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Rural restructuring: Global processes and their responses
342
Book Reviews
In the Introduction to the book it is explained that rural areas are seen to experience a different ensemble of changes and hence challenges to urban areas. Both are, however, seen to originate within urban Europe: hence one has suburbanisation, agricultural support aimed at heightening the security of urban populations but also creating commodity and land surpluses, and the latter feature in turn permitting an expansion in the tourist industry. As in the case of the urban studies, these 'challenges' are seen to have produced changes in the material landscapes and from those living in rural areas. Although this book is not an explicitly 'theoretical" book, its organisation as outlined by the editor can be seen as resting very much on the notion of 'restructuring', interpreted very much in terms of changes in the material arrangements and associations of landscape elements through changes in productive relations. Within rural geography there have been a number of explicit attempts to achieve this very objective, and it is in this light that this reviewer found the book to be both illuminating and frustrating. On the positive side, Fielding's chapter on counterurbanisation follows the stated structure of the book quite closely illustrating how the distribution of one landscape e l e m e n t - - people - - has changed in association with changes in productive relations and has produced new problems and prospects for particular classes of the contemporary rural populace. Fielding provides a wellargued example of how a notion of 'restructuring' can be used to understand social recomposition.
national, regional, urban and rural studies on a wide range of economic subjects. In addition, the book will no doubt become required reading in undergraduate courses upon Western Europe. This book serves these two tasks admirably. The third potential strength of the book is in sensitising us to spatial and economic differentiation and interconnection. In this regard it is unfortunate that more is not made of the different scales of analysis through debate between the various chapters. In the case of rural studies a consideration of the material on the differential nature of the contemporary world economy might have challenged some closely cherished assumptions.
On the negative side, the chapters on rural change exhibit a range rural myopia. The inclusion of rural studies in a book with global and urban foci provided a chance to widen and deepen notions of rural change. Unfortunately the chance was not really realised. In the rural studies there was a continued essentialist equating of the rural with agriculture. This was most apparent in the position (first in the rural section) and content of llbery's paper but even within the most generalised paper, that of Williams and Shaw on tourism, rurality entered into the text only through the issue of farm diversification. A second persistent feature of the rural studies in this book is the common reliance upon a rationalist view of politics and the state. This is particularly evident in the chapters by Ilbery on agricultural policy and Woodruffe on conservation, although as mentioned above is a recurrent theme in the book as a whole. A third, more recently established orthodoxy is the emphasis on the service class within contemporary rural social change. Within the rural studies in this book, it is the chapter by Fielding that exhibits this tendency. The reverse side of service-class relations - - a de-skilled, devalued and low-paid work force - - may be as significant a feature of contemporary social restructuring in some areas as is the emergence of a dominant service class in, say the South East. In addition other forms of economic relationships, such as petty-bourgeoisie ownership or state employment, may be of great significance in shaping the social composition of a rural locality. The chapter by Mason and Harrison in part one of this book certainly suggests that small firms increased in both absolute and relative significance in most Western European countries since the mid-1970s.
