Risking the rural: nature, morality and the consumption of unpasteurised milk

The BSE crisis, concern over genetically modified foods, and E. coli and Salmonella food scares have prompted widespread public disquiet over food safety. For consumers, this has led to a demand for new ‘safer’ foods which are usually ‘local’, ‘natural’ and/or organic. Research into reactions to food risk has to a large degree focussed on this ‘quality turn’. In doing so, there is a danger of failing to fully problematise risk and providing a dualistic appreciation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ natures, rather than exposing nature's fluid and multiple identities. Moreover, it suggests that consumers always attempt to minimise risk and do not challenge the need to change their behaviour. Instead, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from an English village, the paper uses a case study of unpasteurised milk to analyse why rural consumers continue to buy foods labelled by official scientific discourses as ‘risky’. The paper argues that food risks in rural areas are configured by a concern to protect a rural identity from one implicated in scientific discourses of safety. These identity-related definitions of risk are also constructed by various moral behaviours which are integral to the process of becoming rural. In particular, the paper shows that these moral behaviours include establishing relations with specific forms of nature, maintaining community relations and adopting rural knowledgeabilities which together configure food safety and define rural status.     

The new squirearchy and emergent cultures of the new middle classes in rural areas

In part prompted by a recent spate of media reports this paper explores the emergence of a ‘new squirearchy’ in the English countryside. In doing so, it aims to both illuminate a particular facet of rural social life and help reignite interest in the cultures of rural class. Whilst relationships between rural class and culture were a source of excitement during the 1990s, much of this interest has apparently spluttered if not died, despite class itself remaining very much a live issue for rural dwellers. The paper draws on the findings of an in-depth ethnographic study to highlight the significance of performance and symbolic boundary-marking in the construction and reproduction of social identity. The focus is the activities and sites of ‘the pub’, ‘the hunt’ and ‘the shoot’, which have been key in the emergence of the new squirearchy in the study area. The paper shows the importance of lay classifications based on evaluations of cultural (in)competence and morality, and suggests that the performance and boundary-marking of the new squirearchy in tandem with other identities is evidence of a more extensive, complex and ambiguous ‘culture of middle-classness’ in rural areas.     

Rural studies: Modernism, postmodernism and the ‘post-rural’

In response to Philo [(1992b), Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies8, 193–207), who calls for rural studies to take the study of ‘others’ more seriously, we argue the need to take postmodernism more seriously. The paper focuses upon the production of knowledge about rural areas by academics. In the narrative that we provide here, the ‘rural’ had a strong presence until Pahl's critique of the rural-urban continuum which both diminished the status of the rural and emphasised the role of class in shaping particular spaces. Newby and his colleagues applied class analysis to agriculture, likewise undermining the significance of the rural. Further applications of general social theory, such as the political economy and restructuring approaches, show how modernist rural studies seem to be fighting a losing battle to posit the indispensability of the significance of the urban-rural division as an explanation; articulating and rearticulating the divide within a whole range of processes: economic, social and cultural. Rural social scientists have woven this modernist narrative, but, as Philo shows, one effect has been the neglect of certain social groups, cultures and identities. However, in contrast to Philo, we argue that a rather fundamental reassessment of social scientific approaches to the rural is required if these ‘neglected others’ are to be satisfactorily considered. We believe a ‘sociology of postmodernism’ would offer a more reflexive perspective on the processes which give rise to ‘the rural’. We thus call for an end to the use of universal or global concepts such as ‘rural’ (or the ‘urban’) and for a concern with the way places are ‘made’. This will entail a focus on ‘power’ as certain actors impose ‘their’ rurality on others. We term this the study of the ‘post-rural’.     

Segregation and protectionism: Institutionalised views of Aboriginal rurality

Rurality is a complex and contested term, with multiple notions and gazes amid calls for theoretical pluralism. In Australia, the spatial categories of ‘remote’, ‘rural’, ‘regional’ and ‘urban’ are applied to places that vary in their distance from an economic and political core and have differing population densities. We argue that natural resources institutions in rural Australia demand an ‘authentic’ performance of Aboriginality that is framed within orthodox and stable constructions of an Indigeneity associated with the remote category. Dominant representations of remote Aboriginal people living on traditional homelands and engaged in ‘traditional’ environmental protection are assumed to hold for all places and transposed when natural resources institutions satisfy compulsory Indigenous engagement. Such institutional requirements for authenticity exclude alternative and multiple Indigenous voices in natural resources management. Rather, Aboriginal people seek engagement across a portfolio of natural resources activities typically found in rural areas (such as mining, grazing, forestry, water allocation planning, and natural resources service delivery and enterprise development), and not just isolated in natural and cultural heritage conservation. This broad participation would more completely match their expressed aspirations and the multiple lived realities of their fluid and networked rural worlds. Using the rural town of Eidsvold in Australia as a case study, we discuss the findings of participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Indigenous people at regional natural resources management meetings and at ‘home’ in Eidsvold. Rather than a generic institutional approach, a place-based approach to understanding the complex ruralities of Aboriginal people is needed.     

