ABSTRACT
The struggle to re-define national policy in the light of complex changes in the nature of rural space finds its counterpart in academic discussions of ‘rurality’. As long as agriculture reigned supreme in rural areas, it was perhaps appropriate for academic work to focus upon this sector as the mainstay of rural distinctiveness. Consequently, a great deal of analytical attention was placed upon modes of political representation and upon the economic structure of the industry (Newby, 1981). However, with the emergence of rural economies and rural societies increasingly detached from the agricultural sector has come a shift towards more general and holistic frameworks of analysis. These frameworks have been drawn from a range of sources, including political economy (Cloke, 1989), class analysis (Hoggart, 1997; Murdoch, 1995b; Phillips, 1998), state theory (Cloke and Little, 1990; Goodwin, 1998), and post-structuralism (Lawrence, 1997; Murdoch and Pratt, 1993). Despite their different emphases, these various approaches have all focused analytical attention upon the relationships between urban and rural spaces, between economic and social processes, and between global and local actions. As a consequence, academic theorising has been forced to seek out new, non-agricultural definitions of the ‘rural’ (see Hoggart, 1990; Newby, 1979).
