International Conference Meanings of the Rural – between social representations, consumptions and rural development strategies 28-29 September 2015, University of Aveiro, Portugal Conference theme 1: Socials meanings and representations of the rural Between uprooting and resistance. Emerging meanings of the rural Josep Pérez Soriano Dept. Sociologia i Antropologia Social Universitat de València. Josep.Perez@valencia.edu Abstract. Since the theory of modernization the rural exodus has proven itself to be a logical and inevitable consequence of the process of industrialization, so much so that the model of urban society has established itself uncritically as the ideal of modernity, as the supreme paradigm of civilization (Entrena, 1998:127), and rural uprooting seems inevitable, desirable, logical. According to Bourdieu (2004), the social order functions as a vast and subtle machine that tends to reproduce and to naturalize domination. Gender and rurality are social constructions. The rural was born and has grown in parallel with the development of the cities. Villages become old-fashioned and are masculinised; city centres are feminized. In the literary classics expositions abound based on the objective factors of rural expulsion (push) or urban attraction (pull) described by Wirth as a “spell” (1938:5), and by Bourdieu as “urban fascination” (2004), a consequence of the symbolic domination associating modernity and urbanization with the emancipation of the individual. Physical, social and cultural mobility, and, above all, the “willingness to change” (habitat and habitus) are related to the position occupied in the social territory and hierarchy. The structures of domination determine the distribution of employment, economic, cultural and social opportunities between the centre and the periphery. Those who have fewer opportunities migrate more, although, migration is, in addition, an effect of cultural colonization. In accordance with Bourdieu (2004:226) the “hypnotic power” of the city, like