Variegated forms of planetary ruralisation: A multiscalar contextual analysis of evolving ruralities of China's Dike-Pond System

Abstract

Urban-centric attempts to disrupt the urban-rural binary have provoked a re-envisioning of rurality/ruralisation in recent rural scholarships, refracted through the lens of planetary and relational thinking. This paper engages the nascent field of planetary and relational rural geographies by proposing a ‘multiscalar contextual approach’ to showcase how planetary rurality should be understood within historical-geographically variegated contexts. This multiscalar contextual analysis enriches, substantiates, and supplements emerging planetary and relational rural geographies by synthesising the political-economic approach and post-humanistic thinking to accentuate the changing forms of planetary ruralisation across multiple spatial scales and historical periods. These variegated forms result from the interplay between multiscalar political-economic forces and diverse more-than-human agencies, generating uneven social, economic, and ecological impacts. Through a historical-geographical analysis of how China's Dike-Pond System (DPS) – a centuries-old integrated aquaculture-agriculture system – has evolved and adapted to capitalist planetary urbanisation, this paper interrogates how Chinese rurality, while exhibiting certain commonalities with rural changes across global contexts, undergoes dynamic changes and generates distinct spatio-temporal varieties. Specifically, we showcase DPS's transformation across three distinct political-economic conjunctures: from ‘green yet colonial rurality’ (1500s–1900s), through ‘backward rurality’ (1980s-2012), and to ‘upgraded and romanticised rurality’ (2012-present).