First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

This title was first published in 2002. While capitalism continues to convert former communal land into private property, communal ownership still exists throughout the world. By examining the agricultural communities of Chile's semi-arid Norte Chico region where the land commons are predominant, Gloria Gallardo Fernandez investigates the historical origins, emergence, socio-economic context and current development of this form of land tenure. The case study is contrasted with communal land areas in Mexico, South Africa, Switzerland and the UK, whose distinct historical and socio-politcal developments are also explored. This investigation documents almost four centuries, stemming from colonial archival sources, and thus fills the theoretical and empirical gap in the literature about this form of commons.

More than the Soil focuses on the social, cultural, economic and technological processes that have transformed rural areas of Southeast Asia. The underlying premise is that rural lives and livelihoods in this region have undergone fundamental change. No longer can we assume that rural livelihoods are founded on agriculture; nor can we assume that people envisage their futures in terms of farming. The inter-penetration of the rural and urban, and the degree to which rural people migrate between rural and urban areas, and shift from agriculture to non-agriculture, raises fundamental questions about how we conceptualise the rural Southeast Asia and the households to be found there.

Based on archival research and interviews, this study explores Cultural Revolution educational reform and its links to rural education.

This book, first published in 1983, is a major contribution to our understanding of how and why French rural peasant society became modernised by radical changes in the communications system - in particular, the coming of the railways. The author argues that complex changes in the transport systems, and their effects on agricultural market structures, finally brought traditional French rural civilisation to an end. With the extension of commercialisation, and the widening of horizons, new economic and social structures - and changed attitudes - rapidly came into being. Writing as an economic historian, the author has adopted an interdisciplinary approach to this study which incorporates economic, sociological, historical and geographical methods and data.

This multimethod study of crime and the elderly in a small-town setting approaches the related issues from varied perspectives and ultimately presents a different picture of fear of crime among the elderly than that which dominates the current literature. Three features contribute to this book's uniqueness. The first is a departure from the urban view; the second is an emphasis on phenomenology; and the third is multimethodology. With an emphasis on qualitative research, this study allows the elderly and other key informants to present their own portrait relative to crime..a portrait that is far more contextually varied and far less dominated by fear and vulnerability than is commonly assumed.

England in the early part of the twentieth century was rich in utopian ventures - diverse and intriguing in their scope and aims. Two world wars, an economic depression, and the emergence of fascist states in Europe were all a spur to idealists to seek new limits - to escape from the here and now, and to create sanctuaries for new and better lives.
Dennis Hardy explores this fascinating history of utopian ideals, the lives of those who pursued them, and the utopian communities they created.
Some communities were fired by a long tradition of land movements, others by thoughts of more humane ways of building towns. In turn there were experiments devoted to the arts; to the promotion of religious doctrine; and to a variety of political causes. And some were just 'places of the imagination'.
This book is about just one episode in the perennial search for perfection, but what is revealed has lessons that extend well beyond a particular time and place. So long as there are failings in society, so long as rationality is not enough, there will continue to be a place for thinking the impossible, for going in search of utopia.

Early nineteenth-century Ireland witnessed widespread and prolonged rural unrest, as groups of labourers and smallholders formed secret societies demanding land reform, fair rents, the protection of wages and an end to tithes. One of the most active of these groups - the Rockites - waged a vigorous and sustained campaign of arson, intimidation and houghing (maiming of animals) across the southern half of Ireland during the 1820s, quickly attracting the attention of the authorities in both Ireland and Britain. Combining analyses of local and economic concerns with wider national political dimensions, this book offers an in-depth and alternative interpretation of the Rockites. Attaching particular importance to the political dimensions of the Rockites, Katsuta demonstrates how their political mindset was created by local circumstances. Styling themselves descendants of the United Irishmen, Rockites drew on the memories of the bitter political struggles in Cork during the 1790s, as well as current political events such as Daniel O'Connell's mass mobilisation to oppose the Catholic relief bill in 1821. As well as situating the Rockites within the Irish context, the book also offers insights into how British politicians dealt with Ireland in the early years of the Union. The Rockite disturbances prompted the Tory government to adopt a new course that proved less a remedy to problems in Ireland than as a response to events within parliament. In turn Rockites became a useful tool for Whigs and radicals in Westminster to blame the Tories for the misgovernment of Ireland, revealing how the Irish question in the early nineteenth-century UK was regarded first and foremost as a parliamentary issue.

