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.     

Distance as a hybrid actor in rural economies

This paper argues that the notion of distance ought to be re-conceptualized and promoted to the theoretical foreground of sociological analyses of rural economic action. Using research in rural British Columbia, Canada, I argue that current changes in rural political economy (for instance, the restructuring of industrial resource production, the promotion of local economic diversification, and advances in communications and transportation infrastructures) mean that the “performance” of connections between local and extra-local economic spaces are increasingly significant to economic relationships and exchange in rural settings. In re-conceptualizing the role of distance in a Post-Fordist rural economy, I borrow two key insights from actor-network theory: the notion of hybridity, and the strong influence that ‘hybridized’ networks have on (rural) actors. Rather than being a static fact, I argue that distance is itself a hybrid actor that ‘behaves’ differently according to the particular configuration of its natural, technological, and social dimensions. Thinking about distance in this manner makes a novel contribution to understanding rural development, as it asserts that the capacity to organize and configure distance (as opposed to simply acting ‘at a distance’) is a key source of power and variance in rural economies.     

Where the wild things are: the evolving iconography of rural fauna

This paper explores the changing relationship between ‘nature’ and rurality through an examination of the shifting iconography of animals, and particularly ‘wild’ animals, in a rural setting. Drawing upon a set of examples, the paper argues that the faunistic icons of rural areas are evolving as alternative conceptions of the countryside, of nature and of the classic dichotomy between ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’ animals are being re-constructed. The re-introduction of wild species, either through deliberate strategies or through natural migration, the diversification of husbandry to include rare and protected breeds and the increasing number of reported sightings of strange and unfamiliar animals all point to a change, or changes, in the place accorded to ‘wild’ things in countryside that have become, themselves, domesticated and gentrified.     

Conflicts about water: A case study of contest and power in Dutch rural policy

The Dutch countryside forms the scene for pressing problems of management and allocation of land and water. These problems underscore the need for comprehensive rural policies. For that purpose, area-based rural policy has been initiated. This new policy is part of a larger policy shift, labelled in literature as ‘new rural governance’. Area-based rural policy co-ordinates the different interests of stakeholders and establishes consensus-based solutions. In this article we question this claim. We analyse the conflicts, rationalities and interests within a Dutch rural planning project. This project displays a power struggle in which actors try to (de)construct legitimacy. This observation contrasts sharply with the consensual rationality on which area-based policies are founded. Therefore, we conclude that a tension exists between ‘what should be done’ and ‘what is actually done’ in Dutch rural policy. Area-based policy does not guarantee the establishment of consensus among rural stakeholders. Therefore, Dutch area-based policies need to be contextualised to purposefully address spatial rural problems.     

Whither rural studies?

To mark the launching of Journal of Rural Studies, this paper briefly reviews the increasing importance and volume of rural studies throughout the developed world. The rise in popularity of rural environments within some disciplines of study has been due to a steady progression of concept and technique resulting in academic maturity. In other disciplines, previous bias towards urban areas and consequent patchy and sectoral study of the countryside has only been overcome, in part, through a relatively unplanned but nevertheless effective multidisciplinary perspective. Rurality has proved very difficult to define in an all-embracing manner, and indeed rural studies as a framework of study may be threatened if social science continues to espouse structuralist epistemologies with their aspatial connotations. At present the divide between the ‘environmental’ and ‘socio-economic’ element of rural studies is certainly not unbridgeable, although by the same token the existence of an integrative and commonly cherished body of subject matter which will satisfy both elements may be more apparent than real. These conceptual issues, and related questions of technique and method require further emphasis in rural studies as does the analysis of planning and policy-making, where a cross-fertilization of concepts with rural development strategies in underdeveloped nations would be beneficial.     

Regulating rural change: Property rights,economy and environment — a case study from Cumbria,U.K.

