Saving the countryside: how, what and by whom? Mobilising identities and aesthetics of conflicted space

Using the notion of the rural as a conflicted space, this project aims to expand and pluralise rural life and the image of the countryside in a way that can strengthen the ability of regions and rural areas to achieve sustainable development and learn from local contexts on how to accomplish this. This includes tending to how people living and working in Swedish rural spaces identify with local communities through identity building in social media and community activism and how they relate to the imaginaries of the countryside through aesthetic expressions. With the aim to illuminate the countryside as a conflicted space the project departs from three theoretical strands—the call from settler colonial scholars to explore the everydayness of settler colonialism, efforts by critical Whiteness scholars to spatially locate Whiteness and long-time calls from critical race and indigenous feminists for White women to interrogate their responsibilities in challenging White supremacy. The following research questions will be explored (1) What are the notions of how the countryside should be saved, and what makes an attractive rural area and attractive for whom? (2) What values are seen as important for rural livelihoods, and what do sustainability and local development mean to those living in rural locations? (3) Who is included and/or excluded in the saving of rural communities, of and by whom?