‘Deprivation’ and ‘the rural’: An investigation into contradictory discourses

This paper investigates the issue of ‘rural deprivation’ using material collected for the Rural Lifestyles Project, conducted at Saint David's University College, Lampeter. The concept of ‘deprivation’ usually deployed within the literature in rural studies is problematic, and a number of criticisms are made about existing conceptualisations of the term. One of these criticisms is based on the finding that amongst respondents interviewed for the study of lifestyles in rural areas of England, a number were highly critical of the application of the term ‘deprivation’ to rural areas. This issue is explored through an investigation of the discourses of ‘the rural’, taken to mean a system of meanings that describe English rural areas. An examination of these discourses shows how ‘deprivation’ is denied, and this is investigated through a discussion of the representation of rural areas as problem-free and ‘idyllic’ in some way; through the portrayal of ‘deprivation’ as a fault of the individual; and through the construction of ‘deprivation’ as a feature of ‘the rural's’ ‘other’, i.e. the urban. The paper concludes with a call for the attitudes and beliefs of different groups of people living in rural areas to be taken account of in the production of research into lifestyles in rural areas.     

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.     

Situated legitimacy: Deliberative arenas and the new rural governance

Rural governance in the UK and elsewhere has undergone far-reaching changes, as partnerships and other collaborative approaches have emerged to address the challenges of rural sustainable development. The legitimacy of this ‘new rural governance’ is purportedly grounded in deliberation between stakeholders, but this is problematic—it is not clear how ‘legitimacy’ is to be understood now that the criteria of legitimacy appropriate to representative democratic government are not obviously applicable.Here we propose an analysis of legitimacy as situated—that is, given meanings by actors in specific contexts—and continuously constructed through discursive processes, where it also plays a reciprocal, highly political role in shaping those processes. We use this framework to analyse decision making in three distinctive deliberative arenas for sustainable transport policy making in the Peak District National Park in England. Legitimacy claims were found to be significant elements in each arena, but no single, overriding legitimacy discourse was successfully established. Instead, each arena's legitimacy was a hybrid, justified through a complex mix of competing rationales.While no single conclusion can be drawn about the legitimacy of ‘the new rural governance’, the strongest legitimising principles remained those grounded in representative democracy. In contrast, the ‘new’ approaches rely on deliberative norms accepted only by (some of) the relatively limited circle of stakeholders directly involved. More generally, if such norms are to become accepted principles for legitimate rural governance, then more work is needed to discursively establish their acceptability both in networks of governance and with the wider population.     

Behavioral economics has two ‘souls’: Do they both depart from economic rationality?

In this paper, I argue that behavioral economics, far from being a monolithic theory, consists of two different ‘souls’ and that a fundamental asymmetry exists between them, with regard to the nature of the departures from the economics’ ‘canonical model’ they focus on. While a first class of departures deals with the major cognitive limitations and systematic biases in decision-making affecting economic behavior, a second research area investigates deviations from the classic assumption that economic agents are systematically driven by the pursuit of material self-interest. Even though on methodological grounds the two research areas share a broadly inductive approach – as they both aim at incorporating the major results obtained through several empirical methods (in particular, via experimental work) into formal economic analysis –, I claim that rather different methodological conclusions and regulatory and policy implications can be drawn, depending on the cognitive or social nature of the departures from the standard economic model under study.     

Interconnecting housing,homelessness and rurality: evidence from local authority homelessness officers in England and Wales

This paper investigates the discursive and practical policy issues relating to homelessness in rural areas of England and Wales. It begins with the argument that such homelessness does represent a significant but under-emphasised problem in rural areas. Official government counting of rural homelessness itself underestimates the scale of the problem, but provides a starting point for an understanding of more hidden forms of homelessness. We suggest a number of ways in which rural homelessness is less visible than its well-publicised urban counterpart, relating to the morphology of rural areas, social-cultural constructs of idyll-ic rural living, and conceptual assumptions which render homelessness as out-of-place in purified rural spaces. We then report on findings from a survey of local authority homelessness officers in England and Wales and in-depth interviews with officers in the counties of Somerset and Gloucestershire. Seeing the issues through the eyes of these practitioners clarifies a number of strands of the invisibility of rural homelessness, and points to very significant interconnections between ‘housing’ and ‘homelessness’ discourses in the local rural policy process.     

