Beyond rural idylls: Imperfect lesbian utopias at Michigan Womyn’s music festival

Whilst rural idylls have dominated some discussions of rural social difference, little attention has been paid to rural utopias. Imagined, material and discursive experiences of utopian rural ideals are critically examined in this paper. It takes as its focus the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival - an annual US womyn-only festival - in order to understand the mutual construction of empowering rural spaces and non(hetero)normative women’s bodies. The first part of the paper moves away from the current focus on ‘rural idylls’ to understand social difference and ruralities, and argues that the notion of ‘rural utopia’ is a useful framework to reconsider rural possibilities for those considered ‘other’ to dominant (heterosexual) hegemonies. The context of the festival and qualitative empirical research methodologies are explained. In the second part of the paper four themes that arose from this research are explored. Firstly, the ‘free expression’ of sexualities, including sex and relationships is seen as creating a ‘slice of lesbian rural utopia’ at Michfest. Secondly, rural utopian understandings of Michfest as womyn’s space where diverse bodily aesthetics are celebrated are compared and contrasted to urban spaces, and particularly the gendered embodiments of ‘everyday’ life. Third, while womyn’s bodies may contest heteronormative performances of femininity, they also reiterate normative and embodied versions of ‘women’, creating womyn’s space through the controversial ‘womyn-born-womyn’ entry policy. Fourth, rural tensions are examined around the negotiation of work (voluntary and paid). The paper concludes by arguing that a focus on imperfect (lesbian) utopias furthers our understanding of gender, sexuality and rurality.     

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 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.     

Competitive sport and social capital in rural Australia

Sport is often regarded as an important part of life in rural Australia, contributing to community identity, sense of place, social interaction and good health. The involvement of rural citizens in sport also has the potential to contribute to social capital. Understood in simple terms as norms of reciprocity and associational life, social capital is often regarded as a positive resource in rural areas. Drawing on a case study of the Northern Wheatbelt of Western Australia, this paper examines the links between sport and social capital in a rural region. In particular, it considers the ways in which sport acts as a vehicle for the creation and expression of social capital. The paper also considers the so-called darker side to social capital, and the extent to which this is evident in the Northern Wheatbelt. The paper shows that sport is an important arena for the creation and maintenance of social capital. However, it is also clear that this is being eroded as a result of wider processes of economic and social restructuring in rural Australia. The paper also points out that the social capital generated by sport is often fragile, and can lead to social exclusion and marginality for some residents.     

Gender,class and rurality: Australian case studies

The interrelationship between gender and class in rural spaces has received little attention. While rural scholars have focused on the implications for class from processes of gentrification and agricultural and rural restructuring, these analyses have remained largely ungendered. Similarly, feminist rural studies have rarely explored subjectivity as gendered and classed. This paper contributes to rural theories of class and gender by drawing on the work of contemporary feminist class theorists to explore class as gendered and inscribed through personal memory, community narrative and through everyday values and interactions associated with work, leisure and family. To explore intersections of gender, class and rurality, the article draws on data from interviews from two separate Australian studies of farming families. Narratives highlighted the ambiguity of class, the gendered and classed nature of voluntary organisations in rural spaces, and moral values and signifiers associated with what it is to be a ‘good’ farmer and a ‘good’ community member. The data indicate how values of moral worth are gendered and classed and inscribed on farming women and men. This qualitative examination of gender and class in rural spaces draws attention to class as being more than a ranking on an occupational scale, property ownership or degrees of engagement in consumption. Rather, it reveals class as emotionally inscribed in ways that are gendered, economic and moral, and represented through symbolic signifiers and cultural narratives.     

The politics of marginality in Wallowa County,Oregon: Contesting the production of landscapes of consumption

The state of Oregon’s (USA) land use planning framework has long been characterized by tensions between state and local authority, between traditionally-defined “urban” and “rural” concerns, and between the competing interests of various landowners. An examination of Wallowa County, Oregon’s implementation of House Bill 3326, a 2001 law giving counties the power to define certain agricultural lands as “marginal,” and therefore exempt from restrictions on subdivision and development, illustrates the ways in which these tensions become magnified as rural communities attempt to govern private land use in the context of rural restructuring. Implementation of HB3326 highlighted the tensions between landowners interested in capitalizing on development opportunities afforded by HB3326, neighboring producers concerned about interference from future amenity migrants, and existing amenity migrants with interests in protecting their rural idyll. Contestations over nonfarm development took place in the context of a strong agricultural community identity, concerns about the effects of economic restructuring on producers, and local resistance to the rural gentrification process. The process of defining marginality came to encompass not only technical issues of land productivity, but also broader community contestations over the continuation of traditional land uses and the legitimacy of various actors to govern private land.     

