Conflicts and contestations. Rural populations’ perspectives on the second homes phenomenon

In response to demands to restructure and diversify their economies, many rural communities have welcomed the expanding phenomenon of second homes. However, while the second home owners bring new resources to the host communities, the literature also suggests that large second home populations in rural communities provide fertile ground for a number of economic, social and cultural conflicts and contestations. The present paper analyses the views of the local rural populations on the second home phenomenon, with particular attention to variation in these views, both within and between the rural communities (municipalities). The analysis uses material from the survey City, countryside, second homes 2008, which was conducted among a large-scale and representative sample of the population in Norwegian rural second home municipalities. The first section of the paper addresses the rural populations’ stance towards the second home phenomenon, both in general and as it unfolds in their own vicinity. Results show generally positive views on second home development; however, the analysis identifies a substantial minority which is negative to the second home expansion. Nevertheless, the second section shows that even those rurals who are negative towards further developments of second homes largely report harmonious social relationships with the second home population that is already present. Third, the paper presents and discusses a multivariate logistic regression model to analyse how different segments of the rural population vary in their views on second home phenomena. Here, results suggest differences at both micro and macro levels: the local rural elites, in particular those with direct economic interests in the second home sector, are most positive towards further development. On the municipality level, resistance towards second homes is stronger in municipalities with a high density of second homes. Nevertheless, a high growth rate in the number of second homes, due to high investments, seems to increase local support.     

The changing nature of rurality and rural studies in Russia

This paper seeks to outline different strands of the reconfiguration of the social and spatial perspectives on the countryside in Russia in the last 20 years. The country's transition implied changes in the production of knowledge, including the re-examination of research topics and bringing new theories into rural studies. The article strives to develop a theoretically informed critique of the recent studies, specifically addressing the changing vision of rurality. Taking as a starting point traditional concerns in rural discourses, i.e. the ways rurality have been traditionally studied in Russia, this paper seeks to identify what rural studies might gain and lose from the shift in academic research. Critics have focused on the problems of bringing together past and recent trajectories in rural research, concentrating on the power of construction of particular rural discourses in different environments. The reconstruction of changing rural discourses aims to provide an interpretative framework for understanding the ways various rural images and policy concepts are implicated in the construction of the Russian countryside.     

Experiencing and writing Indigeneity, rurality and gender: Australian reflections

This paper has two interrelated aims. The first is to contribute to knowledge about rurality, gender and Indigeneity. This is undertaken by the first author, Bebe Ramzan, an Indigenous woman living in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. Bebe shows similarities across rural and remote areas in Australia and details her knowledge and experience of home, rurality, rural communities, land and gender. The second aim of the paper is to examine issues surrounding the involvement of academic white women in Indigenous research. Writing from the position of feminist white women Barbara Pini and Lia Bryant reflect on theories of whiteness as cultural practice and in this paper contest representations of rurality in rural studies as white.     

Excluding exceptions: Housing non-affordability and the oppression of environmental sustainability?

This paper explores the provision of homes for less wealthy households in rural England. By allowing ‘exceptions’ to UK planning law to provide low-income housing for local residents, the national government seeks to secure dwellings for the less wealthy and so sustain socially mixed rural villages. This paper explores how the production of homes through the exception policy is not conducive to the construction of many new houses. The particular emphasis in the paper is on how responsible agents are discouraged from being more active in erecting new village homes for low-income households. Empirically, the paper draws on documents, interviews and a social survey in the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk to investigate the process of delivering rural exception homes. It is concluded that, despite Government assertions that a socially mixed countryside is desirable, the decision-making criteria that dominate the worldviews of agents in social housing provision work against this outcome.     

What rural restructuring?