Social welfare in rural Europe

Rural development has been identified by EU leaders as one of the priorities of European structural policies, and as one of the objectives of cohesion policy. Yet despite this commitment, we are very poorly informed about how ordinary people live across the rural areas of Europe, their incomes and quality of life, and their perceptions of policies and economic and social change. This paper argues that greater attention should be devoted to issues of poverty, disadvantage and social exclusion in rural Europe by both policymakers and researchers. This is particularly crucial at the present time as rural Europe is subject to major structural changes deriving both from changes in rural economy and society and from policy initiatives such as the Maastricht Treaty and the Single European Act. These are over and above the wider trends operating throughout Europe in relation to employment, fiscal crisis and ageing, for example. A central requirement is for the articulation of policies for tackling economic and social exclusion (e.g. Poverty 3, Exclusion 1), on the one hand, with those directed towards rural development (e.g. Leader 2), on the other. Fundamental household survey work is required to increase our understanding of what constitutes rural disadvantage, which client groups are affected, and how policies can contribute towards relieving their disadvantage, preferably through client-based instruments rather than less appropriate area-based approaches. The last part of this paper presents preliminary results of such a survey, focusing on issues of employment, housing, poverty and quality of life.     

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.     

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 public transportation and the mobility of older persons: paradigms for policy

Federal policy regarding public transportation in rural areas is examined through a comprehensive literature review. Then, three alternative approaches to future policy are suggested. The current fragmented panoply of rural transit programs that serve a minority of the rural population is the result of cycles of federal regulation and deregulation and chronic underfunding of rural transit compared to urban areas. The public purposes of transit, distinctions of need and demand, and funding comparisons with automobile usage are some contexts which set the framework for the social, and economic, and sustainability paradigms. Specific recommendations within each paradigm are suggested.     

What is really different about rural and urban firms? Some evidence from Northern Ireland

The economic structure of rural regions in Europe is becoming increasingly similar to that of urban regions. Therefore, what is really different about rural and urban firms? This question is investigated here through a comparison of matched manufacturing plants in rural and urban areas of Northern Ireland. The analysis finds that remote rural, accessible rural and urban manufacturing plants that are matched with respect to their industrial sector, size, age and ownership structure are nevertheless different in certain key respects. Remote rural manufacturing plants are seen to follow a production-cost-oriented export strategy, while accessible rural firms adopt a more innovation-oriented export strategy. In contrast, urban manufacturing plants use their reputation-based competitive advantage to service relatively large local markets. The competitiveness of rural firms is particularly influenced by the quality of transport infrastructure, the availability of suitably qualified staff, and external trade factors. Given this complex set of factors, effective policy initiatives in this area may involve measures that cut across departmental and national boundaries.     

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.     

Rural Public Transportation and the Mobility of Older Persons

ABSTRACT

Federal policy regarding public transportation in rural areas is examined through a comprehensive literature review. Then, three alternative approaches to future policy are suggested. The current fragmented panoply of rural transit programs that serve a minority of the rural population is the result of cycles of federal regulation and deregulation and chronic underfunding of rural transit compared to urban areas. The public purposes of transit, distinctions of need and demand, and funding comparisons with automobile usage are some contexts which set the framework for the social, and economic, and sustainability paradigms. Specific recommendations within each paradigm are suggested.     

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.     

Poetic Justice? Rural policy clashes with rural poetry in the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK

In 2001, the foot and mouth disease epidemic in the UK gave rise to widespread individual and community trauma and has had negative health, economic and social impacts on the people who live in affected rural areas. Many found strength by sharing their experiences with friends and relatives; others expressed their feelings in poems and art. Using insights from linguistics, cultural studies and rural studies, this paper analyses three poems written by a former farmer, a poet and a vet from the three most affected regions: Devon, Northumberland and Cumbria. It examines how an analysis of this type of ‘grounded poetry’ can provide new insights into individual and community trauma, how it can complement other work on FMD in rural studies and how it can be used to improve social policy decisions regarding future outbreaks of animal disease.     

