Who are neorurals? or, How capitalist time discipline dilutes political projects and makes it difficult to propose an alternative

Abstract

Urban-to-rural migration is a rising trend across industrialized countries, the significance of which is not interpreted unanimously. The explanations tend to fall into two competing groups: (a) an alternative to capitalism or (b) perpetuation of the status quo, where, on one hand, the richer participants effect a green lifestyle choice, while the poorer participants follow a coping strategy, on the other. Instead of focusing only on the radical fringe, this article describes and analyzes the diversity of the present-day neorural movement in France. It argues that the neorural movement is a multivocal critique of modern capitalist societies that rapidly transforms into an apolitical lifestyle choice once it is confronted with the capitalist value-making mechanisms. It shows that the deradicalization of rural utopia has to do with social stratification and people's enormous difficulty in reappropriating their agency over their time-use and lives at the household level. Finally, it suggests that the imagery of rural utopia could be mobilized for constructing a shared alternative, but one that would require rewriting the rules of socioeconomic interdependence.