Place, land, and the local: the political economy of Rogationtide

Despite the separation the coronavirus has enforced upon us, then, it’s also prompted a refocusing on our need for one another and especially for those near to us geographically ... In the renewal of communal solidarity, in the return to the local, may the church find itself invigorated with a new parochialism to match.

These words from David Bagnall's reflection in SCM's 'Theology in Isolation' series were not written with Rogationtide in mind, but they are particularly appropriate reading for Rogation Days.  Rogationtide embodies parochialism, what Clerk of Oxford has described as "the relationship between human bodies and the physical space they inhabit - to touch and mark its boundaries, to feel the earth beneath their feet".

The Rogation Days, in other words, recall us to the significance of the local for our well-being and flourishing.  To attempt to 'free' ourselves from the local, to desire to be 'liberated' by the global, is to be torn from the gifts of place and of neighbour, gifts bestowed for our flourishing.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed ... And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

Rogationtide, then, is not an irrelevant, antiquated practice. It is not ecclesial LARPing.  In affirming the giveness of place, land, and the local, it sets forth a vision of political economy which challenges the dominant rootless, disembodied political economies of contemporary political discourse.  Above all, it declares that our flourishing is caught up with place, land, and the local.  This has significant contemporary resonance. Rogationtide, for example, coheres with the critique of the contemporary food economy by farmer and writer James Rebanks:

The obsession with efficiency in our food economy has done its best to destroy a distributed local and diverse food economy — local abattoirs are now as rare as hen’s teeth, farmers markets have very limited capacity, and most areas are so specialised in their farming focus that they rarely produce the things that would give us a balanced diet.

Barely any of us know the fields that feed us or grow a significant share of what we eat. There is way too little local fruit and vegetable production in most areas, and there has been a general loss of the food culture that once existed to turn local products in to great meals.

He continues in words that could have been written for Rogation Days:

We do however need to think very carefully about how the nation feeds itself, because in the long run we will need a truly robust and resilient food system, with strong local food economies. This is our wake-up call to respect farming once more — not uncritically: we have an absolute right to want more nature on farmland, high welfare standards for farm animals, and safe and healthy food. But Britain must seek to understand and remember the value of farming and food production.

This, of course, is a challenge to the 'free markets and free trade' consensus that has shaped the neoliberal Right.  The political economy of Rogationtide, however, also challenges assumptions of the progressive Left, particularly what Labour MP John Cruddas has described as its "condescension towards the local, and the search for home, family and security".  Take, for example, this account of shopping in liberal, progressive Vancouver:

I was taken aback this week, when I walked into a supermarket just outside Vancouver and saw a sign that said ‘BC First’. Was this (yet another) Canadian separatist movement? A homage to Trump’s America First agenda? A far-Right campaign against multiculturalism, à la Britain First?

But no: looking closer, the ‘BC First’ sign was sticking out of a large mound of yams. All it meant was that the supermarket makes every effort to source its vegetables from within the province, to reduce food miles — a decidedly un-Trumpian goal.

This identifies how a progressive Left suspicion of place and the local can undermine and contradict environmental concerns:

In the past, environmentalism was primarily championed by global-minded, tofu-eating, city-dwelling, Left-wing young people — the kind of people who might, guiltily, fly 4700 miles to spend Christmas in Vancouver and feel right at home there.

Consider what that young person learned at school about protectionism (it’s bad) and nationalism (it’s really bad) — and about globalisation (it ends poverty!) — and it’s hardly surprising that they might feel ambivalent about a sign putting a particular place ‘First’.

Obviously, it will require a global outlook to tackle climate change; but it will also require citizens to buy increasingly from within their own borders. 

Rogationtide's affirmation of place, land, and local is not a reactionary vision - unless, to quote Cruddas, "the search for home" is to be dismissed as necessarily reactionary.  It also offers a means of responding to ecological catastrophe, a point made by political thinker David Goodhart:

The ascent of climate change anxieties up domestic and international agendas is also making life uncomfortable for unfettered free trade, encouraging a bias towards localism, reduced travel and a degree of self-sufficiency.

The signs of a retrieval of Rogationtide in contemporary Anglicanism - after its dismissal by late 20th century liturgical revisions, a reflection of the atomizing economic values of the Right and social values of the Left - offer some hope that there can be a recognition by Anglicans of the importance of the political economy of human flourishing to which these days point.  Rogationtide's account of human flourishing has a deep contemporary resonance, contrasting with the flawed and disordered anthropologies which are the foundation of our dominant political economies, and drawing us to receive as gift that which is inherent to our flourishing: place, land, and the local.

(The painting is by contemporary artist Anna Dillon, 'Chalk Hill Blue'.)