Why do we see the country and the city as intrinsically different spaces and ways of being? Almost 50 years after Raymond Williams (1973) argued that this contrast is “one of the major forms in which we become conscious of a central part of our experience and of the crises of our society,” we continue to see agrarian economies and life as relics of an idyllic past, dissolving at the hands of the forward-marching cities. Against perspectives that saw the development of capitalism as an urban/industrial set of forces slowly gnawing away at rural/agrarian harmonious and simple living, Williams saw industrial capitalism as intrinsically connected to feudalism and agrarian capitalism, the urban to the rural. Rather than reflecting a historical reality, he argued that this spatial and ideological binary was constructed in direct response to the growth of capitalism and imperialism.

Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas—but agrarian livelihoods and lives are not merely withering away. The country-versus-city binary continues to govern our efforts to find solutions to the grave crises of our times. Contemporary solutions, such as agroecology as an antidote to industrial agriculture or green energy as a foil to fossil fuels, invoke the return to a pristine, sustainable past.

This conference will showcase graduate student papers that explore how the country and city constitute each other and investigate how capital, labor, imaginaries, and sentiments flow between the two.

10-11:30 am - Constructing Nature

Presentations by: Michael Cary, Jessie Mayall, Suraj Kushwaha and Finn Domingo

Discussant: Nataya Friedan

Constructions of nature, Williams reminds us, often contain veiled arguments about people, societies and social relations. This panel asks what kinds of social arguments are embedded in ideas of environmental instability and what kinds of politics emerge from them. We begin in England, where romanticized understandings of ‘the countryside’ underlie contemporary visions for landscape ‘optimization’ for food production and carbon sequestration. We then move to the remote Siachen glacier, where representations of the world’s highest battlefield by the Indian Army mediate public consent for militarization through appeals to martyrdom and national pride. From there we move to the aftermath of wildfires in Los Angeles, where the financial mechanisms and socio-economic effects of homeowners insurance are exacerbating an already unaffordable housing market. Finally, we turn to Paraguay, where the infrastructures of defense from destructive floods—and the politics of blame for when they happen—shape the relationship between an expanding city and neglected countryside.

12:30 -2pm - Morality of Improvement

Presentations by: Yui Sasajima, Maria Paula Espejo and Allen Huang

Discussant: Paul Kohlbry

These four papers examine the construction of rural spaces and urban fringes, paying attention to the flexible ideas of home that often lie behind the creation of certain spaces as desirable or ideal. At the heart of this question is the issue of improvement, which Raymond Williams points us to as a driver behind the subjection of tenants and the landless.Drawing on varying methodologies, these papers examine how rural and urban spaces are bridged—or thought to be bridged—through social reproduction, how home is made in new spaces, and who benefits from the drive to “improve.”

2:15-3:45pm - Structures of Feeling

Presentations by: Liam Greenwell, Georgia Koumantaros , Andrew Colpitts and Grace Myers

Discussant: Katharine Lindquist

Raymond Williams invites us to investigate the dialogic relationship between the rural and urban through the unspoken, shared, and historically contingent “structures of feeling” that emerge from cultural texts. This panel examines Williams’s contribution in relation to the moral, symbolic, representational, and material assemblages by which the rural is imagined. In doing so, we ask how the country and the city become sites of imagined dystopia and utopia alike by which people reimagine life in generative ways. These papers track imagined promises of the countryside—from a site for family values, national becoming, future imagination, and self-actualization—in contexts from rural evangelicalism in New York, queer reckonings with both limitation and thriving, folklore and placemaking in coal country, and the contradictions of village life in Greece. The unclear lines between utopia and dystopia trouble the position of the figures involved and promise—or threaten?—collective self-fashioning.

An A.D. White Professors-at-Large keynote public lecture

Thursday, March 27, at 4:45pm, Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall, and via Zoom

Open to all. A reception will follow.

Abstract

The establishment of colonial dispensations on the Caribbean frontier by rival European imperial powers was conceived and implemented within an ideological framework that sanctioned and mandated the extensive use of servile labour. The creation and survival of economic enterprises across imperial borders in mining, agriculture, distributive trades and services, depended upon the availability of coerced unfree labour. Entrepreneurial thinking, likewise, was constrained by a set of specific economic references in which the attainment of growth and profitability, and a stable social order, were seen as contingent upon the supply and organization of unfree labour.

