Providing places for structures of feeling and hierarchical complementarity in urban theory: Re-reading Williams’ The Country and the City

Abstract

This paper reflects upon intellectual possibilities of Raymond Williams’ classic study The Country and the City (1975) within current urban and regional research. First, the paper canvasses the relevance of the book by constructing a frame of reference based on its citations in urban and regional studies. The principal findings of this approach discern frequent use of the main points developed by Williams in recent discourse. Thereafter the paper raises two issues that have been somewhat neglected in the present adoption of The Country and the City. First, the possibilities of the concept of structure of feeling still seem underdeveloped in urban and regional research today. The idea of generation-specific structures aims at the heart of the habit of urban theory-making. Second, drawing on the work on hierarchies of French anthropologist Louis Dumont the binary relationship between country/city shown in the book could be used as a fruitful methodological starting point for thinking about representation in more recent studies of spatial relationships.