework to analyse the factors contributing to disruptive politics and employs a mixed-methods strategy combining statistical analysis, GIS, large-scale survey, ethnography, interviews, textual analysis and participatory research. In order to elaborate a holistic, comparative perspective, RuralSpatialJustice examines case studies in the UK, Europe and the US states of Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, including examples of electoral and non-electoral mobilization over the last quarter-century. RuralSpatialJustice seeks to recognize the diversity of rural societies, engaging with marginalized communities to explore their perceptions of (in)justice and how these have wider political and societal consequences through articulation in disruptive political movements and events, and investigating possibilities for fairer, more inclusive futures.