ABSTRACT
Deprivation is frequently associated with the lives of inner city dwellers in old densely packed terraced housing built in the last century, or with the residents in high-rise city slums and concrete council houses. However, deprivation is not determined by spatial location per se, be it the countryside or urbanscape. As every major study of poverty has demonstrated, deprivation can be as serious a problem in the rural setting as it is in the worst inner city neighbourhood. None the less, rural deprivation tends to be overlooked. As shown by the studies of Bradley and Lowe (1984), there is an urban bias in the social sciences. Brogden (1984) has also referred to the development of indicators of social malaise produced by such an urban bias. At the same time Walker (1978), Pacione (1984) and Gilder (1984), amongst other recent writers, have demonstrated that a romanticized view of rural life still survives. That view is best described by Pahl (1970) as the ‘village of the mind’.