A new set of priorities increasingly determines the development of the British countryside. It is encouraging a more economically and socially differentiated countryside in which spatial patterns of development will be less predictable and environmental concerns more evident. New means of examining these complex processes of change are urgently required. In particular, they must engage with and adequately reflect the significance of local circumstances. Drawing upon Clark's notion of ‘real’ regulation, with its focus upon administrative processes, a framework is presented which re-directs our understanding of regulation as a focus for examining the relations between the market, the state and civil society. The framework is operationalized through an examination of the redefinition and redistribution of real property rights. Changes to property rights provide a means of establishing altered priorities. These priorities are reflected in the nature and outcomes of the rural land development process which, it is argued, continues to afford a particularly powerful ‘window’ on the nature of rural change. The field enquiries are based upon a detailed, case study approach using an ‘actor-in-context’ methodology. A case study drawn from Allerdale in Cumbria, England, which examines the debates and outcomes surrounding the Lostrigg open-cast coal site, is used to illustrate the methodology, to indicate the growing political substance of environmental as opposed to employment concerns in the countryside, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of local resistance to established norms of land development.     

The elderly in rural environments

This paper provides a critical examination of the research available on the rural elderly in America. A detailed review of the many studies and topical areas investigated by rural gerontologists is not attempted. Rather, several ‘salient aspects’ of rurality (occupational, ecological and sociocultural) are identified as a basis for describing and explaining the status and experiences of older people in rural areas. The meaning of these dimensions as they relate to rural environments and the elderly is explored through both a general discussion and an application to two substantive issues — health status and life satisfaction. This examination illustrates the sizeable gaps that exist in what we currently know about the rural elderly and the problems/drawbacks of approaches traditionally used to study this topic. The paper concludes with a call for a more unified and conceptually based approach to future rural elderly research, that focuses on how and why the ‘salient aspects’ of rurality produce different circumstances and experiences for the elderly, and that emphasizes rural variation, not just ‘rural vs urban’ comparisons.     

The economic diversity of rural England: stylised fallacies and uncertain evidence

Debate about rural policy is often based on persistent presumptions about conditions in ‘rural England’, generally associated with economic decline, low incomes, and a lack of services. Such generalisations are rarely justified for rural areas as a whole and we term them as ‘stylised fallacies’. The impression of their relevance is perpetuated by the selective comparison of statistics for ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ areas. The paper reviews the evidence on a number of such fallacies: the economic impact of agriculture, depopulation, low incomes, rural labour markets, house prices and service provision. In each case, the position is far more complex than is commonly recognised in policy debate. The rural character of an area does not in itself offer a rationale for policy intervention. Rather, discussion could be supported through the characterisation of different types of local area. This might be approached either through statistical analysis or through qualitative analysis of emerging social and economic patterns of differentiation. In practice, each approach needs to be supported through the other.     

The mobility imperative for rural youth: the structural,symbolic and non-representational dimensions rural youth mobilities

Mobilities of money, symbols and young people themselves are central to the formation of the contemporary youth period. While rural young people remain marginal to theoretical development in youth studies, this paper shows that mobilities are especially significant for rural youth, who experience a kind of mobility imperative created by the accelerating concentration of economic and cultural capital in cities. Drawing on theory and evidence from contexts including Europe, Australia, Africa and South America, this paper explores the mobility imperative for rural youth and offers a new theoretical framework for understanding rural youth mobilities. The framework understands mobilities across three dimensions: the structural, the symbolic and the non-representational. These dimensions refer to material inequalities between rural and urban places in a global context; symbolic hierarchies that concentrate the resources for ‘youthfulness’ in cities and the affective entanglements between embodied subjectivities and spaces that emerge as young people move. The paper shows how these dimensions interact in the production and experience of the mobility imperative, offering an ontological and theoretical platform for future research into rural youth mobilities.     

