Counterurbanisation and the emergence of a postproductivist economy in South Africa’s arid Karoo region, 1994-2010.
Abstract
This review article serves to broach the concept of the “post-productivist
countryside” where the primacy of agricultural production is supplanted by
tertiary industries such as tourism, recreational farming, and arts and crafts
production. The essay maintains that advances in communications technology
have facilitated the phenomenon of “counterurbanisation” whereby a new
breed of well-qualified, highly mobile professionals (a “creative class”) opt for
rural living, all the while continuing to derive urban-denominated incomes. In
recent years South Africa’s arid Karoo hinterland has enjoyed something of a
renaissance occasioned by an influx of human capital from the cities. Although
the onset of post-productivism inevitably entails costs it is argued that these are
more than compensated for by the beneficial cultural and economic impacts
of the new rural creative class in the Karoo.