This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualities outside the metropolis. It explores sexualities and sexual experiences in a variety of rural and marginal spaces with international contributions from a wide range of disciplines. These include: literary and cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, geography, history and law. Among the topics uncovered are:
* a lesbian in rural England * sexual Life in rural Wales
* sexuality in rural South Africa
* scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics
* nature and homosexuality in literature
* Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space
* How 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.

Series Information:
Critical Geographies

International migration is favoured by the governments of many poorer countries, despite often well-publicized abuses affecting individual migrant workers. Not only is local unemployment reduced but also it is expected that the migrants will learn new skills, with many even becoming entrepreneurs on their return home. Meantime, they are seen as a source of foreign remittances, providing needed capital for economic development. Such is the attitude in Pakistan from where thousands of migrant workers leave every year for the Gulf states especially. An anthropological study approaching this issue from a local (village) level, this book focuses on two areas of the Punjab. Describing the historical passage of rural life from pre-colonial times to the present, it shows how the rural economy of the Punjab was not transformed by the green revolution. On the contrary, it is still a subsistence economy. The resulting poverty combined with Pakistan's labour-market policies forces many Punjabi men to seek work abroad, in turn bringing changes to the economic role of the women left behind. Remittances from abroad have brought further changes on the economic and social life of the villages but n

This volume looks at a central sociological problem - the reconciliation of individual self-interest and social solidarity -through the eyes of villagers in the east Italian Alps. It shows how local conceptions of envy, personal strength, mutual sympathy, and self-sacrifice interact with ideas about language and communications, properties, kinship, and natural forces. Village ritual evokes these conceptions to represent a social system based on age-group solidarity and exchange between the generations, and to link village unity with images of church and state power. Heady draws on both participants observation and interviews with older informants to trace the effects of recent exogenous technological and institutional changes and the way local people have responded to them. His findings relate to such themes of recent history as nationalism, regionalism, and anti-clericalism; and contribute to the theoretical debate on the relevance of structuralist anthropology to European societies.

This impressive work, set to become the standard history on the subject, offers a definitive survey of peasant society in Russia, from the consolidation of serfdom and tsarist autocracy in the 17th century through to the destruction of the peasant's traditional world under Stalin. Over three-quarters of Russian society were peasants in these years, and David Moon explores all aspects of their life xxx; including the rural economy, peasant households, village communities xxx; and their political role, including protest against the landowning elites. In the process he presents a fresh perspective on the history of Russia itself. A big book in every way xxx; and compellingly readable.

Cultures of the Countryside examines the relationship between the museum and the micro-cultures of the countryside. Offering an exploration of museums and heritage projects in the UK that have attempted to introduce new ways of engagement between localities, objects, and people, this book considers how museums, heritage initiatives, and art projects have dealt with pressing local and global socio-political issues relating to the environment and rural life, including changing demographics and rural practices, local environmental concerns, and global climate activism. Providing a thorough examination of the representation of competing histories, visions and politics, Sekules asks whether museums and heritage projects can engage actively in shaping cultures, as well as reflecting them. At the core of the analysis is an examination of the findings from a project in the UK's East Anglia, 'The Culture of the Countryside', from which emerged themes closely bound to different countryside landscapes, peoples and heritage. Aimed at practitioners and students alike, Cultures of the Countryside provides a unique insight into the roles of the museum and heritage projects in rural and environmental issues in the recent past, whilst also offering perspectives and recommendations for the future.

Although a great deal has been published on the economic, social and engineering history of nineteenth-century railways, the work of historical geographers has been much less conspicuous. This overview by David Turnock goes a long way towards restoring the balance. It details every important aspect of the railway's influence on spatial distribution of economic and social change, providing a full account of the nineteenth-century geography of the British Isles seen in the context of the railway. The book reviews and explains the shape of the developing railway network, beginning with the pre-steam railways and connections between existing road and water communications and the new rail lines. The author also discusses the impact of the railways on the patterns of industrial, urban and rural change throughout the century. Throughout, the historical geography of Ireland is treated in equal detail to that of Great Britain.