Crossing divides: Ethnicity and rurality

This paper draws on research with people from African, Caribbean and Asian backgrounds regarding perceptions and use of the English countryside. I explore the complex ways in which the category ‘rural’ was constructed as both essentialised and relational: how the countryside was understood most definitely as ‘not-city’ but also, at the same time, the English countryside was conceived as part of a range of networks: one site in a web of ‘nature places’ across the country, as well as one rural in an international chain of rurals – specifically via embodied and emotional connections with ‘nature’. I argue that alongside sensed/sensual embodiment (the non-representational intuitive work of the body), we need also to consider reflective embodiment as a desire to space/place in order to address the structural socio-spatial exclusions endemic in (rural) England and how they are challenged. I suggest that a more progressive conceptualisation of rurality – a ‘transrural’ open to issues of mobility and desire – can help us disrupt dominant notions of rural England as only an exclusionary white space, and reposition it as a site within multicultural, multiethnic, transnational and mobile social Imaginaries.     

Knowledge constructions in research communities: The example of agri-rural researchers in Denmark

Construction of scientific knowledge can be seen as a struggle over who should define the terms and conditions of legitimate fields of research. Sociologists of scientific knowledge (SSK) have pointed to the importance of analysing scientific knowledge in the same way as other types of knowledge. This idea guides the present paper on Danish research in agriculture and rural areas. Based on an ethnographic study of researchers involved in rural studies, we take stock of the agri-rural research community in Denmark and reflect upon the how and why ‘fashions’ in Danish rural studies differ from ‘fashions’ in rural studies in the UK. In the analysis, we show how a research community construct and reconstruct itself in relation to what is perceived as legitimate fields of research. Finally, the paper gives insight into the research world of those doing research outside the UK and adds to the discussion of ‘putting philosophies of geography into practice’ that is on-going in British geography.     

Leaching the poison – The importance of process and partnership in working with Yolngu

The popular construction of rural places as ‘white’ spaces has significant repercussions for ethnic, Indigenous and ‘other’ groups who do not always fit within prescribed dominant processes. This paper provides new insights for rural scholarship through an engagement with Indigenous specific experiences of governance and decision making in rural and remote areas. Drawing on powerful Yolngu metaphors from northeast Arnhem Land, Australia, it makes Yolngu law and perspectives visible. Like the cycad nut that has poison within its flesh, so have government impositions on Indigenous people in remote areas. This paper is written to leach the poison out, to let it be cleansed.     

Investigations of the british rural middle classes — Part 1: From legislation to interpretation

This is the first of two papers concerned with understanding the causes and consequences of middle class presence in rural areas. This paper explores debates over the future of class analysis and in particular whether it is possible to avoid a dualistic choice between a ‘modernist class analysis’ or a ‘postmodernism’ where class has completely receded from view. Attention is drawn to notions of an ‘interpretative approach’ to class, which while accepting many of the claims of postmodernism still sees value in the notion of class and in conducting class analysis. Drawing on a number of recent discussions of class within and beyond rural studies it is argued that class analysis should be seen as an ‘interpretative accomplishment’ and that attention needs to be paid within it to at least four issues: (i) the processes of knowledge construction and communication; (ii) differences in conceptualisations of power and related concepts such as domination and exploitation; (iii) differences within the processes of class formation; and (iv) the impact of identity recognition on class analysis, class relations and classes practices. In a later paper these issues will be explored in a more substantive manner through consideration of some of the results of research conducted in five locations in rural Britain.     

