Henri Lefebvre, On the Rural: Economy, Sociology, Geography

A collection of previously untranslated writings by Henri Lefebvre on rural sociology, situating his research in relation to wider Marxist work.

In collaboration with Stuart Elden, we are pleased to present Lefebvre’s key works on rural questions, including the first half of his book Du rural à l’urbain and supplementary texts. On the Rural: Economy, Sociology, Geography (published March 2022) reveals the production of the rural as a key site of capitalist development and as a space of struggle.

When we contemplate a field of wheat or maize, we are well aware that the furrows, the pattern of sowing, and the boundaries, be they hedges or wire fences, designate relations of production and property

—Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space

On the Rural is the first English collection to translate Lefebvre’s crucial but lesser-known writings on rural sociology and political economy, presenting a wide-ranging approach to understanding the historical and rural sociology of precapitalist social forms, their endurance today, and conditions of dispossession and uneven development.

In On the Rural, we present Lefebvre’s key works on rural questions, including the first half of his book Du rural à l’urbain and supplementary texts, two of which are largely unknown conference presentations published outside France. On the Rural offers methodological orientations for addressing questions of economy, sociology, and geography by deploying insights from spatial political economy to decipher the rural as a terrain and stake of capitalist transformation. By doing so, it reveals the production of the rural as a key site of capitalist development and as a space of struggle.

This volume delivers a careful translation—supplemented with extensive notes and a substantive introduction—to cement Lefebvre’s central contribution to the political economy of rural sociology and geography.

Contents

Stuart Elden and Adam David Morton, ‘From the Rural to the Urban and the Production of Space’

1. Introduction to From the Rural to the Urban (1969)

2. Problems of Rural Sociology: The Peasant Community and its Historical-Sociological Problems (1949)

3. Social Classes in Rural Areas: Tuscany and the mezzadria classica (1950)

4. Perspectives on Rural Sociology (1953)

5. Social Relations, Population Phenomena, and Labor Problems in the Agricultural Sector of Underdeveloped Countries (1954)

6. The Village Community (1956)

7. The Theory of Ground Rent and Rural Sociology (1956)

8. The Marxist–Leninist Theory of Ground Rent (1964)

9. Introduction to the Psychosociology of Everyday Life (1960)

10. The New Urban Complex: Lacq-Mourenx and the Urban Problems of the New Working Class (1960)

11. Experimental Utopia: For a New Urbanism (1961)

12. The Valley of Campan: A Study in Historical Sociology (1963)

The set image reproduces Grant Wood, Fall Plowing (1931).