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This chapter examines narratives and representations of rural Australia deployed by political actors. At both federal and state levels in Australia, political parties tend to focus their attention on metropolitan electorates in their public discussions, particularly during election campaigns. This has led to accusations from minor parties and independents that rural areas are ignored by governments based in capital cities. The Nationals, for example, presents itself as the party whose primary motivation is to protect the interests of rural voters. Rural sites are political spaces shaped by particular types of narrative and rhetoric. Engaging with how the ‘rural’ is represented through rhetoric and image is useful for understanding how crime is positioned. This chapter uses rhetorical political analysis and representation to understand how political ideas about rurality are expressed through language and imagery. The political context outlined in this chapter is one factor that affects the nature and complexities of rural crime and responses to it. Rural Australia is at its own political crossroad, reflected in the emergence of competing narratives for the bush, defined here as a contest between ‘rural centrism’ and ‘rural populism’.

In the 69 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, especially the 40 years since the reform and opening-up, the relationship between urban and rural areas has undergone profound change. When the deepening reform of the urban-rural relationship is entering a critical period, it is necessary to reassess the evolution of the urban-rural relationship in China and draw a picture for that relationship in the future. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper combs the policies on the urban and rural development since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and analyzes macro data on the industries, population, personal income, and other aspects.

The study found that this urbanism affects individuals’ lives and the choices of society through the will of the state, and then provides feedback at the whole level of social values.

This paper divides the evolution of China’s urban-rural relationship into two major stages – nurturing cities with rural areas and leading rural areas with cities, which are then subdivided into five periods. The features of the relationship between the urban and rural areas in different periods are analyzed, and the future development of urban-rural relations is also considered.

This chapter aims to analyse the evolution of competing paradigms and theoretical frameworks that have pervaded the debates on the present and future of agricultural and food systems and their associated rural areas. From this global overview, we will extract common features of paradigms that are being reproduced over time as well as highlight the innovations introduced. Particular attention will be paid to discuss the responses and contributions inspired by European Mediterranean-based research, setting up the framework that underlines the subsequent chapters of the volume.

This paper studies how Chinese consumers respond to foreign goods in the post‐WTO era. Specifically, it examines brand sensitivity as a mediator and product cues as moderator of purchase intention. Additionally, it examines consumer preferences for different products and consumption plans for the subsequent five years. The survey sample is drawn from a population of foreign product users from 34 cities in 18 provinces in China. Results provide evidence that brand sensitivity mediates the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention; product cues moderate the effect of ethnocentrism on purchase intention. As the first study to link consumer ethnocentrism directly to brand sensitivity and purchase intention, this research provides some managerial implications. Global marketers can offset the negative effect of ethnocentrism by emphasizing brand image of its products, taking advantage of specific product cues, or by providing more comprehensive after‐sale service to reduce the perceived risk of purchasing imports. Also, price is still a hurdle that prevents Chinese consumers from mass consumption of foreign products. Global firms should not overestimate the purchasing power of Chinese consumers. This study represents a “snapshot” of Chinese consumers’ decision making at a time when their economic system is undergoing rapid change.

The chapter examines the current macro-governance of agri-food in a contemporary sense, taking changes in the UK and more broadly Europe. It first outlines a recent ongoing period of what is called ‘Disruptive Governance’. This emerged in the UK, the USA and indeed Brazil after the prolonged fiscal and financial crisis which brought about economic austerity in these countries over the past two decades. This relatively new disruptive phase, has now become more engrained into wider political and institutional structures and cultures, and indeed re-enforced earlier neo-liberal rounds of political articulation. Whilst there are far wider in effects than with agri-food systems, it is having a profound effect upon the stability and security of current food and farming systems. The chapter then explores the unfolding implications for agri-food in terms of policy changes, further market concentration and further financialisation. At a regional scale, we look at how these macro governance and regulatory forces are impacting in contrasting regional contexts: the UK, Wales and rural North West England (Cheshire and Shropshire). Finally, in conclusion, we ask to what extent these conditions are indeed tempered by longer-running and alternative radical shifts in agro-food systems, and the degree to which these can become mainstreamed. What do these trends suggest for sustainable food transitions and the further application and appropriateness of regime theory and governance?

In this chapter, rephrasing Spivak's question into ‘can subaltern children speak?’, I reorient the research on China's gigantic population of children and youths in rural migrant families towards a critical interpretative approach. Based on life history and longitudinal ethnographic interview gathered with three cases, I unpack the multiple meanings migrants' children attach to mobility in their childhood experiences. First, despite emotional difficulties, children see their parents' out-migration more as a ‘mobility imperative’ than their abandonment of parental responsibilities, which should be contextualized in China's long-term urban-biased social policies and the resultant development gaps in rural and urban societies. Second, the seemingly ‘unstable’ and ‘flexible’ mobility patterns observed in migrant families should be understood in relation to a long-term family social mobility strategy to promote children's educational achievement and future attainment. The combination of absent class politics in an illiberal society with an enduring ideology of education-based meritocracy in Confucianism makes this strategy a culturally legitimate channel of social struggle for recognition and respect for the subaltern. Last, children in migrant families are active contributors to their families' everyday organization amidst mobilities through sharing care and household responsibilities, and developing temporal and mobility strategies to keep alive intergenerational exchanges and family togetherness. The study uncovers coexisting resilience and vulnerabilities of migrants' children in their ‘doing class’ in contemporary China. It also contributes insights into our understanding of the diversity of childhoods in Asian societies at the intersection of familyhood, class dynamics and cultural politics.

The production of the ‘good life’ or the ‘less bad-life’ (Berlant, 2007, 2011), especially among generations of the Marcos dictatorship and the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue revolutions (henceforth, EDSA revolutions) in the Philippines, is animated by the ‘mobility imperative’ (Farrugia, 2016). The mobility imperative includes processes that encourage or demand mobility (Farrugia, 2016) for individuals and institutions. It figures in various ‘systems of practice’ (Levitt, 1998, 2001) among families in migrant-sending communities, government and corporations that magnify how migration is the ticket to better life (McKay, 2012) or its glorification as a heroic act (de los Reyes, 2013, 2014). Among the generations of the Martial Law and the EDSA revolutions, therefore, the ‘good life’ is hinged upon departure as professionals (e.g. nurses and engineers), workers in elementary occupations (e.g. construction and domestic workers) or mail-order brides or pen pals. Put simply, the good life in these generations is a function of remittances.

This chapter examines how the contemporary generation of young people construct the ‘good life’ in differential and new terms (de los Reyes, 2023; McKay & Brady, 2005) from previous generations. Using interviews and vision boards of left-behind children (15–18 years old), it argues that left-behind children critically appraise the ‘mobility imperative’. The chapter shows that there is a growing imagination of alternatives to the migration-induced good life among left-behind children, and therefore, they gradually refuse the ‘mobility imperative’. For them, the aspired good life consists of potentially being employees or entrepreneurs in their own villages and living a life with their own families (de los Reyes, 2019, 2020).