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Sparsely populated areas: worlds apart?

François-Michel Le Tourneau et Yvette Vaguet

Sparsely populated areas and population concentration hotspots form the Janus of human occupation of the Earth. In a synthesis of historical works on the concept of density, Hervé Le Bras [1995] emphasized how reflections on this topic exhibit remarkable historicity. Many intellectuals of the 17th and 18th centuries discussed both overconcentration and desertification, and their effects on societies. For instance, Montesquieu, sometimes considered the first proponent of human geography, argued for a direct relationship between human density and political regime [Broc, 1969]. In this type of analysis, regions with low or extremely low densities appear to constitute distinctly separate worlds.

The growth of the global population and the progress of urbanization in the world continue to polarize society’s attention today. However, with increasing desertification and abandonment processes, the persistence of ‘empty’ or sparsely populated spaces remains one of the structuring features of human occupation [Le Tourneau, 2020]. While half of the world’s population lives on 1% of the land area, 62% of these lands have densities lower than 2 inhabitants/km² – which does not mean that these regions are immune to anthropogenic impacts. These ‘sparsely populated areas’ are, for some of them, ‘vast open spaces’ located at the margins of the ecumenes, constituting external anecumenes, such as the lands of northern Europe, Canada, or Siberia, and internal anecumenes, like the Sahara Desert and its borders, or the interior of Australia. However, they can also include tropical forest regions, such as the Amazon or the Congo Basin, or smaller areas within more densely populated regions, especially mountain ranges experiencing pronounced abandonment phenomena, like central Spain. Moreover, these anecumenes are increasingly associated with biodiversity preservation functions, without always consulting their inhabitants or obtaining their consent for usage restrictions. A new ‘green colonialism’ is sometimes criticized to describe this type of imposition.

In recent decades, a number of social science specialists have focused on these sparsely populated areas, highlighting their particular characteristics [Carson et al., 2011 ; Carson and Carson, 2014 ; Holmes, 1981 ; Le Tourneau, 2020 ; Taylor, 2016]. Among these features, remoteness and isolation are realities that permeate all dimensions of social life, creating a sense of being apart or misunderstood by the metropoles to which they are most often connected. For instance, the Russian boreal populations [Stepanova et al., 2020 ; Vaguet, Ourng and Moriconi-Ebrard, 2021] refer to the 'continent' when evoking the distant capital region. Radical interpretations have been proposed, where the separation from more densely populated areas is not seen as a consequence of geography but as a deliberate strategy by populations seeking political, social, or cultural autonomy (Scott, 2009; Le Tourneau, 2023). In addition to these recent literatures, there is an inheritance from analyses of sparsely populated spaces as frontiers where phenomena of incorporation into the capitalist economy, space appropriation, exploitation of natural resources, and the construction (if not the fabrication) of national identity take place [Bazzi, Fiszbein and Gebresilasse, 2020 ; De Koninck, 2000 ; Geiger, 2009 ; Moraes, 2003].

In this context, the journal Space, Populations & Societies proposes a call for papers named “Sparsely populated areas: separate worlds?” in order to offer updated perspectives, review the latest research approaches related to these topics, and highlight new advances in their theorization.

There are several directions that potential contributions could take. The first one concerns the characterization or quantification of sparsely populated areas [Karácsonyi and Taylor, 2022]. At what population threshold do we classify an area as sparsely populated? Are these thresholds invariant based on geographical, social, or cultural context? How does their definition impact quantification? Additionally, how do we distinguish closely related concepts such as sparsely populated, wild, desert, etc.? Complex methodological questions find their place here, including considerations about the chosen spatial delineation, scale, and the characterization of concepts like distance and isolation [Bocco, 2016]. In France, at the level of municipalities, 4/5ths of the territory are inhabited by only 1/5th of the population. However, in terms of square meters, the entire population lives on less than 1% of the territory, leaving 99% as “empty” spaces. On the frontier regions, at a fine scale, the wave of colonization leaves large voids far from communication nodes, the most fertile lands, or new resource extraction points. These questions relate to the cartography of sparsely populated regions: where are they, and how can we represent these empty spaces?

A second set of questions could concern the temporal functioning of these sparsely populated areas. How do they evolve? While the concept of a ‘frontier’ implies positive demographic dynamics, it can be shown that this is not always the case today [Tritsch and Le Tourneau, 2016]. Conversely, regions that were once densely populated have seen their population decline dramatically and continue to depopulate, such as the mountains areas of Western Europe. Comparative perspectives would be welcome in this line. How do they differ from densely populated areas, and what factors explain these differences? To what extent can we propose a global interpretation of these questions? Can sparsely populated areas be considered a specific geographical category where common traits outweigh geographical and cultural differences? How are relations established with more densely populated areas? Power dynamics and domination could be addressed here, as well as real or imagined representations. Distant margins are sometimes a burden, sometimes an Eldorado for central spaces, to be integrated volens nolens [Bousquet, 2012 ; Le Tourneau, 2023 ; Moraes, 2003 ; Pilyasov, 2016 ; Scott, 2009].