Socio-cultural representations of greentrified Pennine rurality

This paper examines the processes of change in two ‘rural’ environs of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, associated with the in-migration and consumption practices of relatively affluent households. In doing so, we address the knowledge gap identified by Phillips (J. Rural Studies 9 (1993) 123) relating to the gentrification of rural locations. The term ‘rural greentrification’ is suggested to emphasise the varying cultural predilections of in-migrant households in the consumption of ‘green’ spaces. More specifically, a geography of greentrification is identified in the locale, which encompasses two socio-spatial relationships: ‘village’and ‘remote’. These are interpreted as distinct constructions of rural ‘habitus’ and thus exemplify the significance of Hebden Bridge as a special place, where the multiple appeals and meanings of different representations of greentrified Pennine rurality enable cultural and social differentiation. The findings reaffirm the value of viewing the rural as a socio-cultural construct, tied to place and time, which is specific to individuals and social groups.     

Tamworth, Australia's ‘country music capital’: place marketing, rurality, and resident reactions

Since the 1970s, Tamworth has become well known as Australia's ‘country music capital’. Its annual Country and Western Music Festival has become the leading event of its type in Australia, attracting over 60,000 visitors every year. The festival, and country music more generally, have become central to the town's identity and tourism marketing strategies. This article discusses the social constructions that have surrounded Tamworth's transition to ‘country music capital’—of the ‘rural’, and of ‘country’—within the context of debates about the politics of place marketing. Textual analysis of promotional material and built landscapes reveals representations of rurality (or ‘senses of the rural’). In their most commercial form, representations of rurality converge on a dominant notion of ‘country’, quite different from the ‘countryside’ and ‘rural idyll’ in England. This dominant, or normative ‘country’ forms the basis of imagery for the festival, the Town's marketing strategy, and associated advertising campaigns by major sponsors. It is predominantly masculine, white, working class and nationalist. But links between musical style and discourses of place are complex. Colonial British histories, Celtic musical traditions and North American popular culture all inform ‘country’ in Tamworth, dissipating nationalist interpretations. Normative constructions also contrast with other, heterogeneous ruralities in Australia, that include the lived experiences of rural Australians, and on stage—in country music—where multiple ‘ruralised’ identities are performed. Even those who stand to benefit from place promotion have been uncertain about country music and ‘the country’, because of associated discourses of Tamworth as ‘hick’ and ‘redneck’. In the final section of the paper, reactions of residents to constructions of Tamworth as country music capital are discussed, via the results of a simple resident survey. In contrast to previous studies of the disempowering politics of place marketing, Tamworth residents were on the whole supportive of the new associations and images for the town, despite ‘hick’ connotations, as it has become a centre for ‘country’, and for country music. Reasons for this are explored, and resistances discussed. The result is a complex and entangled politics of national identity, gender, race and class, where meanings for place are variously interpreted and negotiated.     

The peri-urban fringe: Europe's forgotten rural areas

The EC White Paper — The Future of Rural Society — identifies three “standard problems” of rural areas, but the first, which characterises areas associated with “the pressures of modern development”, receives little attention in the remainder of the document. This paper explains why it is particularly important that the peri-urban areas are not ignored in the development of rural policy. In the first place, the problems of these areas are inextricably linked to those of areas of rural decline and if such links are ignored the resulting partial analysis of rural problems may cause some important policy-options to be overlooked. Second, there continue to be pockets of disadvantage within the peri-urban areas where deprivation is likely to be increased by close proximity to an affluent majority. Finally, the paper analyses the Rural Community Strategy for Berkshire, a nonstatutory document prepared by a group drawn from governmental, quasi-governmental and non-governmental organisations in one peri-urban area of southern England. This shows that while the broad agenda of rural policy issues (covering employment, housing and services), may be very similar to that found in areas of rural decline the rationale for intervention is somewhat different, and transport issues may lie at the heart of the “standard problem” of these areas.     

Re-discovering the social: neo-liberalism and hybrid practices of governing in rural natural resource management

Since the 1980s, natural resource management (NRM) in rural Australia has been underpinned by rationalities and technologies of governing that constitute agricultural landscapes and resource managers in economically rational terms. While it is tempting to interpret these forms of regulation as part of a broad shift away from social forms of governing, this paper argues that ‘the social’ remains of crucial significance in understanding how both natural environments and the capacities of individuals to manage these environments are constructed. Drawing upon recent work in the Foucauldian-inspired literature on governmentality and, in particular, Stenson and Watt's (Urban Studies 36(1) (1999) 189–201) concept of hybrid governance, this paper examines how particular representations of ‘the social’ are assembled through strategies of NRM. Using the National Landcare Program (NLP) and Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) as examples, we consider how ‘social’ data is being incorporated into resource management strategies, and how this re-shapes both ‘the social’ and NRM as domains of governance. While the NLP and NHT incorporate concerns about social responsibility, they define these in terms of the capacity of individuals to respond to changing economic circumstances. This effectively defines land managers as socially and ecologically responsible only to the extent that they have the managerial capacities to pursue economically ‘rational’ practices. In concluding, we argue that hybrid practices of governing are indeed evident in NRM in Australia and that the concept of ‘hybrid governance’ requires further attention in understanding how rural spaces are made knowable and shaped as objects of knowledge.     

