The studies collected in this volume were written by anthropologists, architects, geographers, historians, a sociologist, and a veterinary ecologist. Taken together they form an exceptionally coherent survey of Chinese villages, ranging from the dry north to the humid southeast …
A truly unusual and unique resource, this extremely hands-on book brings together three popular but long-out-of-print classics (THE MODERN BLACKSMITH; THE RECYCLING, USE, AND REPAIR OF TOOLS; and THE MAKING OF TOOLS) essential for anyone interested in the making, repair, mainten…
What, and where, is the Rural? From the rocks that break a farmers plough on a field in Japan to digital infrastructures that organize geographically dispersed interests and ambitions, vast parts of our lives are still connected and dependent on resources, production, and infras…
This thesis seeks to make visible the presence and voices of minority ethnic households in rural communities by addressing the ‘place blindness’ in research on ethnicity / ‘race’, and the ethnicity / ‘race’ blindness in rural literature. The overall aim of this thesis is to deve…
This thesis explores the notion of rurality as a form of constructed identity. Just as feminist and postcolonial studies identify the formation of hierarchies within gender and ethnicity, I argue that the rural is constructed as inferior in opposition to its binary counterpart, …
Taking the case study of the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, the largest event of its kind in Europe, this thesis examines the role that agricultural shows have in the modern-day countryside. Agricultural shows are a key fixture in the rural calendar. In recent years these events…
This study analyses local communities in Caernarfonshire in order to offer new perspectives on Welsh society in the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras. This has been seen as a period of major change in Wales characterised by economic modernisation and national awakening. Ho…
An unprecedented number of Labour MPs was elected in rural areas in England in 1997. This study examines critically examines the making of rural policy and the implications for rural politics over the life-time of New Labour in power between 1997 and 2010. The analysis begins by…
After discussing the Malawian context and summarising the remittance research, I focus on remittances in rural Malawi. I follow remittances from the giver’s motivations through to the receiver’s view of remittances and how the receiver uses them and finally to their impact as a …
In spite of the prevalence of rural-urban interactions in developing countries, much remains to be learnt about their welfare impacts. This thesis extends the discussion on rural-urban linkages by examining – for Ghana – two of the main forms of such interactions: migration and …