It was clear to all with an interest in the colonial mission that by the seventeenth century the options as far as labour use was concerned were reduced to three basic forms. These choices were the reduction of the conquered indigenous population to servitude on lands apropriated from them, the transfer or surplus labour from the imperial centre to the colonial periphery under set contractual conditions, and the trading in chattel labour from the already well established African market. Also, these forms were considered discrete in the sense that their structures were clilnically demarcated by racial differences – heightened by clearly distinct methods of recruitment.

About the speaker

Sir Hilary Beckles is the eighth vice chancellor of The University of the West Indies-UWI and a distinguished academic, international thought leader, United Nations committee official, and global public activist in the field of sustainability, social justice and minority empowerment. He is president of Universities Caribbean, chair of the Caribbean Examinations Council, chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, and advisor on sustainable development to former United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. He was knighted by the government of Barbados in 2007.

In 2021, Sir Hilary received the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace and Freedom Award. In 2022, he was elected as an Andrew D. White Professor-At-Large at Cornell University. Also in 2022, Sir Hilary presented an Einaudi Distinguished Speaker Series lecture at Cornell. In 2024, he was appointed as Chairman/Chancellor of the United Nations University (Tokyo), begin in May 2025.

Sir Hilary has published over 100 peer reviewed essays in scholarly journals, eight plays, and over 13 books on subjects ranging from Atlantic and Caribbean History to gender relations in the Caribbean, sport development, and popular culture. The breadth of Beckles’s scholarship and its generalizability to many fields has captured the interests and imaginations of a vast array of audiences worldwide.

A highly sought-after speaker, Sir HIlary has lectured extensively throughout Europe and Asia. Beckles received his higher education in the United Kingdom and graduated in 1976 with a B.A. (Hons) degree in Economic and Social History from The University of Hull, and a Ph.D. from the same university in 1980.

This event is part of an A.D. White Professors-at-Large (ADW-PAL) visit and is cosponsored by the Dept. of History and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. For more information on a week of events with Sir Hilary Beckles, please visit this site.

Spring 2025 Harry ’51 and Joshua ’49 Tsujimoto Perspectives in Global Development Seminar Series

Abstract

The intersection of race, class and gender in the conception and design of the Atlantic Slave system continues to attract multidisciplinary research interest. The Caribbean, and the southern US colonies, provide sharp contrast in some areas but share common structural and social aspects. The presence of white women, bonded and free, was central to the roll out of chattel enslavement as a race-specific order that targeted Africans. The social interactions of white women and Africans, male and female, challenged legislators and provided the core context for continuous refinement of the rules of racial engagement. Indeed, the specific legal architecture of black enslavement (in particular the slave code) was principally a response by white males to protect property rights in production and reproduction. By defining the role and function of white women as carriers of the seed of freedom the slave based order was rendered economically sustainable.

About the speaker

Sir Hilary Beckles, eighth vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies, is a distinguished academic, international thought leader, United Nations committee official, and global public activist in the field of social justice and minority empowerment. Beckles is a 2024 Andrew D. White Professor-At-Large at Cornell University.

He received his higher education in the United Kingdom and is professor of economic history. He has lectured extensively in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. He has published over 100 peer reviewed essays in scholarly journals and over 13 books on subjects ranging from Atlantic and Caribbean History, to gender relations in the Caribbean, sport development, and popular culture.

Beckles is president of Universities Caribbean, chair of the Caribbean Examinations Council, chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, and advisor on sustainable development to former United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. He was knighted by the government of Barbados. He has received numerous honorary doctorates from around the world and recently received the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace and Freedom Award.

About the seminar series

The Harry ’51 & Joshua ’49 Tsujimoto Perspectives in Global Development Seminar Series showcases innovative approaches to development with experts from around the globe. Each year, the series attracts online registrants from over 45 countries and more than 350 organizations.

Seminars are held Wednesdays from 12:20-1:10 p.m. eastern time during the semester in 101 Bradfield Hall. Students, faculty and the general public are welcome to attend in-person or via Zoom.

The series is co-sponsored by the Department of Global Development, the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, and the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management as part of courses GDEV 4961, AEM 4961, NTRES 4961, GDEV 6960, AEM 6960, and NTRES 6960.

Part of the A.D. White Professors-at-Large Program. For more information on a week of events with Sir Hilary Beckles, please visit this site.

Come to the LRC to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.