The Australian Landcare movement: towards ‘post-productivist’ rural governance?

This paper analyses whether the Australian Landcare movement complies with notions of ‘post-productivist rural governance’. The paper argues that Landcare has been a vast improvement on previous approaches to the management of the countryside in Australia, and that it has managed to mobilise a large cross-section of stakeholders. However, the Landcare movement only depicts certain characteristics of post-productivist rural governance. Although Landcare has some elements that fit in with theorisations of social movements, it still depicts many characteristics that show its close affiliation with the state and its agencies (in particular budgetary shackles). Landcare cannot be conceptualised as a fully inclusive movement, and there is little evidence that Landcare has been able to actively shape government policy. However, Landcare has contributed towards changing environmental attitudes, which can be seen as a key precondition for the successful implementation of post-productivist rural governance structures. In particular, Landcare's innovative approach of mutual farm visits, and its emphasis on the demonstration of ‘best practice’, has led to both an increased awareness of land degradation problems and the creation of grassroots ‘information networks’. There has also been some success with regard to Landcare's ability to change attitudes of the wider Australian public. Two important lessons with regard to conceptualisations of post-productivist rural governance emerge. First, individual components of post-productivist rural governance may change at different times, with the attitudinal level most influenced by Landcare, while underlying socio-political productivist structures will take much longer to change. Second, the problem in being able to label Landcare (the most innovative rural programme in advanced economies) as an expression of post-productivist rural governance shows how far away rural programmes in advanced economies still may be from such new forms of governance. The results, therefore, support those advocating that post-productivism may only be a theoretical construct in the minds of academics, rather than an expression of reality on the ground.     

The role of natural heritage in rural development: An analysis of economic linkages in Scotland

There is growing recognition of the important role played by natural heritage in rural economic development, but limited empirical work as yet to inform this debate. This paper examines the nature and strength of local economic linkages associated with the natural heritage in four case study areas in Scotland, differentiated in terms of their peripherality and dependence on the natural heritage. A framework for identifying ‘natural heritage activities’ in different localities is developed and applied in each study area. The framework distinguishes between three types of natural heritage activities, ‘core’ activities, such as environmental management; ‘primary production and extraction’ activities; and ‘reliant’ activities where the natural heritage is highly important to a business's commercial viability. Analysis of first-round economic linkages and multiplier effects of local economic activity in the four case study areas indicates that natural heritage ‘reliant’ activities have the greatest potential for generating local economic benefits through their propensity to source locally. They are also found to contribute more significantly to the economic base of the study areas through sales of goods and services to visitors. The policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

Intra-class conflict in rural areas

Although the changing nature of rural society has received considerable attention over the last two decades, there is a sense in which the importance of class conflict in rural areas has yet to be fully explored. There has been a preoccupation with matters of local authenticity in these communities, and the portrayal of social relations has been founded on a theatre of ‘locals vs newcomers’. Thus, class conflict has been accepted as the staging of a play-off between middle class in-migrants and the indigenous working class element of the community.In this paper we attempt to deal with the problem of class conflict from a rather different perspective. Specifically, we are less interested in inter-class conflict, and more interested in intra-class conflict. We argue that intra-class conflict can be a significant motive force in the economic, social and cultural constitution of rural areas.     

‘How to be a rural man’: Young men's performances and negotiations of rural masculinities

This paper is concerned with young rural men and how they ‘do’ identity politics living in a rural area of Norway. Focusing on how masculinity and rurality are constructed and interrelated in young men's narratives of living in a remote community, it is identified that young rural men reproduce, negotiate and transform local discourses of rural masculinity. First, the article shows that young men living in rural areas believe it is important to express rural masculinity through hunting and outdoor life as well as by exhibiting skills as handymen. Second, it reveals that it is important for young rural men to communicate a particular stance in the ongoing and controversial Norwegian debate over snowmobiles and carnivores, as these topics are related to rural men's sense of loyalty to place. Third, the article shows how rural men negotiate ‘the tough man’ images related to hunting, motors and handyman skills by constructing new and alternative masculinities. The analysis reveals that young rural men enact alternative masculinities, expressed in relation to new working life opportunities in the service sector, through emotional openness and caring, and in relation to traditional ‘masculine spaces’ such as hunting and snowmobiling. It is concluded that, little by little, rural communities are opening up for more flexible masculinities.     

