Thoughts of a Critical Theory of Rural Communication

• In Event: Critical Communication Theory: Times and Spaces

Abstract

Outside of certain sectors of human geography and rural sociology we are hard pressed to find serious and sustained critical scholarship on the rural as a condition of social
existence, as a phenomenological experience, as a modality of capitalism, or, most pertinent to this essay, as medium of – and for – communication. Media and communication scholars are as guilty as their peers in other disciplines for failing to take seriously their own version what Marxists call “the agrarian question.”This paper is a first attempt to develop a critical theory of rural communication. In the end, it is does not offer a concrete declaration of such design, but rather points the way forward by underscoring issues and subjects that such a theory should engage with. Drawing on critical scholarship in media and communication studies, political economy, critical geography, phenomenology, and mobility studies, this essay aims to point the way forward for a critical theory of rural communication.

Author

• Christopher Ali, U of Virginia