Introduction : geographies of ruralities and sexualities

In both academic and popular literature, "rurality" is recognized as a set of both material spaces and symbolic imaginaries that converse with each other (Bell 2003, 2006a; Short 2006; Woods 2007). Rurality is also often juxtaposed with urbanity, cities, and metropolitan registers, albeit in different relational frames in various regions, nations, and cultures. Moreover, just like cities and urban imaginaries1 these interlinked rural spaces are, in the West, sites of a broad range of social and cultural differences (Cloke and Little 1997). In recent years, this complexity has been increasingly recognized and interrogated by scholars in geography, sociology, cultural studies, rural studies, gender studies, and related fields of inquiry. One of the most productive and provocative themes, we argue, is the rapidly growing interest in the intersections between sexuality and rurality, and particularly the spatial contingencies of these relationships (Bell and Valentine 1995a; Phillips, Watt, and Shuttleton 2000; GormanMurray, Waitt, and Gibson 2008; Bryant and Pini 2011). Sexuality is multifaceted, and encompasses interpersonal relationships, emotional embodiment and desires, and disciplinary social and political structures. Rurality, too, is diverse, in terms of its composite physical and human geographies that come together in multiple ways to form imbricated landscapes of settlement, belonging, production, consumption, and conservation. This volume seeks to scrutinize the diverse and multifarious connections between sexuality and rurality within the organizing context of geographical imperatives and relations.