Baroque rurality in an English village

The paper explores the concept of baroque rurality through employing concepts of affect and affordance within a study of an English village experiencing rural gentrification. The paper begins by outlining the concept of baroque rurality, contrasting it with so-called romantic approaches that have employed abstract notions of environmental or natural factors in accounts of rural in-migrational decision making. This paper then outlines conceptions of affect, affordance and more-than-representational perspectives before moving to an empirical examination of the relations that residents in a gentrifying village in the East Midlands of England have with the natures that surrounds them. The presence of positive and negative emotions with respect to a range of actants taken to be natural is highlighted, along with the significance of non-representation and pre- or semi-conscious relations with these actants. Attention is also drawn to the range of material affordances and ecologically embedded positionings and sensings described in accounts of rural living and rural in-migrational decision making. The paper concludes by considering the diversity of such positioning and the complexity associated with studies of baroque ruralities

Climate change, carbon dependency and narratives of transition and stasis in four English rural communities

This paper explores the carbon dependency of life in four villages in England, the degree to which residents in these villages are aware of and concerned about this dependency and its relationship to climate change, and the extent to which they undertake actions that might mitigate or adapt to this dependency. The paper identifies high degrees of carbon dependency and awareness and concern about climate change and carbon dependency, although relatively low levels of mitigative or adaptive actions. The paper explores how this disjuncture between awareness and actions persists, arguing that attention needs to be paid to how people narrate stories to themselves and others that account for inaction. Five narratives of non-transition or stasis are identified, along with three, less widely adopted, narratives of transition. The significance of rurality and emotions within these narratives is highlighted

Moving to or from a carbon dependent countryside

Introduction “Within the revisiting of counterurbanisation … attention has been paid primarily to the types of people involved - counterurbanisation as practice - and their motivations for moving towards a more residential environment” (Halfacree, 2011: 210); “As the extensive literature on moving to a low-carbon society attests there are … many … ways of motivating people … to move to low carbon energy” (Caney, 2011: 549). This paper explores the two senses of the phrase ‘moving to’ referenced above, namely spatial movement as in-migration and changing state, or transition. Specifically, the paper explores, on the one hand, movements of people towards rural living - the counterurbanisation referred to by Halfacree and the daily movements or mobilities that emerge within this migration to rural living - and, on the other hand, movements from current forms of energy use towards low-carbon ways of living mentioned by Caney and which have come to exercise the minds and practices of many transport researchers and policy-makers due to connections between carbon use and global climate change (see Schwanen 2011; Banister et al. 2012). After highlighting the significance of these two senses of movement, it is argued that although often discussed in isolation they potentially lie in tension, in that the former might preclude, or at least hinder, achievement of the latter. Migration to the countryside may involve people moving to areas where they engage in higher levels of transport use, the majority of which will consume carbon-based fuels and emit carbon dioxide (CO2) and other ‘greenhouse gases’ that are widely seen to be creating global climate change. Drawing on work conducted as part of two major research programmes, entitled Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) and Bridging the Urban Rural Divide (BURD), the paper demonstrates the value of a post-carbon perspective within a mobilities influenced rural transport geography. It does this through exploring the extent to which peoples' everyday lives in the British countryside rely on carbon-fuelled mobilities and the degree to which there is both recognition of this and willingness to establish lower-carbon rural lifestyles. It is argued that whilst there is recognition and concern over levels of energy consumption, a series of ‘narratives to the self and others’ lead to little willingness to undertake actions to move away from this situation

Narratives of transition/non-transition towards low carbon futures within English rural communities

Drawing on Anderson’s (2010) identification of calculative, imaginative and performative modes of anticipatory action where futures are made present in the present day, this article explores how rural studies have explored futures before focusing its attention on the degree to which residents in four villages in England make evaluations of rural futures linked to issues of low carbon lifestyles and climate change. Particular attention is paid to the role of imaginative constructions of rurality in influencing anticipatory actions associated with carbon dependency and climate change. The study reveals the presence of disjunctures between expressed concerns over energy consumption and climate change, and associated mitigative and adaptive actions. It is noted that such disjunctures have been widely observed in previous studies and interpreted through some variant of a ‘deficit model of public understanding’. It is argued, however, that such models ignore the presence of cultural and material constraints on action, the presence of pre-existing imaginative and performative interpretations of futures, and the degree to which people are aware of such disjunctures and construct narratives for the self that seek to resolve, deny or displace dissonances between beliefs and actions. The paper outlines five narratives that promote stasis as well as three narratives of transition, considering how they make a range of futures both present and absent

