distinctiveness attributed to integration into
Globalization and rural
areas
Michael Woods
Aberystwyth University, UK
Globalization is a major driver of change in rural
areas around the world, impacting on economic
activities, structures, and relations; migration pat-
terns and the composition of rural populations;
and cultural traditions and practices of environ-
mental management. Globalization is a complex
and multifaceted phenomenon, involving the
multiplication, stretching, and intensification of
social, economic, political, and cultural relations
over space which leads to places becoming more
tightly integrated in transnational networks of
inter-dependence. As such, globalization chal-
lenges popular perceptions of rural areas as places
that are isolated from mainstream economies and
culture and that retain greater economic inde-
pendence and cultural distinctiveness than cities.
In practice, many rural areas have long been inte-
grated into global networks of trade and migra-
tion, notably through colonialism. However, late
twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century
globalization is distinguished by the reach and
intensity of transnational connections, and by the
immediacy of communications and transactions
between distant places.
Research on globalization in geography has
tended to focus on urban areas and particularly
on the concept of the “global city,” to the
relative neglect of rural areas. This tendency has
contributed to the conflation of globalization
and urbanization in analysis of rural change,
with the erosion of rural cultural and economic
The International Encyclopedia of Geography.
Edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0189
urban systems, which in turn have become
increasingly interconnected through globaliza-
tion. As such, rural experiences of globalization
were positioned as mediated through the con-
centration of power in global cities. This analysis
was particularly associated with research con-
ducted from a political economy perspective,
which focused primarily on structures, processes,
and institutions rather than on communities, and
thus emphasized dependency and convergence
over local difference.
More recent rural research, however, has
drawn on the relational approach to globaliza-
tion developed by geographers including Ash
Amin and Doreen Massey, which sees places as
unique entanglements of social, economic, and
political relations that are reconfigured in global-
ization. The relational approach has a number of
implications for the analysis of globalization in
a rural context. First, by highlighting the com-
plexity and contingency of the relations that link
places, and the uniqueness of their intersection
in a specified place, it suggests that globalization
produces cultural and economic hybridity, not
homogeneity. Second, by revealing relations that
can be rural-to-rural as well as rural-to-urban,
it shows that globalization is not necessarily
always mediated through global cities. Third, by
arguing that globalization is reproduced through
the reshaping and substitution of relations within
place, it demonstrates that the outcomes of glob-
alization are not inevitably positive or negative.
And, fourth, by pointing to the diffusion of
power in globalization, not its concentration, it
indicates that rural actors have agency to affect
the outcomes of globalization in their localities.
These features are presented by Woods (2007)
G L O BALI ZAT I O N A N D RU R A L AR E A S
as characteristics of an emergent “global coun-
tryside” in which rural places are changed by
globalization but continue to be different from
each other (see also Aguayo 2008).
Rural areas and the global economy
One of the most significant expressions of
globalization in rural areas has been the incorpo-
ration of rural economies into longer and more
complex commodity chains, linking sites of pro-
duction and consumption. The development of
global commodity chains (or global value chains)
has been facilitated by technological advances,
market deregulation, and trade liberalization
affecting all economic sectors, but notably in a
rural context in relation to agriculture and food
(see, e.g., Challies and Murray 2011). Between
1970 and 2010, the value of global agri-food
exports increased from less than US$100 billion
to over US$1100 billion per year, with a greater
share of food being produced for export, and
the distance traveled by produce bought by
consumers (known as “food miles”) increasing.
The lengthening of these supply chains has
been enabled by improvements in transport and
preservation technologies that have changed the
principles of agricultural geography by allowing
perishable food to be sold over longer distances,
and also by trade agreements that have dismantled
controls on agri-food imports designed to pro-
tect domestic farmers. Free markets for agri-food
products have been created within regional eco-
nomic blocs such as the European Union and
the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) area, while negotiations at the World
Trade Organization (WTO) have attempted to
remove trade barriers and abolish production
subsidies in agriculture under pressure from the
Cairns Group of agri-food-exporting nations.
2
Global agri-food commodity chains do not
only connect sites of production and consump-
tion in different countries, but can also involve
commodities being sent for processing or pack-
aging in third or fourth countries, as companies
seek cost efficiencies. Accordingly, the spatial
division of labor in agriculture has become
increasingly fragmented, with impacts for rural
localities. The weakening of local supply chains
has altered social and cultural relations between
farmers and local communities; food-processing
industries that had located close to sites of
production have closed down as their functions
are concentrated in lower-cost locations; the
incomes of individual small farmers have been
squeezed by competition from cheaper imports,
and their financial power reduced; and land-
scapes have been transformed as production has
been switched to new commodities with higher
market value or export potential. Globalization
has consequently promoted increased regional
concentration and specialization in agricul-
tural production, including the relocation of
industries such as intensive livestock farming to
regions that offer not only lower production
costs but also looser environmental and animal
welfare regulations.
