Counter-geographies : reproducing rural life at the time of neoliberal conservation.

Contra-geografías : reproducción de la vida rural en tiempos de la conservación neoliberal.

This article examines how rural life spaces are produced and reproduced at the space-time of development, as revealed in counter-geographies. The context framework is the times of neoliberal conservation as a representation of space cross-sectionally marked by socioenvironmental inequality. On the basis of Lefebvre’s spatial triad (conceived, perceived, and lived space), the notions of (social) rural reproduction and land as a place are developed. Besides, the notion of rural counter-geography is posed as a research problem and social fact, as a relational-collective time-space, a place where humans and non-humans, living and dead, participate; it is a rural time-space mediated by emotions, affections, and daily rituals, a space of representation and spatial practice reproduced simultaneously against the grain of neoliberal conservationism.