On the Rural

A collection of previously untranslated writings by Henri Lefebvre on rural sociology, situating his research in relation to wider Marxist work On the Rural is the first English collection to translate Lefebvres crucial but lesser-known writings on rural sociology and political economy, presenting a wide-ranging approach to understanding the historical and rural sociology of precapitalist social forms, their endurance today, and conditions of dispossession and uneven development. In On the Rural, Stuart Elden and Adam David Morton present Lefebvres key works on rural questions, including the first half of his book Du rural lurbain and supplementary texts, two of which are largely unknown conference presentations published outside France. On the Rural offers methodological orientations for addressing questions of economy, sociology, and geography by deploying insights from spatial political economy to decipher the rural as a terrain and stake of capitalist transformation. By doing so, it reveals the production of the rural as a key site of capitalist development and as a space of struggle. This volume delivers a careful translationsupplemented with extensive notes and a substantive introductionto cement Lefebvres central contribution to the political economy of rural sociology and geography.