This book arises out of an ESRC project devoted to an examination of the economic, social and cultural impacts of the ′service class′ on rural areas. The research was an attempt to document these impacts through close empirical work in a set of three rural communities, but something happened on the way. The authors found that the ′rural′ became a real sticking point. Respondents used it in different ways - as a bludgeon, as a badge, as a barometer - to signify many different things - security, identity, community, domesticity, gender, sexuality, ethnicity - nearly always by drawing on many different sources - the media, the landscape, friends and kin, animals. It became abundantly clear that the ′rural′, whatever chameleon form it took, was a prime and deeply felt determinant of the actions of many respondents. Yet it was also clear that to the authors they possessed no theoretical framework that could allow them to negotiate the ′rural′ to deconstruct its diverse nature as a category. Rather each of the extended essays in the book is an attempt by each author to draw out one aspect of the ′rural′ by drawing on different traditions in social and cultural theory.

About the Authors

Marcus Doel is Professor of Human Geography at Swansea University in Wales, where he is also the Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation, and the Co-Director of the Centre for Urban Theory. Marcus is an alumnus of the University of Bristol, and held positions at Liverpool John Moores University and Loughborough University in England prior to his move to Swansea University in 2000. He is the author of Postculturalist Geographies: The Diabolical Art of Spatial Science (Rowan and Littlefield, Edinburgh University Press), the co-author of Writing the Rural: Five Cultural Geographies (Sage), and the co-editor of Jean Baudrillard: Fatal Theories (Routledge), Moving Pictures/ Stopping Places: Hotels and Motels on Film (Lexington books), and The Consumption Reader (Routledge) amongst other works. Marcus has written and lectured widely on critical human geography, social and spatial theory and post-structuralism, and he has published over 100 articles and book chapters in the related fields.

Nigel Thrift is a Visiting Professor in Oxford and Tsinghua Universities. He was previously Executive Director of Schwarzman Scholars, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Warwick and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Oxford University.

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