| Abstrakt: |
The aim of this article is to impose some order on the diversity of claims and conceptions related to the countryside. In the Netherlands, discourse analysis is deployed as a methodological tool to that end. Discourses construct an object, in this case the countryside and its rurality. Discourse has constitutive power as the signs, symbols and statements composing it make the world meaningful to ourselves and others. It is important to stress the socially embedded nature of discourses, that is, the processing and contested construction of the social world through specific actors in specific spatial and temporal circumstances. These actors' constructions are based on representations concerning in this case, the dimensions and characteristics that define the rural. These representations are drawn upon by social actors in both their discursive and non-discursive actions and exist at the social rather than individual level. They are indeed social representations, the terms through which people understand, explain and articulate the complex social and physical environment in which they are immersed. These terms are consensual means of making the unfamiliar familiar. |
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