The restructuring of social imaginations in rural geography

This paper reviews the development of rural social geography. It argues that there has been a restructuring in the dominant social imagination expressed within rural social geography away from a ‘restricted social imagination’ which shied away from considering phenomena which were immaterial and clearly politicized. The prevalence of this social imagination within geographical studies of rural settlement, population change, access to resources and services and rural communal life is highlighted. It is argued that there have been two important directions of critique of this social geography. First, the politicization of rural social geography through Marxism is discussed with particular reference being paid to the analysis of class relations in the countryside. Second, the rise of postmodernism and the cultural turn of rural geography is discussed. Attention is drawn to the explicit politicization of this social geography and the emphasis placed within it on the immaterial. The paper outlines some of the key arguments and texts of these two lines of restructuring, and also how some earlier work trespassed beyond the dominant restrictions placed on social imaginations of the rural. The paper ends by raising the issue of whether the immaterial and the politicized have been reconciled together within the current work of rural social geographers.     

Strangers asking strange questions? A methodological narrative of researching belonging and identity in English rural communities

This paper emerges from a current research project that examines the relationship between contemporary English rurality and notions of identity and belonging. While this is primarily a methodological narrative we argue that this narrative speaks to an analysis of current rural relations. The paper concerns itself with two key methodological issues that have arisen during the ‘doing’ of the research. First, it examines our own relationship, as ‘outsider’, urban-based researchers, to the rural and the use and/or relevance of our biographies as resources for making ourselves seem less ‘strange’ and for accessing, and being in, rural environments. At the same time as providing us with a map into our micro rural worlds the paper draws on this biographic-research relation in order to problematize notions of homogenous rural identities and polarized rural/urban identities. The second part of the paper argues that who we were/how we were perceived had a relation to what ‘truths’ and accounts we were told by our respondents. More particularly, we show how our use of focus group interviews had a direct role in the rehearsal and presentation of these ‘truths’. Given the current contestations and tensions over what and who ‘the rural’ is, it was clear that those involved in the focus group discussions wanted to give us particular stories that often fell into a consensus pattern of either ‘rural idyll’ or ‘rural crisis’ narratives. Drawing on Simmel's notion of the stranger and focus group data we argue that for these narratives to be told we, as researchers, were ascribed by the group members to shifting positions of intimacy and remoteness.     

Bridging identity divides in current rural social mobilisation

The shift from a corporatist citizenship regime to a neoliberal one has adversely affected Latin American rural communities and led to widespread social mobilisation and organisation in the countryside. The struggle of such marginalised communities has been often framed by stressing their indigenous collective identity over the previously prevalent class-based peasant identity. This article focuses on the role of identity and the negotiation of different identities in the struggle of two rural organisations in Northwest Argentina for securing land tenure and improving their standards of living. Argentinean society, in contrast to some other Latin American societies, is often imagined as ‘white,’ but in recent decades many peasant, or campesino, communities have rediscovered or reaffirmed their indigenous origin. This article therefore deconstructs rural collective identities in Argentina and analyses how class and ethnic identities are negotiated in struggles of grassroots social organisations in the countryside of this predominantly urban country.     

Second home countryside. Representations of the rural in Finnish popular discourses

This paper focuses on the representation of post-productive countryside in Finland by exploring how the rural is presented in the context of second home tourism. Being an integral part of rural areas and their history, second homes are an established example of the post-productive consumption of countryside. The international and Finnish literature on rural images provides the theoretical framework for the paper. Research on rural visions has been active in recent years with an emphasis on the Anglocentric interpretations of the rural idyll. This paper contributes to this discussion by providing an empirical review of Finnish popular discourses of second homes. The review is based on an analysis of second-home owners' motives and media representations. The second home countryside is analysed as a farmscape, wildscape and activityscape. The results suggest that the Finnish second home landscape is seen as wilderness (1), life at second homes imitates visions of traditional rural life (2), and the environment is used for traditional consumptive and leisure activities (3).     