On ‘problems and solutions’. The reproduction of problems for rural communities in Britain during the 1980s

Rural studies have long taken an interest in the problems besetting rural people, and in the ways in which these problems have been addressed by policy-makers. This paper briefly reviews the conventional analyses of problems and policy solutions in rural Britain during the 1980s and also raises the question of how rural researchers should regard the ‘problematic’ in these contexts. The move from regarding problems as the result of the structuring of opportunities to regarding them as a far more complex set of experiences and reactions to changing social, economic, political and cultural practices, raises interesting issues about the nature of power in rural lifestyles. It is argued that existing interpretative discourses of rural problems should be augmented by further study of problematic experiences relating to social constructions of belonging, feeling welcome, and cultural competence, and that the interconnected nature of power in politics, practice and discursive expectations about rural lifestyles will be an important subject for future research on these issues.     

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.     

What suicide and Greece tell us about precarity and capitalism

ABSTRACT

Many see precarity and precariousness as a ‘global condition', others do not. Most of these authors share the idea that populations suffer from economic displacements and ought to be at the forefront of states’ economic and labor policy agendas. However, these same authors, from different disciplines, presume an equivalency in precarity, missing that many peoples are racially exposed to injury, violence, and death. This article problematizes some of these disciplinarian notions and logics and argues that raciality is a global structure and a set of institutions of ordering and differencing through which the state resolves its contradictory demands by ‘checking claims’ about justice. Second, this article expands an analytics about subjectification and biofinancialization by reading how suicide and Greece are not projects but rather sites that expose the works of global raciality which aids, through the logics of precarity and the logics of ‘obliteration,’ the state’s work for global capital.     

Polanyi’s two transformations revisited: a ‘bottom up’ perspective

ABSTRACT

In The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi offers a ‘top-down’ analysis of the rise and demise of Europe’s unregulated market system. He assumes that changes in the organization of the international economy provide particular kinds of opportunities for states to act which, in turn, shapes the extent to which social forces will be able to influence state policy. Consequently, his analysis focuses, first, on the international institutions created by the self-regulating market system; then on the ‘liberal state’ which these made possible; and finally on how the system impacts ‘society as a whole’. The account which this analysis produces systematically underplays the social struggles which propelled and emerged from the rise of Europe’s nineteenth century system and which ultimately led to its demise. In revisiting the two periods that are the focus of Polanyi’s analysis, this article assumes that states and interstate systems reflect the interests of powerful social forces. Thus, working from the ‘bottom up’, it focuses on the class interests that produced Europe’s market system, the state and international structures which reflected and supported them, and the social struggles that ultimately brought about the collapse of the system. What this ‘bottom up’ account reveals is the centrality of a ‘double movement’, not of market expansion and a protective countermove on the part of ‘society as a whole’, but of dominant classes monopolizing economic opportunities from global expansion, and a rising ‘red tide’ of disaffected workers. This double movement, it argues, better explains the demise of the system and the changes that ensued from it.     

Case management for people with psychiatric disabilities in rural Sweden; experiences from the implementation of a national policy

The aim is to analyse the implementation of a case manager-model in rural Sweden. A sample of 15 case management teams was selected. Written materials were collected and interviews on location were carried out. Results: rural case managers design their work methods themselves, which entail several deviations from the national policy guidelines in this field. The case management boards have a low capacity to direct and manage the activities of the case managers. Consequently, case managers develop into ‘welfare entrepreneurs’. One salient risk is that teams become isolated from the surrounding welfare system. In conclusion, the Swedish version of case management in rural areas is a result of local processes of adaptation and negotiation that result in services that differ from those envisaged in national policy guidelines.     

TANF’s 15th Anniversary and the Great Recession: are Low‐Income Mothers Celebrating Upward Economic Mobility?

This article examines the impact of welfare reform for the upward economic mobility of low‐income families at the fifteenth anniversary of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. The reformed policy was based on assumptions about participating families’ morality and encouraged states to move families off welfare through work and marriage without considering whether they were still poor. TANF was also implemented during an economic boom. Today, the US economy is suffering from the effects of the Great Recession, with many fearing a double dip recession. Poverty rates rose during the last 3 years and are currently above 15 percent. For the first time since 1996, the welfare rolls are increasing in many states. Welfare reform’s ‘work first’ approach did not create lasting upward economic mobility for low‐income families. As an alternative, I explore how higher education for welfare mothers will create opportunities for lasting upward mobility, even in times of recession.