Affective Topologies of Rural Youth Embodiment

Abstract

This article explores the affective, embodied dimensions of young rural people's relationship with space and place. Relationship with space and place has been recognised as a significant dimension of rural youths' subjectivities but it has been primarily understood through representational perspectives which focus on young people's perceptions, images, or discursive constructions of their local places. In contrast, this article draws on non-representational approaches to subjectivity and space to highlight the embodied, sensuous entanglements between young people's subjectivities and the spaces they have inhabited and experienced. Qualitative data gathered as part of a project exploring youths' subjectivities in regional Australia shows that young people's experience of their rural locale, as well as their relationship to the city, reflect an affective topology of relations of proximity and rhythmic tempo which emerges from the relationship between the space of their bodily hexis and the spaces and places they are situated within. These non-representational, embodied processes are intrinsic to rural youths' subjectivities and structure how young people approach and navigate their futures.

Young People's Place‐Making in a Regional Australian Town

“…Discursive constructs pervading understandings of place are a common means to understand and characterise place (Halfacree and Rivera ; Farrugia et al . ). Here, social processes are reproduced as conscious, rational articulations based on individuals’ own backgrounds and experiences coloured by pre‐existing place categories (Farrugia et al .…”

“…The focus is less on dominant discourses utilised to construct place, and more on those ‘sensuous processes through which bodies and places come into mutual co‐existence’ (Farrugia et al . , p. 2). Indeed, experiential data in the form of interpretations gathered from the physical senses and emergent ‘feelings’ associated with being ‘in place’ is an important component of a more comprehensive account of people and place (Tuan ).…”

“…While, heterogeneous accounts are generally reported by those who live there (see for example Farrugia ; Farrugia et al . ), discourses which construct an ‘idyll’ or disadvantage still emerge in significant ways among rural residents (see O'Connor ; Rye ). This is because such discursive constructs share a ‘discursive dominance’ (Blokland , p. 1594) within these places.…”

“…2015) that manifests as a conscious process as well as ‘beneath’ conscious articulation (Farrugia et al . ). Place‐making mechanisms encompass an active engagement demonstrated in talk concerning place.…”

City as Lens

“…In this context, work building on Bourdieu's notion of habitus (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) stresses the importance of embedded, place-based class dispositions in the habits and behaviours of young people (Farrugia et al, 2015;Fraser, 2013Fraser, , 2015. From this perspective, despite claims to an apparently 'globalized' youth culture, the role of place remains central to young people's choices, habits and behaviours.…”