ABSTRACT
Any chapter dealing with recent policy in England and France for small towns in rural areas has to recognise that there are different concepts of the ‘rural’ in these countries linked to their social, economic and cultural histories (Lowe and Buller 1990) and there are thus distinctive national contexts for the appreciation of rural issues. The context, as Lowe and Buller (1990: 5) put it, ‘for one is a densely packed and decidedly urbanised nation, and for the other is a nation which covers more territory and was until recently predominantly rural and agrarian’. Quoting Bodiguel (1986) they argue that ‘French civilisation remains still, at heart, a rural one’ (Lowe and Buller 1990: 5). Whether such a bold claim about French national identity can still be justifi ed, it remains true that rural issues have a greater salience in French political life.
