Unpacking the multifaceted rurality of Hong Kong's countryside: A social representation approach

Abstract

In Hong Kong, a global metropolis with a vast countryside occupying about 60% of land use, “de-ruralization” in terms of depopulation and marginalisation of rural villages has started since the 1960s. Nonetheless, it does not necessarily lead to the vanishment of rurality. On the contrary, rural spaces have been (re)appropriated and (re)imagined through the re-establishment of different internal and external socio-spatial relationships within a changing policy environment in recent years. Nonetheless, the multifaceted rurality as a socially-constructed, post-structuralist, dynamic, relational, and evolving concept remains insufficiently explored. This study thus aims to unravel the polysemic and polyvalent rurality of Hong Kong's countryside through a social representation approach, which emphasizes the importance of imaginations, positionalities, and discourses. Based on two rounds of questionnaire surveys involving both visitors and villagers, this study identifies five distinct clusters of rural representations: 1) rural idyll consumerists, consuming the idyllic image of the rural; 2) urbanists, envisaging urbanisation as the future of the rural; 3) rural utopianists, attracted by “authentic” rural lifestyle; 4) rural conservationists, with strong interests in ecological and biodiversity conservation; 5) rural dull realists, regarding rural as unattractive and hopeless. Discourse analysis and stakeholder interviews are also conducted to verify and explain the emergence of variegated representations of rurality in Hong Kong. These representations mainly revolve around a dialectical relation between rural idyll and rural dull emerging from the intensified urban-rural interactions and shaped by the uneven power relations among multi-generation villagers, urbanites, environmentalists, business interests, and government organizations. This study offers a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted rurality within a global metropolis to enrich the rural epistemology and to provide a practical framework to inform rural revitalization and conservation strategies.