Rural Identities: Ethnicity and Community in the Contemporary English Countryside

Dr Sarah Neal has published a new book, Rural Identities: Ethnicity and Community in the Contemporary English Countryside (2009 on Ashgate). 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 contested status of the English countryside. In doing so, it outlines the exclusionary limitations and inclusionary possibilities of the relational discourses of rurality and nation.
 

A flyer for the book is attached below.