This paper emerges from a growing sense of disquiet over the regularity and often loosely utilised appearance of the concept ‘rural restructuring’ in the literature. The paper examines rural restructuring from two perspectives — as an analytical approach that emphasizes the need for a holistic view of change processes, and as a statement on the character of change in the countryside. The argument put forward is that restructuring ideas have much to commend them as an approach, even if theoretical improvement will require more diversity in ‘starting’ theoretical perspectives and a stronger willingness to engage with other theoretical stances when the weaknesses of a ‘starting’ perspective are revealed. This will entail approaching questions of rural restructuring from a broader range of perspectives than currently dominant visions, which are grounded in political economy. In exploring restructuring ideas as ‘facts’, the paper focuses on England, as this is a country in which rural restructuring is commonly reported to have occurred or be occurring. The paper argues that this vision of the English countryside is too poorly articulated and that support for this vision is far from convincing. It cautions that restructuring processes are less widespread than is often implied. Moreover, there are grounds for seeing restructuring processes are reifying the past, not heralding a new social dynamic.     

(Un)caring communities: Processes of marginalisation and access to formal and informal care and assistance in rural Russia

The marginality of rural life, understood in structural, economic, political and geographic terms, has been an underlying theme in both historical and contemporary studies of the Russian countryside. Much less attention has been paid to marginality as relational and the moral discourses of (un)belonging and (un)deservingness through which moral centres and peripheries are constructed within rural Russian contexts. This paper explores the ways in which both fixed, structural and constructed, personalised explanations of hardship are employed by rural people and how these relate to processes of integration into or exclusion from ‘caring’ and ‘moral’ communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Burla village, western Siberia, in 2008-10, and focusing primarily on the activities of the Centre for Social Assistance to Families and Children located there, the paper discusses the ways in which affiliation with the ‘moral centre’ facilitates access to both formal and informal forms of care and assistance from which those at the ‘moral periphery’ are more often excluded.     

Commodification of rural places: A narrative of social fields,rural development,and football

One of the most significant recent elements of restructuring in rural areas is the transition from an economy based on agricultural production to an economy based on the countryside as a form of commodity. In this transition process, different narratives or images of an area are produced to promote villages and other places in the countryside as commodities. Much of the literature takes it for granted that outsiders control the processes of branding rural areas, but our case study demonstrates that the producers (as well as potential consumers) of the countryside as a commodity can be insiders within a community. In this paper, we demonstrate how a local football club can take a leading role in the process of commodification of rural places in the post-modern era. Football clubs are presented as commodities to attract investors, sponsors, and expertise from private businesses. In both commodification of rural places and football, the challenge is to construct narratives or images that correspond to the pre-existing expectations of consumers, whoever they might be. Our theory-informed empirical analyses illustrate the way in which the Norwegian football club Sogndal Football has been instrumental in the restructuring of the Sogndal community.     

我国生态农村建设之探索

生态农村建设是当前建设社会主义新农村的重大举措,从农村的生态环境、基础条件和农民意识等方面,探讨农村生态环境存在的问题,指出加快农村生态建设的重要性,提出加强乡镇企业环境综合整治、完善体制机制建设、发展生态农业、开展生态文明教育等措施。     

Once an outsider,always an outsider? The accessibility of the Dutch rural housing market among locals and non-locals

One of the most pressing questions in the rural gentrification literature is whether rural residents face difficulties in finding a home within their locality due to the influx of more wealthy newcomers. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which intended local movers and intended non-local movers have realised their rural residential preferences in their preferred municipality. We perform multilevel multinomial logistic regression analysis on data from two housing surveys for the Netherlands that are enriched with register data from the longitudinal Social Statistical Database (SSD). Our results show that, despite of their lower income, intended local movers are more likely to find homes within their preferred rural location than are intended non-local movers. Intended non-local movers move more often to a location other than that initially preferred, with urbanites facing a higher likelihood to move to an urban area. The findings suggest that ties to the residential environment are more important in successfully finding housing in one's preferred rural location than are financial resources.     

