Rural Geography

Author: Michael Woods
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761947615
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
"Michael Woods has taken on the formidable task of giving an overview of rural places and society in advanced economies as a single author and has presented a book that rightly deserves to be called state-of-the-art." - Geographische Rundschau "For those students with an interest in rural change, this 'state of the art' book is essential reading." - Brian Ilbery, University of Coventry "With Rural Geography Michael Woods remedies the often underestimated dynamism of rural places and rural society by providing the much-needed synthesis of the European and North American literature on rural restructuring and globalization processes." - Patrick H. Mooney, University of Kentucky Rural Geography is an introduction to contemporary rural societies and economies in the developed world. It examines the social and economic processes at work in the contemporary countryside - including the more traditional: like agriculture; land use; and population; as well as wider themes like: rural health, crime, exclusion, commodification, and alternative lifestyles. With a contextualising section defining the rural, the text is organized systematically in three principal sections: Processes of Rural Restructuring, Responses to Rural Restructuring, and Experiences of Rural Restructuring. Using the most recent empirical material, statistical data, and research, the text is global in perspective using comparative examples throughout. Rural Geography is a systematic introduction to the processes, responses, and experiences of rural restructuring.

Rural England

Author: Joan Thirsk
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198606192
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Book Description
From prehistory to the present day, our landscape has been transformed by successive periods of human activity, triggered by the rise and fall of populations and their need to be fed, housed, and employed. These changes have built up layers of evidence which offer historians exciting insightsinto land use through the centuries and how rural communities of the past lived their lives. In this ground-breaking study - published in hardback as The English Rural Landscape and now available in paperback - Joan Thirsk and her team of distinguished contributors, many of whom live in the places they describe, invite us to explore the historical richness of the English landscape. Eachchapter synthesizes the latest thinking and provides fresh perspectives on its subject. It is the first book since W. G. Hoskins' definitive study The Making of the English Landscape, published nearly 50 years ago, to do so. The first ten chapters describe the characteristic features of the main landscape types, including fenland, downland, woodland, marshland, and moorland. However geographically scattered areas of a particular landscape type are, they have often been moulded by successive generations in ways that haveproduced strong physical similarities. The second part of the book is made up of five cameo features, each exploring an individual place in detail: the people and the distinctive histories that shaped them. These include the Land Settlement experimental village of Fen Drayton, set up during the Great Depression in the 1930s, and surveysof the very different settlements of Hook Norton in North Oxfordshire and Staintondale in North Yorkshire. Rural England: A History of the Landscape shows us how much of the rural past is still visible if we choose to dig for it. It illustrates how we might go about exploring it for ourselves. It is the definitive work on the history of the English landscape for all would-be landscape and local historydetectives, professional and amateur alike.

The Rural Tradition

Author: William J. Keith
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487586329
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Book Description
'There is probably no single quality or characteristic – besides love of the countryside – that must inevitably distinguish a rural writer,' notes W.J. Keith. However, 'what distinguishes rural writing that belongs to literature from that belonging to natural history, agricultural history, etc., is, as Richard E. Haymaker has observed, the writer's "means of revealing Nature as well as describing her"...In the final analysis the rural essayist paints neither landscapes nor self-portraits; instead he communicates the subtle relationship between himself and his environment, offering for our inspection his own attitudes and his own vision. We may be asked to look or to agree, but more than anything else we are invited to share. Ultimately, then, the best rural writing may be said to provide us, in a phrase adapted from Robert Langbaum, with a prose of experience.' Keith argues that non-fiction rural prose should be recognized as a distinct literary tradition that merits serious critical attention. In this book he tests the cogency of thinking in terms of a 'rural tradition,' examines the critical problems inherent in such writing, and traces significant continuities between rural writers. Eleven of the more important and influential writers from the seventeenth century to modern times come under individual scrutiny: Izaak Walton, Gilbert White, William Cobbett, Mary Russell Mitford, George Borrow, Richard Jefferies, George Sturt/'George Bourne', W.H. Hudson, Edward Thomas Williamson, and H.J. Massingham. In examining these writers within the context of the rural tradition, Keith rescues their works from the literary attic where they have too often been relegated as awkward misfits. When studied together, each throws fascinating light on the others and is seen to fit into a loose but nonetheless discernible 'line.'

The Rural Idyll

Author: G. E. Mingay
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351721216
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
This book, first published in 1989, recounts the changing perceptions of the countryside throughout the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries, helping us to understand more fully the issues that have influenced our view of the ideal countryside, past and present. Some of the chapters are concerned with ways in which Victorian artists, poets, and prose writers portrayed the countryside of their day; others with the landowners’ impressive and costly country houses, and their prettification of ‘model’ villages, reflecting fashionable romantic and Gothic styles. This title will be of interest to students of history.

Handbook of Rural Studies

Author: Paul Cloke
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761973324
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 538

Book Description
'This is a unique interpretation of rural issues that will become essential reference for students, scholars, politicians, developers and rural activists...' - Imre Kovach, President, European Society for Rural Sociology, Research director, Institute for Political Sciences, Budapest

Contested Countryside Cultures

Author: Paul Cloke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134769547
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
This book examines the 'other' side of the countryside, a place also inhabited (and visited) by women, children, teenagers, the elderly, gay men and lesbians, black and ethnic minorities, the unemployed and the poor. These groups have remained largely excluded by both rural policies and the representations of rural culture. The book charts the experiences of these marginalised groups and sets this exploration within the context of postmodern, poststructuralist, postcolonial and late feminist analysis. This theoretical framework reveals how notions of the rural have been created to reflect and reinforce divisions amongst those living in the countryside.

Countryside Planning

Author: Andrew W. Gilg
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415054904
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
Countryside Planning is an in-depth and authoritative introduction to rural issues and addresses key issues such as planning for agriculture and natural environment, countryside management, forestry and the built environment.

Faith and the Future of the Countryside

Author: Jill Hopkinson
Publisher: Canterbury Press
ISBN: 1848254253
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
A practical and theological handbook for rural ministry. Addressing the concerns of rural communities today, it will help you understand key issues in the context of mission and respond both pastorally and prophetically.

New Labour's Countryside

Author: Michael Woods
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 9781861349323
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
This book analyses the specific ways in which family lives have changed and how they have been affected by the major structural and cultural changes of the second half of the twentieth century.--

Rural Geographies

Author: Richard Yarwood
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429829272
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
Rural Geographies provides a critical, contemporary and accessible introduction to rural change by using geographical ideas to understand current issues affecting the countryside. The book discusses how the countryside has been studied by geographers across a range of different scales, from village community to the global countryside. Each chapter provides a concise and well-illustrated introduction to a key theme in rural geography, using current literature and contemporary examples. The book is divided into four sections that cover rural contexts, changes, contests and cultures. The volume takes a global perspective but is largely centred on the Global North, reflecting the tradition of scholarship in rural geography. Rural Geographies is driven by thinking in human geography. It reflects how major paradigmatic changes in the discipline have impacted, and have been informed by, the sub-discipline of rural geography. The aim is to introduce key ideas and concepts that will teach students the critical skills necessary to analyse rural issues themselves. The text will be a valuable resource for undergraduate students studying rural geography and rural studies.