Race,Hyper‐Incarceration,and US Poverty Policy in Historic Perspective

In this article, I bring scholarship on welfare reform into discussion with work on crime control and racial and ethnic relations. I locate the genesis of hyper‐incarceration and the moral suasion imposed on the recipients of contemporary social welfare services through the poverty policies of the Victorian era and later the postbellum south, implicating the checkered history of racial domination in the United States in the development of social welfare and criminal justice policy. I conclude by discussing the ways in which the United States has been reconfigured to facilitate these trends and of new terrain in the study of marginality in the neoliberal age. Doing so demonstrates the long‐standing collusion between welfare state and criminal justice actors, identifies the racialized target of punishment and poverty management, highlights the significance of race in the development of social policy, and exhibits the importance of social welfare policy in contemporary race and ethnic relations.     

Drinking places: Young people and cultures of alcohol consumption in rural environments

This paper focuses on the contemporary British moral panic about young people and the consumption of alcohol in public space. Most of this public debate has focused on binge drinking in urban areas as a social problem. Here, we consider instead the role of alcohol in rural communities, and in particular alcohol consumption in domestic and informal spaces, as well as the formal drinking landscape of pubs and bars. Drawing on empirical work (including a survey, interviews and participant observation) in rural Cumbria, UK we explore the specific socio-spatial nature of local attitudes to alcohol consumption and its regulation. In doing so, we reflect on the nature of rural lifestyles, community spaces and intergenerational relations. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the implications for health promotion professionals of the generally positive attitude towards young people's drinking in the rural area where the research was conducted. It also draws attention to the need for academics to pay closer attention to the ways that moral panics about binge drinking are implicitly producing a monolithic image of alcohol consumption in urban areas that fails to acknowledge the socio-spatially differentiated nature of practices of alcohol consumption and regulation.     

Wind farms in rural areas: How far do community benefits from wind farms represent a local economic development opportunity?

Although the large-scale deployment of renewable technologies can bring significant, localised economic and environmental changes, there has been remarkably little empirical investigation of the rural development implications. This paper seeks to redress this through an analysis of the economic development opportunities surrounding wind energy development in rural Wales. The paper concludes that the economic development outcomes to rural areas from wind generation projects to date have been questionable. Increasing the flow of conventional economic benefits to rural economies in terms of incomes and jobs is shown to be difficult because of the nature of the local supply side in remote areas. Partially as a consequence of this, developers of wind farms have come to routinely provide diverse forms of community benefits to ‘affected communities’, but these have yet to evolve into significant tools of economic development. In any case, the flows of revenues from community benefits are dwarfed, in quantitative terms, by the revenue streams that might be channelled to rural areas through a broader community ownership of wind energy projects. However, although a few local successes have been achieved, the scope for realising the returns from community ownership remains low in the Welsh case, with a series of impediments considered. We close the paper by suggesting means through which economic outputs might be improved.     

Moral distinctions and structural inequality: homeless youth salvaging the self

This paper explores the construction and contestation of moral distinctions as a dimension of contemporary structural inequality through a focus on the subjectivities constructed by young people who have experienced homelessness. Empirical material from two research projects shows that in young people's narratives of homelessness, material insecurity intertwines with the moral economies at work in neoliberal capitalist societies to construct homelessness as a state of moral disgrace, in which an ungovernable experience is experienced as a moral failure. When young people gain access to secure housing, the increasing stability and security of their lives is narrated in terms of a moral adherence to personal responsibility and disciplined conduct. Overall the paper describes an economy of worth organized around distinctions between order and chaos, self‐governance and unruliness, morality and disgrace, which structures the experience of homelessness. As young people's position in relation to these moral ideals reflects the material conditions of their lives, their experiences demonstrate the way that moral hierarchies contribute to the existence and experience of structural inequalities in neoliberal capitalist societies.     

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.     

