Unities and distinctions: the country and the city, the agrarian and the rural, scales and polities, and rights and utility in the era of climate change. Response to ‘climate change and urban-agrarian solidarities’

In response to ‘Climate change and urban-agrarian solidarities’ by Angelo, Goh, and Paprocki (Angelo, Hillary, Kian Goh, and Kasia Paprocki. 2025. “Climate Change and Urban-Agrarian Solidarities.” City: 1–30. https://doi-org.goddard40.clarku.edu/10.1080/13604813.2025.2512623), this essay uses the work of Raymond Williams as a stepping-off point to make three arguments regarding how to theorize relationships between urban and agrarian geographies and politics in the era of climate change. The first is that our analyses should begin from the structuring processes and relationships that produce categories such as ‘urban’ and ‘agrarian,’ rather than beginning and proceeding from an acceptance of those categories as commonly used. The second is that it could be productive to consider alternate terminologies, such as ‘rural,’ and consider what is emphasized or deemphasized in both the terms themselves, and the scholarly literatures organized around them. The third is that the challenging work of building political solidarities across diverse geographies could be facilitated by more explicit attention to the concepts and vocabularies of scale and polities on the one hand, and rights-based vs. utilitarian frameworks on the other. © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.