Our dreams of a perfect countryside blind us to rural reality

For many people, the image that is conjured up when they imagine life outside the city is one that harkens back to an earlier era: an idyllic countryside, timeless, serene, far removed from the rest of the world. 'As a result, we are actually only seeing half the story of the effect that ever-increasing globalisation is having on our world,' says Esther Peeren, professor of Cultural Analysis at the UvA. Current events, such as the corona crisis and the Dutch farmers' protests, are only making this even clearer, according to Peeren. Many of people's perceptions are fuelled by cultural representations of the countryside. Films, TV shows and books set in the countryside frequently stick to older genres of the costume drama variety. But even when they are set in our current times, such cultural representations frequently do not engage with the reality of country life, where globalisation is equally likely to be wreaking radical changes as it is in the cities. Fascinated by this divide, Professor Esther Peeren started the 'Rural Imaginations' project, funded by the European Research Council. She focussed at first on the UK, but the project was soon expanded to include the US, China, the Netherlands and South Africa, and the project team found that the issue was seemingly universal, with a similar lag everywhere between people's perceptions of the countryside and its actuality. What makes this study of ideas about the countryside so relevant?