ABSTRACT
While this text centres on the rural, there is undoubtedly overlap with and yet a semi-conscious division between environment studies and rural studies. The rural and the environmental are conflated at times, with perhaps the rural being seen as a sub-set of the environment and therefore conceptualised as a resource to be conserved, preserved or otherwise ‘protected’. This chapter is concerned with the ‘rural environment’ and rural environmental citizenship as introduced earlier in the text. This field of view is used as a means of approaching the issue of consumption and consumers in terms of the rural. Here other examples of citizenship as activity (linked to identity politics) are illustrated, showing how attempts to define legitimate action are being resisted and restructured by interests in the rural environment. The wider arena of environmental action and the market is considered where the space being contested is at once ‘rural’, environmental and also contested in terms of rights (of consumption and contractual entitlements) and activity.