Gender and housing : The provision of accommodation for young adults in three Mexican cities

The literature on gender and housing is oddly distorted, for it is dominated by research on households which are ‘women-headed’, even where the majority of women may live in households conventionally regarded as being headed by men. This literature shuns the ‘traditional’, male-headed, nuclear household and regards ‘non-traditional’ households as being those headed by single mothers or women living alone. The first part of this paper argues that it is important not to restrict discussion of gender and housing to the problems facing single mothers or women living alone, because there is a danger of rendering the majority of women, once again, invisible.Equating ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ households with ‘nuclear’ and ‘women-headed’ households, respectively, confuses structure with headship and overlooks cultural variations in what constitutes a ‘traditional’ household — the nuclear household is not necessarily the traditional norm. The second part of this paper explores a little-documented housing arrangement in which large numbers of women are involved in urban Mexico: sharing. ‘Sharing’ occurs when two or more households occupy the same plot of land; one household owns the plot, allowing the other(s) to live there rent-free. Sharing mostly involves the adult sons or daughters of the plot owners, and may be regarded as a variation on the extended household structure. Sons are more likely to be allowed to bring their wives to their parents' home, whereas daughters are more likely to leave. Women living with their in-laws lack security of tenure and there is often conflict between wives and members of their husband's family of origin, particularly their mothers-in-law.The anthropological literature has identified gender relations as the source of conflict between women in extended households. Sharing reduces the potential for conflict by giving the younger household greater autonomy. Furthermore, concern for their daughters' welfare leads many parents to offer accommodation to married daughters as well as sons. Single mothers, however, are more likely to live as part of their parents' household than to share. In this respect, the nuclear household norm is reinforced, since sharing seems to be a privilege accorded only to those who are married.     

New community governance in small rural towns: the Australian experience

State and federal governments in Australia have developed a range of policy instruments for rural areas in Australia that are infused with a new sense of ‘community’, employing leading concepts like social capital, social enterprise, community development, partnerships and community building. This has encouraged local people and organisations to play a greater role in the provision of their local services and has led to the development of a variety of ‘community’ organisations aimed at stemming social and economic decline. In Victoria, local decision-making, before municipal amalgamations, gave small towns some sense of autonomy and some discretion over their affairs. However, following municipal amalgamations these small towns lost many of the resources—legal, financial, political, informational and organisational—associated with their former municipal status. This left a vacuum in these communities and the outcome was the emergence of local development groups. Some of these groups are new but many of them are organisations that have been reconstituted as groups with a broader community focus. The outcomes have varied from place to place but overall there has been a significant shift in governance processes at community level. This paper looks at the processes of ‘community governance’ and how it applies in a number of case studies in Victoria.     

Exploring the current and future role of market towns in servicing their hinterlands: a case study of Alnwick in the North East of England

Faced with the problems of access, distance and low population density, the provision of quality services to rural areas is inherently difficult. Although the role of market towns in alleviating problems in the provision of rural services has been given little consideration within the academic literature, they are currently being targeted by UK government policy. Using a case of the hinterland of Alnwick, a market town in the North East of England, this paper explores the current and future role of market towns in servicing their hinterlands. The results suggest a mutual dependence between market town services and hinterland residents and that the continuation of this relationship depends on market towns taking advantage of demographic trends in rural areas. Faced with changing demographics and the wider use of the Internet, potential is identified for ‘clawing-back’ trade from larger urban areas and creating an enhanced role for market towns. Extending the sense of belonging beyond the boundaries of the town itself will also be important in increasing patronage of town services.     

“A problem of resources”: defining rural youth encounters in education, work & housing

Using empirical evidence from a study of rural youth living in a remote region in the West of Ireland, this paper applies a structurationist approach to focus on and explore how young people's scope for action and choice is shaped and mediated. In particular, it applies Giddens's concept of authoritative resources (‘organization of life chances’), social practices and relations to understand the encounters, events and experiences within education, work and housing. The paper concerns how the types of practices and relations encountered within these three arenas tend to problematise the choices and opportunities available for young people. In the late-modern age, these three spheres of life can generate considerable pressures, which, depending on circumstances, are differentially mediated by young people. In conclusion, it calls for policy to engage in more ‘enabling’ terms with rural youth experiencing the negative effects of rural economic restructuring.