ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the understanding the processes whereby a particular ethnic identity constantly slips between interior and exterior worlds; between different scales of home; between the individual and the notion of national belonging. It addresses some of the thinking on what constitutes ethnicity and focuses on the notion of Englishness as an ethnic identity and asks what gets called upon and folded into its formations. The fieldwork data testify that it is 'feelings' and 'the personal' that most dominate the interactions between individuals and the wider worlds they inhabit. By the argument that ethnicity involves and works through a range of human emotions. Within this narrative the countryside has tended to be deployed as an endangered and essentialsed symbol of what Englishness is and this chapter has suggested that rural nature has been invested with the meanings and representations of English ethnicity.
