‘Rural as White’ is a settler colonial ruse: Christabel Devadoss, ‘Intimate Geopolitics and “Rural as White” Narratives in the Rural Rust Belt’, Geopolitics, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

‘Rural as White’ is a settler colonial ruse: Christabel Devadoss, ‘Intimate Geopolitics and “Rural as White” Narratives in the Rural Rust Belt’, Geopolitics, 2025

02Feb25

Abstract: This paper uses intimate geopolitics to disrupt the focus of ‘rural as white’ narratives in rural geographies. ‘Rural as white’ narratives have evolved from settler colonialism, systemic racism, Orientalism, and institutionalised genocide and enslavement that shape and uphold geopolitical positions of the United States. Meanwhile, intimate geopolitics, particularly Pain’s (2021) concept of geotrauma, has served as a lens to view the local impacts of global phenomena in intimate spaces (Pain 2014). I demonstrate how connecting geotrauma and ‘rural as white’ narratives to the experiences of people of colour living in rural Rust Belt spaces provides a more nuanced approach to rural scholarship. Scholars have noted how geopolitical actors and states intimately impact people’s everyday lives (Barabantseva, Ní Mhurchú, and Barabantseva, Ní Mhurchú, and Spike Peterson 2021). I demonstrate how nationalism and geopolitics shape intimate experiences for many minoritized communities in rural spaces. More importantly, I show how everyday geopolitical rhetoric manifests as rural geotrauma in rural Rust Belt communities.

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