Crossing divides: ethnicity and rurality

Askins, K. (2009) Crossing divides: ethnicity and rurality. Journal of Rural Studies, 25(4), pp. 365-375. (doi: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2009.05.009)

Abstract

This paper draws on research with people from African, Caribbean and Asian backgrounds regarding perceptions and use of the English countryside. I explore the complex ways in which the category ‘rural’ was constructed as both essentialised and relational: how the countryside was understood most definitely as ‘not-city’ but also, at the same time, the English countryside was conceived as part of a range of networks: one site in a web of ‘nature places’ across the country, as well as one rural in an international chain of rurals – specifically via embodied and emotional connections with ‘nature’. I argue that alongside sensed/sensual embodiment (the non-representational intuitive work of the body), we need also to consider reflective embodiment as a desire to space/place in order to address the structural socio-spatial exclusions endemic in (rural) England and how they are challenged. I suggest that a more progressive conceptualisation of rurality – a ‘transrural’ open to issues of mobility and desire – can help us disrupt dominant notions of rural England as only an exclusionary white space, and reposition it as a site within multicultural, multiethnic, transnational and mobile social Imaginaries.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Askins, Dr Kye
• Authors: Askins, K.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Journal Name: Journal of Rural Studies
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0743-0167
• ISSN (Online): 1873-1392
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2009 Elsevier
• First Published: First published in Journal of Rural Studies 25(4):365-375
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.