Research on the Geography of Agricultural Change: Redundant or Revitalized?

Future research directions for agricultural geography were the subject of debate in Area in the late 1980s. The subsequent application of political economy ideas undoubtedly revived interest in agricultural research. This paper argues that agricultural geography contains greater diversity than the dominant political economy discourse would suggest. It reviews ‘other’ areas of agricultural research on policy, post-productivism, people, culture and animals, presenting future suggestions for research. They should ensure that agricultural research continues revitalized rather than redundant into the next millennium

Poetry, painting and change on the edge of England

In this article we discuss our creative research on and with a contested coastal community on one of the UK's last existing plotlands, the humberston Fitties. Plotlands can be briefly defined as places where individuals have historically self‐built holiday houses. This 56‐acre strip of land with 319 chalets is on the Humber estuary and lies close to Cleethorpes, a seaside resort, and Grimsby, a seaport now facing post‐industrial decline. Our cross‐disciplinary collaborative practice between poetry and visual art explores open, environmentally aware engagements and methodologies with landscape and rural place. We investigate the relation of social, environmental and energy politics, looking out to land and sea and back to the community. Our results include original art and poetry presented innovatively together in exhibitions and books, in addition to local people's responses to our methodologies and the work itself

Blueprints for rural economy: Philip Lowe's work in rural and environmental social science

Philip Lowe died in February 2020, and so an academic career spanning five decades in environmental and rural social science and the sociology of knowledge came to an end. A pioneer of the social science of environmentalism since the early 1990s, Philip Lowe had been closely associated with the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University in the UK and had been the intellectual force behind establishing rural economy as both a subject and mode of social science analysis. This article reflects on a career and the evolving concept of ‘rural economy’ as an economic form, a policy realm and a knowledge practice. Through this history, it presents an account of the contribution of Philip Lowe's research and writing that, as a result of his death, now stands as a bounded and complete body of work for the benefit of future generations of scholars

Troubled Waters:The Unifying Influence of Conservation and Public Health on the Access Provisions of the Marine and Coastal Access Act

The Marine and Coastal Access Act, amongst its other aims, is intended to ‘build on existing access legislation to create a route around the coast of England’ (Foreword to the Draft Marine Bill, HMSO 2008). As such the Act can be seen as a continuation of the access objectives of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, and possibly as a vindication of the success of the original Act. The broad objectives of access, land management and conservation are present in both pieces of legislation, though it remains to be seen whether the access provisions of the Marine Act will enjoy the same level of funding as those of the CROW Act. This paper investigates the origins of the Marine Act, and in particular the power and influence of tourism, nostalgia and environmentalism on the emergence of this legislation

Rights, symbolic violence and the micro-politics of the rural: the case of the Parish Paths Partnership scheme

In this paper microlevel politics and conflict associated with social and economic change in the countryside and linked changes in rural governance are explored with a focus upon research carried out on a recent rural policy initiative aimed at local 'empowerment'. This acts as a touchstone for a wider theoretical discussion. The paper is theorised within a conceptual framework derived and extended from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and others in order to explore case studies of the English Countryside Commission's Parish Paths Partnership scheme. The micropolitics involved with this scheme are examined and used to highlight more general issues raised by increased 'parish empowerment' in the 'postrural'