Footloose economics is evident in rural areas in
respect to not only agriculture, but also other tra-
ditional industries including mining and forestry,
with smaller mines and paper and lumber mills
closed as production is concentrated in fewer,
larger, sites. The search for new resources to
supply global markets has led mining companies
to increasingly remote locations (often staffed by
“fly in, fly out” shift workers), and spurred both
deforestation in regions such as the Amazon
and new commercial forestry plantations in
areas such as Australia. In manufacturing, some
regions such as rural Ireland benefited in the
late twentieth century from new branch plants
attracted by land availability and low labor costs;

yet some of these factories have subsequently
been closed – along with longer-established
factories in industries such as textiles – as pro-
duction has been relocated to more cost-effective
locations in Central America and Southeast Asia.
In some rural areas, the closure of a mine, mill,
or factory has meant the loss of the dominant
employer in a single-industry town, prompting
community decline and depopulation.
Economic globalization is also associated with
the increased influence of transnational corpora-
tions that dominate markets in traditional rural
industries, having squeezed out or taken over
local firms. Mining and forestry are dominated
globally by a handful of companies that each
operate on a transnational scale. In agriculture,
while the majority of the world’s farmers are
still small-scale individual farmers, agribusi-
ness accounts for an increasingly substantial
share of global production, and key parts of
agri-food commodity chains are controlled by
limited numbers of transnational corporations.
These include biotechnology firms with control
over inputs such as seeds and fertilizers, and
supermarkets, food-processing companies, and
fast-food brands, which are the major purchasers
of agricultural produce. In some cases, compa-
nies have formed strategic alliances to achieve
“vertical integration,” with interests at each step
of the commodity chain, from “seed to shelf”
(Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002). In this way,
relations between transnational corporations and
individual farmers are unequally weighted. In
India, for example, transnational biotechnology
firms have been accused of pushing geneti-
cally modified seed that would make farmers
dependent on their supplies and chemicals. Sim-
ilarly, supermarkets and fast-food corporations
can use their market power to depress prices
paid to markets, standardize requirements for
the appearance and variety of produce, and
GL OBA L IZATION A ND RU R A L AR EA S
determine practices in animal welfare, pesticide
use, and labor conditions.
Corporate power in the global agri-food
system is exercised not only by agribusiness and
supermarkets, but also by banks, pension funds,
and traders, who supply the financial capital
for investment and set the prices of agricultural
commodities. Financial speculation has been
an important part of capitalist agriculture since
the nineteenth century, permitting farmers to
off-load risk by selling future crops to speculators
at guaranteed prices. However, deregulation of
trading in food futures in 2000 sparked a surge in
investment in food derivatives from US$3 billion
in 2003 to US$126 billion in 2011, which has
been accused of contributing to the sharp rise
in global food prices in 2008, but which has
had little effect on farm incomes. Over the same
period, international investments in rural land
have also increased, colloquially referred to as
“land grabbing.” These have in part been driven
by concerns about food security following the
2008 crisis, with sovereign wealth funds in
affluent but land-poor countries such as Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and
corporations in Japan and South Korea, purchas-
ing land in Africa, Central and South Asia, and
Australia, in order to secure the supply of food
for domestic markets. Yet, private investment
brokers and funds have also purchased farmland
in Africa and parts of the former Soviet Union as
an opportunity for Western investors. Although
some of these projects are presented as assisting
agricultural development, international land
investments have been criticized for replacing
staple crops with cash crops, diverting resources
such as water, extracting profit from poor rural
communities, and in some cases displacing
peasant farmers.
Indeed, across much of the Global South,
and notably in South America, globalization
is associated with depeasantization, as the
3
G L O BALI ZAT I O N A N D RU R A L AR E A S
livelihoods of peasant farmers have been threat-
ened by the opening of local markets to imported
food and the diversion of resources to support
export-oriented industrial agriculture. To sur-
vive, farmers have been forced to become
migrant workers, or paid farmworkers on large
corporate farms, in some cases selling their land
to agribusinesses (see, e.g., Echánove 2005; Rigg
2006).
International migration and rural areas
Alongside economic globalization, rural areas
have also been affected by the increasing global
mobility of people as migrants and tourists,
acting as both a source of and a destination for
international migrants. As described, the impacts
of economic globalization have contributed to
a flow of labor migrants from disadvantaged
rural areas, especially in the Global South, to
more prosperous regions both nationally and
internationally. In many cases, migrant workers
leave families at home, at least initially, and
remittances from labor migrants have become
a major source of income in many rural areas.
Furthermore, as labor migrants from the Global
South tend to be young men, the demographic
character of rural communities is changed, as
are roles within the community, including the
feminization of agricultural work in some parts
of Africa and Asia.
Although most labor migrants head to cities,
there has been a growth in the number of
labor migrants living and working in rural
areas of Europe, North America, and Aus-
tralia, commonly employed in marginal jobs in
agriculture and food processing, with limited
pay and conditions. As such, migrant workers
have filled a void created by efforts to achieve
global competitiveness by minimizing labor costs
that have deterred recruitment of local work-
ers and made industries such as horticulture,
4
meat-processing, and salad packing dependent
on immigrant labor. Some of the highest growth
rates in the Latino population in the United
States since the mid-1990s have been in rural
counties in the South and West, especially
areas with large-scale poultry production, while
migration from Eastern Europe to Britain since
the enlargement of the European Union in 2004
has produced new concentrations of Polish resi-
dents in areas of intensive agriculture such as Lin-
colnshire. Many of these localities have little pre-
vious experience of large-scale immigration, and
tensions can develop over cultural differences and
competition for jobs and housing. Yet, Torres,
Popke, and Hapke (2006) point to a “silent bar-
gain” in which rural communities accept labor
migrants for the economic contribution they
make, and migrant workers accept low wages and
poor employment conditions for the perceived
safety and tranquility of living in a rural area.