Trial by space for a ‘radical rural’: Introducing alternative localities,representations and lives

This paper is concerned with bringing together and drawing out some diverse strands of thought and action that are striving—from within a broadly green anti-capitalist agenda—to produce a rural space that is different from and a challenge to the mainstream trajectories that the production of the rural is taking in the global North. First, I outline the main elements of a new model for thinking about rural space in general that tries to incorporate three different facets of ‘space’ that have been teased out through geographical scholarship. This draws inspiration from work by Henri Lefebvre. After demonstrating this model in respect of the post-1945 productivist rural, I introduce it to debates about the emerging contours of the post-productivist countryside. Drawing predominantly on British examples, the second half of the paper develops one element within the heterogeneous potentiality of this post-productivism to consider some key aspects of what I term an example of ‘radical’ rural spatiality. This examines its perceived localities, conceived formal representations and partially lived everyday lives. The final main section gives brief consideration to opportunities now being presented to this radical rurality but also notes the considerable challenges that lie ahead.     

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.     

Differentiation of rural development driven by industrialization and urbanization in eastern coastal China

With the socio-economic transformation, regional development factors recombination and followed industrial restructuring have changed the rural areas in eastern coastal China deeply. The interaction between the material and non-material elements affecting rural production and lifestyles shaped different rural development types depending on a carrier, which is composed of different industries. Accordingly, this paper makes the definitions of four rural development types, i.e., farming industry dominated rural development type (FIT), industry dominated rural development type (IDT), rural development type focusing on business, tourism and services industries (BTT), and balanced rural development type (BDT), and classifies the rural development types in eastern coastal China. Then, taking the social representation approach and basing on the major factors affecting the long-term rural development and the exertion of the functions of the countryside with regard to society, the assessment indicator system of rurality degree index (RDI) was established to distinguish the rurality degree of different types. The results indicated that, to some extent, the RDI may accurately reflect the status quo of rural development and the exertion of the functions of the countryside with regard to society, and can also reflect the different stage in what the same rural development type in different region stays. The authors argue that the study on the interaction of rural development factors in the process of economic and social transformation and the subsequent rural development model is very important to deeply understand the rural development and to smoothly achieve coordinated and balanced rural–urban development in developing countries, which are experiencing rapid industrialization and urbanization.     

Residents of the urban field: A study of wilmot township,Ontario, Canada

This paper examines the characteristics and activity patterns of residents located within the urban field of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. A survey of 100 households in Wilmot Township was undertaken, first, to classify the population according to residential history, and second, to compare their travel patterns for work, shopping and neighbouring activities. Results suggest that the urban field of Kitchener-Waterloo is home to three diverse groups of people: ruralites, homecomers, and newcomers. While both homecomers and newcomers moved directly from an urban location, the former are distinguished by their past rural living experience. The activity patterns of the groups varied significantly. While newcomers retained strong ties with the urban core (K-W), both ruralite groups interacted more frequently with communities in the township. It is concluded that the countryside is a dynamic part of the urban field; one whose structure is considerably more complex than first assumed.     

In-migration, entrepreneurship and rural–urban interdependencies: The case of East Cleveland, North East England

In-migration is a key influence in the process of rural economic development in England, Continental Europe and the US. New arrivals are often viewed in the literature as contributors in new venture creation, as well as catalysts in enhancing rural–urban interdependencies in the countryside. This paper sets out to explore the validity of this view in the case of East Cleveland: a rural area with a tradition of mining and industry, occupying the coastal fringe of the Tees Valley city-region. In doing so, the paper compares this locality with other parts of rural England in order to draw some wider conclusions. Particular emphasis is placed on comparisons with Cumbria, where comparable data are available. The paper argues that the impact of in-migration on the conditions of supply of entrepreneurship is cumulative rather than transformational. This means that it is particularly profound in localities with strong opportunity nexus, reinforcing favourable demand side conditions. However, the ability of in-migrant entrepreneurs to influence rural–urban interdependencies in areas with weak opportunity nexus (such as East Cleveland) is modest.     

Rural population density: its impact on social and demographic aspects of rural communities

Using the settled areas of South Australia as a case study, this paper seeks to demonstrate the specific importance of rural population and settlement density as an important variable in understanding the social, population and settlement geography of sparsely settled rural regions, where sparse and falling density presents both practical and conceptual problems for rural planners. After a review of the literature on population density, the case is argued for the use of net rural rather than gross density in the analysis of settlement patterns. The paper then tests a series of hypotheses on the empirical relationship between rural density as independent variable and selected demographic and socio-economic indicators as dependent variables, at two specific points in time. For the same region, points in time and set of indicators, it goes on to compare the predictive power of rural density as an independent variable with that of three other important qualities of rural settlement patterns (remoteness, settlement size and urban concentration). Rural density is found to be a significant explanatory variable, both in its own right and in comparison with the three other variables tested. In conclusion, the findings are related to policy development measures for rural Australia.     