Alienation of the outsider: the plight of migrants

This paper compares the plight of international migrants with those from rural to urban areas, examining specifically the migration of Turks into Europe and into Turkish metropolitan centers. This allows comparison of migrant groups with the same point of origin in terms of national, ethnic, cultural, religious, and social characteristics, as well as the same traditional family culture. Economic factors are the main reasons for immigration into Europe. The migrant worker and his family often become marginal to both the country of origin and the country of sojourn. The migrant family must be flexible in dividing or reconstructing itself in various ways to accommodate time, space, and money requirements and to protect ties with the home country requiring intensive geographical mobility, resulting in structural instability and even fragmentation. For the 2nd generation, poor school performance decreases self-esteem and hinders the development of cultural identity; the higher the aspirations for the future and the perception of marginality, the greater is the child's orientation toward the home country. In Turkey, rapid change in traditional agricultural production and rapid population growth caused the movement of population from rural to urban areas. Through rural-urban migration and international migration millions become uprooted populations and become "outsiders." The distinction between 1st and 2nd generation is one of degree, based on the retention of the traditional culture and identity. Factors which interfere with the integration of the migrant population into the dominant society include 1) the unicultural nature of the dominant society and 2) the degree of similarity (or dissimilarity) between the 2. In Turkey, as well as in many other developing countries, the "traditional" family interaction pattern is characterized by relatedness and interdependence among individuals and between generations. Turkish rural to urban migrants are in a more favorable situation than immigrants to Europe to utilize the informal affiliations of family, kin, and community. Extended communal networks are recreated through congested slum living conditions and through friendship sometimes replacing family and kin; traditional identities are reaffirmed through strengthened religious and national sentiments and informal groupings.     

Investigations of the British rural middle classes — Part 2: Fragmentation, identity, morality and contestation

This is the second of two papers concerned with understanding the causes and consequences of middle class presence in rural areas. This paper draws on the notion of an interpretative approach to class analysis as outlined in the first paper and, in particular, addresses the issues of power, difference and identity discussed, in a theoretical manner, in that paper. The focus of this paper is, however, more substantive in that it draws on research conducted in five rural areas of Britain as part of two research projects. The paper is structured into three parts. The first outlines the nature of the research projects and the forms of research conducted within them. The second part of the paper explores the issue of whether there are significant class differences within the middle class, and indeed within the service class. Attention is drawn to how the class classifications of John Goldthorpe and Erik Wright appear to cross-cut each other in ways which are suggestive of the presence of what may be termed a ‘service proletariat’. The significance of gender and other lines of social differentiation within the formation, as well as fractionalisation, of class relations is highlighted. The third part of the paper addresses the inter-relations between socio-economically established differences and those constructed through notions of culture and morality. It is argued that rural residents commonly evaluate people and places through notions of cultural competence and morality, as well as through constructions of socio-economic differences. The roles of both general and localised/ruralised constructions of cultural and moral differences are highlighted, as is the way that these constructions are used to contest, symbolically at least, the socio-economic construction of difference.     

FROM EL CAMPO TO EL BARRIO: MEMORY AND SOCIAL IMAGINARIES IN SANTO DOMINGO

In the social imaginaries of the Dominican Republic, national culture has its origins in el campo, the countryside. Country spaces and country people are viewed as embodying the past in the present, making them authentic contemporary carriers of national culture and moral order. By contrast, the city has long been viewed as the site of a modernity that takes its inspiration from outside of the nation but also as a site of social degeneration. In recent decades, representations of poor barrios as a threat to the city's moral order have intensified in reaction to rising crime rates and a series of economic crises. First generation migrants from the country to the city find that their status as carriers of culture and morality is compromised. They evoke positive memories of their rural pasts to position themselves as moral beings transposed to a corrupt urban milieu. At the same time, they develop urban identities that incorporate aspects of rural life while rejecting others. I argue that migrants' memories of their rural past resist their emplacement while allowing for the transformation of their present structural position.     

Middle class fractions, childcare and the 'relational' and 'normative' aspects of class practices

The emphasis in class research remains on the structural aspects of class, class processes are neglected. This paper focuses upon some relational and normative aspects of class through an examination of social divisions produced and constructed within middle class families’ choices of childcare. Working with data from two contrasting settings in London (Battersea and Stoke Newington) three issues are addressed in the paper; the extent to which childcare arrangements both substantively and structurally position children differently within long term educational careers; the ways in which the use of choice in a market system of child care and education, works to produce patterns of social closure that quietly discriminate via the collectivist criterion of class and racial membership; and the ways in which child care choices also point‐up and perpetuate subtle distinctions and tensions of values and lifestyle within the middle class, between class factions. Concepts drawn from the work of Bourdieu are deployed throughout.     

Frontier imaginings and subversive Indigenous spatialities

One of the most powerful and enduring aspects of publicly projected Anglo-Australian national identities is part of what [Howitt, R., 2001. Frontiers borders, edges: liminal challenges to the hegemony of exclusion. Australian Geographical Studies 39, 233–245.] has referred to as frontier imaginings: the carving out of the Australian physical and socio-cultural landscape into familiar, settled, and productive spaces. These frontier imaginaries have been leveraged to exact social control and ‘zealously order rural space’ [Philo, C., 1992. Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies 8, 193–207, 197]. Government policy has historically been imbued with frontier imaginaries, privileging population movements that are constructed as appropriately bounded, and disciplining those which are not. Much Indigenous mobility falls into the latter category. This paper tells a story of competing rationalities about the purpose and nature of rural ‘settlement’, both past and present, and the implications of these rationalities for contemporary Indigenous population dynamics. In so doing, it creates a discursive space for examining the cultural content and hidden assumptions in constructions of appropriate ‘settlement patterns’. Ultimately, it speaks of spatial struggles across the Australian geographical and temporal landscape. It also opens windows onto the fragile geographies of co-existence that need to be engaged with to shift the discourses of rural livelihood and well being toward discourses of accommodation, recognition and sustainable ways of being together.     