Rural communities can also be transformed by
international amenity migration, an extension of
domestic counterurbanization with individuals
moving to rural areas abroad for a combination of
economic and lifestyle reasons. Amenity migra-
tion is associated with rural localities that offer
recreational amenities (mountain and coastal
resorts) or idyllic landscapes and historic villages,
but also cheap, empty property left by depopula-
tion or a low cost of living, and access by budget
air travel, including parts of southern and East-
ern Europe and Central America. In particular,
amenity migrants are commonly attracted to
areas that are already popular with international
tourists, and there is a blurred line between
amenity migration and residential tourism, with
some migrants moving permanently but others
occupying foreign properties only seasonally or
for vacations. Both international tourism and
amenity migration can boost rural economies
and help revive declining villages, but they can
also generate tensions around infrastructure

developments, the inflation of property prices,
and the commodification of local cultures for
tourist consumption (see, e.g., Woods 2011).
Global consciousness and rural
environments
In addition to the multiplication, stretching, and
intensification of social and economic relations,
some commentators also describe globalization
as including the growth of global consciousness,
as improved communications, increased travel,
and the growth of the global media have made
people better informed about other parts of the
world and more likely to think in global terms.
This has affected how people perceive rural
areas, with understanding of rural life informed
by globalized media representations that blur
geographical differences. The growth of global
consciousness has also involved a globalization
of values, in which there is an expectation
that universal standards apply across the world
in areas such as environmental management
and animal welfare, regardless of historic cul-
tural differences. The globalization of values is
promoted by transnational nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) and campaign groups,
which can elevate localized issues to interna-
tional causes, and is encoded in international
treaties and agreements. In rural areas, conflicts
have arisen when globalized values clash with
traditional cultural practices, such as seal hunting
in Canada or bullfighting in Spain, or farming
activities such as the live export of livestock.
Similarly, the transnational conservation move-
ment has promoted standardized approaches
to environmental protection, including the
designation of protected areas (such as national
parks) on international models that introduce
restrictions on the traditional use of natural
resources by rural communities or, in some
GL OBA L IZATION A ND RU R A L AR EA S
cases, the eviction of people from designated
zones. There are estimated to be up to 136
million “conservation refugees” globally, who
have been displaced from protected areas (see
Brockington and Igoe 2006).
Rural responses to globalization
Globalization extends to all parts of the rural
world, but different rural regions experience
globalization in different ways. As globalization
includes a multitude of different processes, some
will have greater impact in some regions than
others, and the balance of negative and positive
impacts will also vary (Woods 2007). The impact
and outcomes of globalization in a particular
region are shaped by a number of factors includ-
ing geographical location, economic structure,
natural resources, transport infrastructure, and
human capital, as well as by the policies and
actions of governments and other local agents.
In many regions, rural development strategies
have attempted to engage proactively with
globalization by seeking to attract foreign direct
investment (FDI), encouraging international
tourism, or supporting entrepreneurship to
develop export markets for local products (see,
e.g., Cheshire and Woods 2013). At the same
time, revived interest in regional cultures and
efforts to promote local food systems can also
be seen as responses to globalization, as people
react to a perceived loss of identity or economic
independence.
Responses to globalization can also be more
confrontational, as activists attempt to resist
changes that are perceived to threaten local
economies, cultures, and environments. Protests
by farmers against food imports or the influence
of transnational corporations have occurred in
several countries, including Britain, France,
Australia, India, and South Korea, with actions
5
G L O BALI ZAT I O N A N D RU R A L AR E A S
including blockades of ports and attacks on sym-
bols of globalization such as fast-food outlets. In
Western countries such actions have not gen-
erally been coordinated internationally or been
framed as antiglobalization protests. More direct
links to the counterglobalization movement have
been made, however, by rural movements in
the Global South, especially in Latin America
and Asia, and notably through the interna-
tional farmers’ movement La Via Campesia
(The Peasants’ Way). Rural activists have joined
counterglobalization protests at major inter-
national summits, including WTO meetings,
and regional concerns have been highlighted
by transgressing space to reach international
audiences, with, for example, Indian farmers
mounting a series of demonstrations in Europe
to protest against trade agreements and the intro-
duction of genetically modified (GM) crops by
transnational corporations (Featherstone 2003).
SEE ALSO: Agricultural geography;
Agri-food multinational enterprises;
Colonialism, decolonization, and
neocolonialism; Conservation and capitalism;
Corporations and global trade; Food security;
Global cities; Global commodity/value chains;
Globalization; Governance and development;
Labor migration; Migrant labor; Migration:
international; Mining and mineral resources;
Neoliberalism; Tourism
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