Finally, a third axis could focus on case studies. These could shed new light on the configuration of sparsely populated territories, at fine scales and in different contexts, or on the relationship between these ‘empty spaces’ and the ‘overpopulated places’ that are adjacent to them or associated with them. For instance, we could explore how the former are often seen as a solution to manage the overflow of inhabitants from the latter, whether permanently or temporarily. This is the case, for example, in mountain regions like the Alps, where sparsely populated areas are intensively frequented by various types of tourism (skiing, hiking, etc.), leading to conflicts of management and legitimacy between local populations and external users [Laslaz, 2005].

Based on these three approaches, the ambition of this special issue, open to international contributions, will be to account for current research on sparsely populated areas, aiming to offer a broad panel regarding the treated regions, approaches, and methods.

Calendar

- Deadline for submitting a paper (including tentative title, abstract, method(s), and sources used/considered in 1/2 pages or 500 words): October 30th 2024

- Announcement to authors after validation of abstract selection by the Editorial Committee: November 30th 2024

- Deadline for submitting articles to the Editorial Committee: March 31th 2025

Submission instructions: https://journals.openedition.org/eps/3344

Contacts

Titles, abstracts, and articles should be sent to:

François-Michel Le Tourneau (CNRS – UMR PRODIG) francois-michel.le-tourneau@cnrs.fr

Yvette Vaguet (UMR 6266 IDEES-Rouen) yvette.vaguet@univ-rouen.fr

Papers can be written submitted in French or in English!

Bibliographie

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BOCCO Gerardo, 2016, “Remoteness and remote places. A geographic perspective,” Geoforum, 77, pp. 178–181.

BOUSQUET Marie-Pierre, 2012, “Êtres libres ou sauvages à civiliser ?,” Revue d’histoire de l’enfance « irrégulière ». Le Temps de l’histoire, 14, pp. 162–192.

BROC Numa, 1969, “Peut-on parler de géographie humaine au XVIII e siècle en France?,” Annales de Géographie, 78(425), pp. 57–75.

CARSON Dean B., CARSON Doris A., 2014, “Local economies of mobility in sparsely populated areas: Cases from Australia’s spine,” Journal of Rural Studies, 36, pp. 340–349.

CARSON Dean, RASMUSSEN Rasmus, ENSIGN Prescott, HUSKEY Lee, ANDREW Taylor, 2011, Demography at the edge: remote human populations in developed nations, Farnhamm, Ashgate, International population studies, 344 p.

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GEIGER Daniel, 2009, Turner in the tropics: The frontier concept revisited, PhD Thesis, University of Luzern.

HOLMES John H., 1981, “Lands of Distant Promise,” in Settlement Systems in Sparsely Populated Regions, Elsevier, pp. 1–13.

KARÁCSONYI Dávid, TAYLOR Andrew, 2022, “Reconceptualising sparsely populated remote edges through the concept of region and space,” Journal of Rural Studies, 92, pp. 395–403.

LASLAZ Lionel, 2005, Les zones centrales des Parcs Nationaux alpins français (Vanoise, Ecrins, Mercantour): des conflits au consensus social ? Contribution critique à l’analyse des processus territoriaux d’admission des espaces protégés et des rapports entre sociétés et politiques d’aménagement en milieux montagnards, Ph.D. thesis, Université de Savoie, 644 p.

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LE TOURNEAU François-Michel, 2020, “Sparsely populated regions as a specific geographical environment,” Journal of Rural Studies, 75, pp. 70–79.

LE TOURNEAU François-Michel, 2023, “Internalized Zomias?: James Scott’s theory and the world’s sparsely populated areas,” Terrain - anthropologie et sciences humaines.

MORAES Antonio Carlos Robert, 2003, “O sertão. Um ‘outro’ geográfico,” Terra Brasilis. Revista da Rede Brasileira de História da Geografia e Geografia Histórica, 4–5.

PILYASOV A. N., 2016, “Russia’s Arctic frontier: Paradoxes of development,” Regional Research of Russia, 6(3), pp. 227–239.

SCOTT James C., 2009, The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia, Yale University Press, 416 p.

STEPANOVA Nadezhda, GRITSENKO Daria, GAVRILYEVA Tuyara, BELOKUR Anna, 2020, “Sustainable Development in Sparsely Populated Territories: Case of the Russian Arctic and Far East,” Sustainability, 12(6), p. 2367.

TAYLOR Andrew, 2016, “Introduction: Settlements at the edge,” in Settlements at the Edge, Edward Elgar Publishing.

TRITSCH Isabelle, LE TOURNEAU François-Michel, 2016, “Population densities and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: New insights on the current human settlement patterns,” Applied Geography, 76, pp. 163–172.

VAGUET Yvette, OURNG Chanvoleak, MORICONI-EBRARD François, 2021, “Is the Arctic really a frontier? Settlement dynamics within various Arctic Limits based on the Arcticapolis geohistorical database,” Espace populations sociétés. Space populations societies, 2020/3-2021/1.

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