Comparative ruralism and ‘opening new windows’ on gentrification

In response to the five commentaries on our paper ‘Comparative approaches to gentrification: lessons from the rural’, we open up more ‘windows’ on rural gentrification and its urban counterpart. First, we highlight the issues of metrocentricity and urbanormativity within gentrification studies, highlighting their employment by our commentators. Second, we consider the issue of displacement and its operation within rural space, as well as gentrification as a coping strategy for neoliberal existence and connections to more-than-human natures. Finally, we consider questions of scale, highlighting the need to avoid naturalistic conceptions of scale and arguing that attention could be paid to the role of material practices, symbolizations and lived experiences in producing scaled geographies of rural and urban gentrification

Comparative ruralism and 'opening new windows' on gentrfiication

In response to the five commentaries on our paper ‘Comparative approaches to gentrification: lessons from the rural’, we open up more ‘windows’ on rural gentrification and its urban counterpart. First, we highlight the issues of metrocentricity and urbanormativity within gentrification studies, highlighting their employment by our commentators. Second, we consider the issue of displacement and its operation within rural space, as well as gentrification as a coping strategy for neoliberal existence and connections to more-than-human natures. Finally, we consider questions of scale, highlighting the need to avoid naturalistic conceptions of scale and arguing that attention could be paid to the role of material practices, symbolizations and lived experiences in producing scaled geographies of rural and urban gentrification

Comparative approaches to gentrification: Lessons from the rural

The epistemologies and politics of comparative research are prominently debated within urban studies, with ‘comparative urbanism’ emerging as a contemporary lexicon of urban studies. The study of urban gentrification has, after some delay, come to engage with these debates, which can be seen to pose a major challenge to the very concept of gentrification. To date, similar debates or developments have not unfolded within the study of rural gentrification. This article seeks to address some of the challenges posed to gentrification studies through an examination of strategies of comparison and how they might be employed within a comparative study of rural gentrification. Drawing on Tilly (Big structures Large Processes Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage), examples of four ‘strategies of comparison’ are identified within studies of urban and rural gentrification, before the paper explores how ‘geographies of the concept’ and ‘geographies of the phenomenon’ of rural gentrification in the United Kingdom, United States and France may be investigated using Latour’s (Pandora’s Hope. London: Harvard University Press) notion of ‘circulatory sociologies of translation’. The aim of our comparative discussion is to open up dialogues on the challenges of comparative studies that employ conceptions of gentrification and also to promote reflections of the metrocentricity of recent discussions of comparative research

The Varying Impact of Geographic Distance as a Predictor of Dissatisfaction Over Facility Access

This research uses a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) analysis to compare perceptions of public service accessibility as captured by an attitudes survey against measures of geographical distance to those services. The 2008 Place Survey in Leicestershire, UK, captured data on respondent dissatisfaction about their access to different services and facilities. In this analysis, survey responses about access to Post Offices and libraries were summarised over census Output Areas. Road distances to the nearest facility were calculated for each Output Area. GWR was used to model the spatial variations in the relationship between facility distance and access dissatisfaction and how these relationships vary within and between different socio-economic groups (in this case OAC groups). The results show that for Post Offices, the effect of geographic distance as a predictor of access dissatisfaction is stronger than for libraries, that its effect varies spatially and that there is considerable variation within and between different socio-economic groups. For Libraries, geographic distance is a weaker predictor of dissatisfaction over access, there is little local variation in the effect of geographic distance as a predictor of library access dissatisfaction and that there is little variation within and between different socio-economic groups. These results indicate that as well as geography, other dimensions related to facility access need to be considered and that these will vary from facility to facility and from group to group

The mobilities and immobilities of rural gentrification: Staying put or moving on?

This paper analyses census data for England and Wales to explore the ties between processes of rural gentrification and recent internal migration. Internal migrants are defined as individuals who moved subnationally to their current address in the previous 12 months, as indicated by the replies to the 2001 and 2011 census question about usual address 1 year ago. Our analysis reveals declining rural in-migration rates between 2001 and 2011, in parallel with other recent studies of internal migration. At the same time, uneven geographies of rural in-migration are identified. In rural places with declining in-migration rates, we emphasise the immobilities of settled gentrifiers that are caused by predilections to ‘stay put’ within prized, rural places for age-related personal/emotional, social/support and economic reasons. This is limiting the supply pipeline of housing for latent in-migrants and slowing flows of migration per se in saturated rural housing markets. By contrast, rural places with increasing inmigration rates may signify new frontiers of gentrification, providing channels of entry for recent migrants that are not able to buy into exclusive high-cost gentrified markets. Our novel argument is that despite gentrification being inherently a process of migration, when viewed in a broader temporal perspective, mature and exclusive forms of gentrification can also stifle migration and be the catalyst for immobilities

Rural population geographies in the changing differentiated countryside?

This chapter provides a broad introduction to rural society and the forces of change. Beginning with the concept of the ‘differentiated countryside’, and drawing on the case of England and Wales in the UK, the chapter examines contemporary shifting social geographies and the challenges arising from this. Through mapping census data, the chapter overviews these changes by focusing on employment, class, age and different family formations