This book explores issues of ethnicity, identity and racialised exclusion in rural Britain, in depth and for the first time. It questions what the countryside 'is', problematises who is seen as belonging to rural spaces, and argues for the recognition of a rural multiculture.The book brings together the latest and most extensive research findings to provide an authoritative account of current theory, policy and practice. Using interdisciplinary frameworks and new empirical data, the book provides a critical and comprehensive account of the shifting, contested connections between rurality,...

Rural Identities investigates and engages with the ways in which ideas of the English countryside and rural nature, are enrolled into and fashion the narratives of Englishness. At the heart of the book is an examination of the formations of rural social relations, where the processes and practices through which rural attachments and senses of rural belonging, are established and maintained. Drawing on a substantial research project Rural Identities presents important new empirical material in its analysis of why the concepts of community and ethnicity are relevant to understanding the...