The Power of Ritual in a Chicano Community

This paper explores the meaning of the symbols embedded within the quinceañera, a fifteen-year-old Chicana's birthday party. The ceremony in Chicago includes both a religious and secular component and has become more extensive in the urban U.S. than it has been in rural Mexico. Three positions are advanced: (1) The ceremony is an adaptation to the economic and social marginality of Chicanos in a U.S. city, (2) the ceremony is a transitional cultural phenomenon as it implied the need to maintain ''Mexicanness'' when they are becoming more Anglo, and (3) the ceremony represents urbanized traditionalism emphasizing continuities with the past despite social changes. It is argued that the third hypothesis has more validity. The ceremony serves to promote the separate identity of Chicanos in an increasingly complex society and the richness and power of the symbols permit the construction of different meanings by the different audiences: the adult men, the adult women, and the youth.     

Household Production and Symptoms of Stress in Post-Soviet Russian Villages1

Abstract This paper examines the impact of human capital (the number of working age household members), social capital (social exchange helping networks and community integration), technological capital (use of mechanical agricultural tools), and village of residence on stratification of Russian peasant households in the post-Soviet era. Findings from a 1995 survey of households in three Russian villages show that the number of working age adults in the household has the strongest influence on household agricultural production. Social capital and technological capital also are associated with differences in the amount of sales obtained from household production. One village, which is located in an oblast (province) which has a program to assist peasant households had substantially higher agricultural production than did the other two villages which are located in oblasti without such programs. The number of working age adults in the household, social exchange networks, and community attachment are negatively associated with symptoms of stress, while higher village levels of production are associated with higher average levels of symptoms of stress in the village. The implications of the findings for the future of Russian agriculture and Russian rural village life are discussed.     

Forecasting food supply chain developments in lagging rural regions: evidence from the UK

Endemic problems in EU ‘lagging rural regions’ (LRRs) are well documented and various support mechanisms have long been in place to help overcome structural difficulties. Nevertheless, new rural development architectures are now being sought and some scholars have posited that LRRs may benefit from the ‘quality (re)turn’ in food and a relative shift from long to short food supply chains. The ways in which this ‘new agriculture’ relates to rural development in lagging regions sound fine in theory. However, in practice it is far from clear what will actually happen, where and how. This paper attempts to answer some of these questions and, using a Delphi technique, to forecast those factors likely to influence supply chain development and performance in two LRRs in the UK: West Wales and the Scottish–English Borders. The findings suggest that while most experts willingly accept the socio-economic values that can be gained by localising, shortening and synergising the food chain in LRRs, there are also important barriers that question the emergence of such an agrarian based rural development dynamic. These include the small number and size of ‘alternative’ producers in both locales, with most still locked into industrial forms of production; the restrictive influence of bureaucracy; the shortfall of key intermediaries in both regions’ food chains; and the poor provision of key physical infrastructures (e.g. roads, railway and telecommunications). The Delphi method also reveals how expert opinions about rural development in LRRs are contingent and contested, with contradictions emerging within, as well as between, rounds.     

Migration intentions of rural youth in the Westhoek, Flanders, Belgium and the Veenkoloniën, The Netherlands

‘Should I stay or should I leave my home region?’ is one of the key life course questions that many young people must address as they grow to maturity. Social mobility increasingly presupposes geographical mobility, especially in rural areas. The consequences of the selective out-migration of socially mobile young people (‘brain drain’) are seen as a threat to the economic development and reputation of rural areas. The out-migration of young rural people is often related to participation in higher education and entrance into the labour market. This paper focuses on the migration intentions of pupils in secondary education in two peripheral rural areas: The Westhoek in Flanders, Belgium and the Veenkoloniën in the Netherlands. It analyses, by means of logistic regression analysis, the migration intentions of 611 pupils in the Westhoek and 294 pupils in the Veenkoloniën in relation to their social background, migration history, perceptions of employment opportunities and the way they identify with their home region. In both regions, perceived employment opportunities and local attachment appear to be the most important factors explaining migration intentions. In the Veenkoloniën, in contrast with the Westhoek, migration history, educational level and representations of the region are also important factors determining the migration intentions of young people. These results can be explained by differences in the structure, culture and landscape of the two regions.