The enclosure of common land into smaller privately owned units of land by parliamentary intervention transformed the traditional open-field system of farming which gave even the poorest a share in the common land. Despite its long-term benefits, its methods and immediate consequences were controversial, dispossessing the rural poor from their land. This text analyzes the extent and impact of parliamentary enclosure regionally, examining the processes by which land was reorganized, cultivation extended into former waste lands and old practices transformed. It stresses the degree of local variation and the mixture of motives and effects which make the subject complex. The book also weighs up the evidence for the effect of enclosure on the poor, looking afresh at old conclusions and providing new insights.

Chinese urbanization, including the daily life, migration strategies, and life choices of villagers and townspeople, is the focus of this study by Chinese and North American scholars. From Tianjin in the north, to Tibet in the West, and to Guangdong and Fujian on the southeast coast, a tale is told of transforming countrysides, regional disparities, and the prospects of a fully urbanized China as the twenty-first century dawns. This first broad-scale anthropological investigation of Chinese urbanization captures both the dynamic essence of the urbanizations process and the remarkable vitality of post-reform Chinese society.

This work 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 marginalized 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, another country far away from its idyllic image.

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, another country far away from its idyllic image.

Situated in the rugged mountain peaks and deep valleys of north-eastern Caucasus, Daghestan is home to more than 30 distinct peoples. Eachof these peoples has their own language yet they share a homogenous culture that has both withstood and absorbed centuries of external influence. This text offers an account of the swiftly vanishing traditional ways of life in the villages of this inaccessible mountain area, and how the Daghestanis of today are adapting to change.

Chinese urbanization, including the daily life, migration strategies, and life choices of villagers and townspeople, is the focus of this study by Chinese and North American scholars. From Tianjin in the north, to Tibet in the West, and to Guangdong and Fujian on the southeast coast, a tale is told of transforming countrysides, regional disparities, and the prospects of a fully urbanized China as the twenty-first century dawns. This first broad-scale anthropological investigation of Chinese urbanization captures both the dynamic essence of the urbanizations process and the remarkable vitality of post-reform Chinese society.

A comprehensive analysis of China's rural reforms, this book links local experiences to national policy, showing the dynamic tension in the reform process among state policy, local cadre power and self-interest, and the peasants' search for economic growth. Key topics covered include: the responsibility system, privatization and changing property rights, industrialization, social conflict, cadre corruption, urban-rural relations, conflict over land, rural urbanization, and the impact of globalization. The introduction skillfully integrates the themes that run throughout this work and the concluding chapter focuses on current and future problems in rural China.

A comprehensive analysts of China's rural reforms, this book links local experiences to national policy, showing the dynamic tension in the reform process among state policy, local cadre power and self-interest, and the peasants' search for economic growth. Key topics covered include: the responsibility system, privatization and changing property rights, industrialization, social conflict, cadre corruption, urban-rural relations, conflict over land, rural urbanization, and the impact of globalization. The introduction skillfully integrates the themes that run throughout this work and the concluding chapter focuses on current and future problems in rural China.

A resonant true story of small-town politics and community perseverance and of decent people and questionable choices, Zoo Nebraska is a timely requiem for a rural America in the throes of extinction. Royal, Nebraska, population eighty-one-where the church, high school, and post office each stand abandoned, monuments to a Great Plains town that never flourished. But for nearly twenty years, they had a zoo, seven acres that rose from local peculiarity to key tourist attraction to devastating tragedy. And it all began with one man's outsize vision. When Dick Haskin's plans to assist primatologist Dian Fossey in Rwanda were cut short by her murder, Dick's devotion to primates didn't die with her. He returned to his hometown with Reuben, an adolescent chimp, in the bed of a pickup truck and transformed a trailer home into the Midwest Primate Center. As the tourist trade multiplied, so did the inhabitants of what would become Zoo Nebraska, the unlikeliest boon to Royal's economy in generations and, eventually, the source of a power struggle that would lead to the tragic implosion of Dick Haskin's dream.

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.