The politics of the rural and relational values: Contested discourses of rural change and landscape futures in west wales

Across Europe, rural landscapes and communities are changing, following local, national and global pressures. The future physical makeup of these landscapes, the species, landforms and land uses that are present, and the relationship between these landscapes and local communities, is uncertain. At the same time, rural politics has moved from debates about agricultural production to broader considerations of ways of life, and who and what is appropriate in the countryside. As different visions for the physical makeup of landscapes are being proposed and negotiated, it is worth understanding how they fit into broader rural politics, and the values that underpin them, particularly relational landscape values. The purpose of this work is to understand contests over the future of landscapes in west Wales, with particular focus on the relational values that underpin different visions for the landscape. We use image based Q methodology to analyse different visions. We find two distinct visions which we name socio-ecological rebalancing and maintaining heritage farming landscapes. We find that relational and eudemonic values underpin these visions. Despite claims by participants and stakeholders to speak for rural communities, we find important difference within rural communities. We find that disagreements on the environmental and social future of the landscape are based on shared facts but divergent values and relationships with the landscape. These findings have important implications for the future of contested projects aimed at transforming the landscape of this region, and relevance for wider European landscape change. Our conceptual approach, which combines a focus on the politics of the rural with relational values, and our methodological approach, of image based Q methodology, have great potential for understanding debates over the future of rural landscapes

Writing in Britain and Ireland, c. 400 to c. 800

No abstract available

Creating and curating an archive: Bury St Edmunds and its Anglo-Saxon past

This contribution explores the mechanisms by which the Benedictine foundation of Bury St Edmunds sought to legitimise and preserve their spurious pre-Conquest privileges and holdings throughout the Middle Ages. The archive is extraordinary in terms of the large number of surviving registers and cartularies which contain copies of Anglo-Saxon charters, many of which are wholly or partly in Old English. The essay charts the changing use to which these ancient documents were put in response to threats to the foundation's continued enjoyment of its liberties. The focus throughout the essay is to demonstrate how pragmatic considerations at every stage affects the development of the archive and the ways in which these linguistically challenging texts were presented, re-presented, and represented during the Abbey’s history