Women and the rural idyll

The existence of a ‘rural idyll’ has been widely accepted by social scientists working within the rural field. Yet the term itself has received relatively little critical attention. In particular, the variable characteristics and impacts of the rural idyll amongst different groups within the rural population has been largely overlooked. The cultural turn in rural geography and the emphasis which has recently been placed on identifying and studying the rural ‘other’ provides an important opportunity for the notion of a rural idyll to be unpacked from the perspective of different rural dwellers. This paper investigates the role of the rural idyll in maintaining rural gender relations. It examines women's attitudes towards and experiences of two key elements of the rural idyll; the family and the community. Drawing on material from interviews with women in rural Avon in the south west of England, the paper shows how women's identity as ‘rural women’ is closely tied in to their images and understanding of rural society. It is argued, in particular, that the opportunities available and acceptable to women are built on very strong assumptions and expectations about motherhood and belonging within a rural community. Some of the more practical implications of these expectations are explored in the context of women's involvement in the community and in the labour market.     

From risky to responsible: expert knowledge and the governing of community-led rural development

Rural development policy and practice in the ‘advanced’ Western nations is based increasingly on community-led strategies that seek to manage risk and facilitate change at the local level with minimal direct state intervention. It is widely assumed that such development strategies enable local people to have a greater say in transforming the fortunes of their communities, and are therefore a means of empowerment. Drawing upon the literature on governmentality, this paper argues with specific reference to Australia that such a view depoliticises the significant role played by expertise in defining, governing and setting limits on community-led rural development. We suggest that the notion of risk provides a crucial focal point for exploring sociologically the expert knowledge, categories and techniques through which communities are encouraged to think of and manage themselves as ‘self-governing’, ‘empowered’ and ‘responsible’. Additionally, foregrounding the concept of risk enables a critical analysis of the power-knowledge effects of expertise on rural development practice. Thus, we argue through the use of two case studies that while the use of various forms of rural development expertise creates opportunities for some communities, it enhances inequality for others who either fail to conform to the risk-minimising forms of conduct prescribed by experts, or who pursue alternative forms of development. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these arguments for rural development policy and practice in Australia and in other nations.     

“Me,the street,and a backpack”: employment,income, and physical capital in rural recovery

ABSTRACT

Recovery capital is a framework for understanding individuals’ resources for recovery from substance misuse. In a qualitative analysis of rural individuals in recovery (N = 49), the role of physical capital emerged prominently across ten focus groups. Participants highlighted the effects of employment status, income, and other forms of physical capital directly, as well as indirect effects through changes in human capital. Negative cultural capital components, in the form of stigma and employment discrimination, were described as barriers to physical capital acquisition and successful recovery. Based on these findings, we discuss rural recovery challenges and propose a model of recovery capital interactions.     

Recent rural community studies

This article examines recent rural community studies by considering, in turn: comparisons, methods, theories and community studies as vehicles for developing social scientific arguments. ‘Recent’ is defined as from 1980 onwards. ‘Rural’ is taken to include research conducted in country towns. And ‘community studies’ is understood as an inclusive term embracing various research methodologies. Because this field cannot be covered exhaustively, attention is focused on research that has a special bearing on the future of community studies. Particular reference is made to the work of Colin Bell, which helped to shape recent research agendas.     

Developing integrated rural tourism: Actor practices in the English/Welsh border

This paper examines community attitudes and distinctive practices that shape local responses to integrated rural tourism (IRT) development in the lagging rural region of the English/Welsh border area. The focus is on how actors acquire attributes as a result of their relations with others and how these assumed identities are performed in, by and through these relations. The location of this lagging rural region is particularly interesting as it is divided by a national boundary which not only impacts on administrative, planning and tourism marketing structures, but also contributes to the construction of fluid place identities (Murdoch and Pratt, 1997 describe ‘fluid space’ as having ‘no fixed points of reference, no privileged points of view, simply a swirling, viscous, partially stable, partially enclosed movement of social entities’ (p. 64) that may be described as Welsh, English, or a mixture of both. In order to reflect the variety of opinions and concerns in the region, responses were drawn from different actor-groups: local businesses, resource controllers, gatekeepers, institutions, community members and visitors. Results indicate that, while most were in favour of a greater integration of tourism with actors' aspirations, local resources and activities, there was an element of longing for a deux ex machina to put in place real change in the region.