Ruralization as decolonization: Land, property, and possibilities in North America

Recent scholarship in human geography has proposed the framework of geographies of ruralization to describe rural elements that are persistent, resonant, and pervasive amidst urbanization. This concept has primarily emerged through empirical studies in the Global South, where village-based societies have been rapidly transformed by megaregional urbanization. This commentary brings ruralization into the context of the Global North, specifically rural New England, where modern property regimes have profoundly shaped the rural landscape. Drawing on examples from Massachusetts – where colonial property regimes were first tested and codified – we argue that ruralization in the North today might be understood as an ongoing, processual challenge to the settler-colonial structures of land tenure that have historically defined rural space. We highlight three pathways toward this decolonizing ruralization in the region: autonomy, reparation, and rematriation. These efforts constitute an ‘ecosystem of possibilities’ in which rural actors reclaim embodied relations with the land against colonial enclosure and the ongoing financialization of rural land.