Geographies of ruralization Jamie Gillen University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand Tim Bunnell National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore Jonathan Rigg University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Abstract This paper proposes ‘ruralization’ as a concept that human geographers are well placed to develop across the rural-urban geography divide and in dialogue with scholars in cognate fields. We understand ruraliza- tion as the processual, more-than-residual, and geographically-variegated socio-spatial dynamics of con- temporary human engagements with rural land, livelihoods, and lifestyles. Our approach comprises three prominent dynamics of ruralization experienced through residents’ entanglements with rural and urban Southeast Asia: in situ ruralization, extended ruralization, and rural returns. We argue in favor of a rural-urban relationality rather than urban-centered socio-spatial transformation and urge geographers to take seriously the lives and geographies of people in the Global South whose perspectives on urbaniza- tion are entangled with ongoing rural dynamics. Our contribution is intended as a corrective to notions of the urbanization of everywhere in a zero-sum relationship with a residual rural, and as a way of demon- strating the importance of human geographical experiences to wider debates, concerns, and conversations. Keywords city, methodological villagism, rural, rural-urban relations, ruralization, Southeast Asia, urbanization Introduction Rural and urban scholars continue to operate in largely separate worlds. In terms of academic struc- tures and institutions, there are distinct theoretical traditions and associated models pertaining to each, reproduced in a circular manner through the specific operational units within which ruralists and urbanists are embedded, and the different outlets in which they publish. Historically, this structural and institutional separation mapped on to an empirical partitioning of what were understood as largely discrete rural and urban worlds, notwithstanding long traditions of scholarship on rural-urban interactions and the rural-urban ‘inter- face’. Processes associated with urbanization have been highly influential in shaping the theoretical tra- jectories of many subfields in geography and related social scientific disciplines, while work related to Corresponding author: Jamie Gillen, University of Auckland, Room 413, Cultures Languages and Linguistics Building, 18 Symonds Street, Auckland 1142, New Zealand… Email: Jamie.gillen@auckland.ac.nz Standard Article Dialogues in Human Geography 1–18 © The Author(s) 2022 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/20438206221075818 journals.sagepub.com/home/dhg