Gympie’s country music Muster: Creating a cultural economy from a local tradition

This paper provides an historical analysis of the National Country Music Muster, a country music festival held in a forest outside of Gympie, a town in rural southeast Queensland, Australia, between the period 1982 and 2006 (the first twenty-five years of the event). This article analyses the origins of the Muster, demonstrating how local events are often developed as a result of regional traditions and assets, or ‘countryside capital’ (Garrod et al., 2006). While this countryside capital was used to develop the Muster, this paper will demonstrate the event created its own capital, which the Gympie community has then utilised. The Muster has enabled the development of community capacity in three key ways: community not-for-profit groups have received increased income through participation as volunteers at the Muster; collaborative efforts between groups have developed senses of community on site; and the Muster has fostered social capital development by encouraging volunteer groups to work on site, all of which, of course, ensures the Muster continues to operate. Additionally, the Muster has provided the impetus for the creation of two country music focused cultural institutions in Gympie, as well as several spin-off events, which seek to capitalise on the increased traffic through town during the Muster period. Each of these institutions and spin off events has helped embed country music within Gympie’s cultural economy. Further, they provide a clear demonstration of a rural community actively and creatively deploying its cultural capital in order both to buttress itself against fluctuations in the town’s fortunes and to assert a locally relevant country identity.     

Prospects for rural areas in an enlarged Europe

This paper is an attempt to look into the future of the rural areas of Europe, on the basis of a set of assumptions regarding community enlargement, continued gradual integration and a relatively stable European and global political environment. In the agricultural sphere continued reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), environmental issues, the intensification and new uses for surplus land are discussed. The complexities of recent rural population and employment trends are recognised and it is suggested that in many areas diversification has already taken place, often without support from deliberate diversification policies. The paper concludes by noting the current rise in interest in rural development policy throughout Europe, and highlighting some of the conflicts between alternative visions of the way forward.     

Migration to less-popular rural areas in the Netherlands: Exploring the motivations

Migration into rural areas is often explained in terms of the rural idyll, the attraction of the countryside with its less hurried way of life in a quiet, spacious and green environment. However, this migration phenomenon has mostly been researched in attractive, amenity-rich, popular rural areas. This paper investigates the characteristics and motivations of migrants to less-popular rural areas using survey data (N = 664) for four municipalities in the North of the Netherlands. Our study shows a young group of in-migrants with relatively low incomes, but also a large proportion of working people and a considerable number of highly educated movers. Separating the motivations for choosing to live in a rural area in general from the motivations for choosing this specific rural area reveals that while the pull of the rural idyll is an important motivation for moving to a rural area in general, the reasons for choosing the specific rural area are a mixture of housing characteristics, the physical qualities of the environment, personal reasons and the low house prices in the area. Combining the motivations with the characteristics of the movers reveals the diversity within the movers group. Our analysis shows a group of movers motivated to live close to family and friends, consisting of return migrants, singles, the youngest and oldest age groups and also the lowest income group. The physical qualities of the environment attract a group of highly educated movers, people with high incomes and people aged between 35 and 64. The motivation of housing characteristics, referring in most cases to the availability of a specific house, is mentioned by a wide range of movers, but in particular by people moving from urban areas.     

Rural tourism and livelihood strategies in Romania

Substantial changes in the Romanian countryside accompanied by the need for more robust economic activities have caused some families to turn to tourism as an economic diversification strategy. A qualitative study of selected rural tourism entrepreneurs indicates positive experiences, both economically and in other aspects of their lives. However, the development of rural tourism is highly uneven spatially and the Romanian Government should act more incisively to support families establishing guesthouses.