Providing places for structures of feeling and hierarchical complementarity in urban theory: Re-reading Williams’The Country and the City

Abstract

This paper reflects upon intellectual possibilities of Raymond Williams’ classic study The Country and the City (1975) within current urban and regional research. First, the paper canvasses the relevance of the book by constructing a frame of reference based on its citations in urban and regional studies. The principal findings of this approach discern frequent use of the main points developed by Williams in recent discourse. Thereafter the paper raises two issues that have been somewhat neglected in the present adoption of The Country and the City. First, the possibilities of the concept of structure of feeling still seem underdeveloped in urban and regional research today. The idea of generation-specific structures aims at the heart of the habit of urban theory-making. Second, drawing on the work on hierarchies of French anthropologist Louis Dumont the binary relationship between country/city shown in the book could be used as a fruitful methodological starting point for thinking about representation in more recent studies of spatial relationships.

The intricate geographies of gender ideologies in Germany

“…Raymond Williams' idea of a structure of feeling is a possible explanation for the intersection that occurs. Williams' concept has received augmented consideration in contemporary urban theory (Parker, 2012, p. 531;Dirksmeier, 2015). Following Williams, the detected 'imagined rurality' in Germany's western part might be interpreted as a specific structure of feeling, analyzed by Williams as ''perpetual retrospect to an 'organic' or 'natural' society'' (Williams, 1975, p. 96).…”

Comparative urbanism for hope and healing: Urbicide and the dilemmas of reconstruction in post-war Syria and Poland

“…It manifests itself also with an excessive memorialisation of violence both through countless monuments and in the popular culture (Napio´rkowski, 2016). In this way, urbicide reverberates in what Raymond Williams dubbed the 'structure of feelings' (Dirksmeier, 2016;Williams, 1975), that is the city's collective emotional disposition.…”

The relationship between patriotism and regional identification: a cross-country analysis

“…This local response to macroeconomic conditions is responsible for a region gaining its concrete form, because of the local structures of feelings that are supposed to “hold together” regional spaces in their relationality (Paasi 2010 ). As Milner ( 1994 ) emphasises, structures of feeling can be understood as a “generation-specific medium of processing human experiences” (Dirksmeier 2016 , 889). Region, from the relational perspective, is thus a process of sedimentation of an emerging region into the spatial structure and spatial consciousness of a society (Varró and Lagendijk 2013 ), or even local community.…”