Technological Change and the Rural Environment, Philip Lowe, Terry Marsden and Sarah Whatmore (eds), 202 pp., 1990, David Fulton, London, ISBN 185346 112 1
This last point illustrates one of the potential strengths of this book. As is argued in the Introduction, each chapter of the book in a sense 'stands in its own right' and this indeed is one way in which this book will be received. All of the chapters are full of much empirical detail and therefore present useful comparative material for
M A R T I N PHILLIPS
St David's University College, Lampeter, U.K. Conflict and Change in the Countryside, Guy M. Robinson, 472 pp., 1990, Belhaven Press, London, ISBN I 85293 043 8, £14.95 pb Rural Studies in Britain and France, Phillip Lowe and Maryvonne Bodiguel (eds), 299 pp., 1990, Belhaven Press, London, ISBN 1 85293 083 7, £35 hb Rural Restructuring: Global Processes and their Responses, Terry Marsden, Philip Lowe and Sarah Whatmore (eds), 199 pp., 1990, David Fulton, London, ISBN 185346 I I I 3
Rural studies is in good heart if these four volumes are anything to go by. What is particularly pleasing is the interdisciplinarity of the authors, the international comparative nature of the contributions and the attention to theory that embraces social and economic change generally, not just in rural locations. Indeed, if there is any single message from all these contributions it is the pervasive influence of global and national economic forces on society in general that is shaping the rural scene. Rurality, in the form of a countryside that is distinct from the city, is hardly definable any longer. This tends to make any specialisation of rural studies somewhat problematic. The authors avoid this danger by diverting their attention to a wider canvas of influence and by attracting to their midst urban and economic theorists who like to see the fruit of their new thinking applied to non-urban space. It is probably fair to say that the decades of the 1980s and 1990s will see profound changes to the character of rural economies and society. The 1980s began the trend of counter-urbanisation which spread the physical commuter and the telecommuter into the smaller city and provincial town, and from there to nearby villages and hamlets. The increasing commercialisation of tourism and leisure, spurred by the acquisition of multi-conglomerates into hotels, golf courses, leisure complexes and specialised recreational pursuits has activated the land conversion process in a variety of peri-urban zones and on agricultural land no longer needed for good production. The 1990s will probably see an intensification in the crisis in European and North American agriculture, promoted by the Group of Seven major industrial countries demand for liberalisation of trade, and the determination in Brussels to reduce the unnecessary costs of agricultural subsidy. By and large rural geographers are well poised to examine the possible
B o o k Reviews
343
implications for the land, wildlife, the economy and society of all these changes. Certainly this collection of books and essays encourages that belief.
Landscapes; the Artists' Vision, Peter Howard, 260 pp., 1990, Routledge, London, £45.00 hb
Guy Robinson has produced a definitive text for the conventional rural geographer. This looks as though it is the result of many years of teaching a comprehensive rural geography course together with as many years of research. He concentrates on non-urban problems, notably depopulation, deprivation, dependency on primary activities and urban-rural conflicts over land and class. He looks systematically at rural resources, population movements, agriculture forestry and land-use planning considerations from the vantage point of comparative analysis across many countries, though most especially Western Europe, North America and Australasia, where he has taught and researched. The text is clear, authoritative, timely and well illustrated. It is always a pleasure to see a synthesis of key literature and research reports neatly placed between two covers in an orderly fashion. But this is more than a text book. There is plenty of insight and commentary to weld together the systematic coverage.
Geographers have for many years looked at the perceived boundaries of their discipline and wondered at the delights that might lie beyond. The author of "Landscapes, the Artists" Vision" takes up the call of the President of the Royal Geographical Society in 1922, Sir Francis Younghusband, to regard "the beauty of the Earth's featt, res as within the purview of geographers'. He is keen to stress that this book does not fall within the discipline of art history but within the discipline of geography, being concerned 'not with the pictures themselves but what they can tell us about landscape in reality'. The art historian might raise an eyebrow at an interloper concerning himself with the always tenuous links between paintings and reality, reality being a very difficult matter for an art historian.
The "London Bristol mafia' of Lowe, Marsden, Munton and Whatmorc have long been active in bringing together researchers and commentators of diverse ideological hues to produce exciting and varied volumes. Some of this effort has been financed by ESRC grant aid: but much is the fruit of persuasion, hard work and boundless enthusiasm. The two volumes in the critical perspectives series, published by David Fulton, concentrate on international perspectives on rural restructuring of society and economy with contributions from Western Europe, Australia, the United States of America and Hungary. Unlike many edited volumes, these two collections provide a cohesive framework and powerful theoretical statements. They are not an easy read, but they are rewarding. They nicely complement the more factual and cartographic analyses of Guy Robinson. The U.K.-French anthology also edited in part by the tireless Philip Lowe is the outcome of a fruitful series of workshops held in both countries involving some 30 scholars from either side of the Channel, again funded by the ESRC and its French counterpart, the CNRS. What is intriguing is the capacity of both groups to benefit from each others' contributions to produce a remarkably international perspective on rural economic and social change in two very different histories and cultures. What emergcs is a fascinating mix of similarities and contrasts. The changing politics of the Common Agricultural Policv and the G A T T trade talks set the broad framework for a series of trends especially in agriculture, which are quite comparable. But the French still protect their small farmers, most of whom work in gainful (though not always taxed) off-farm income. The differentiation of social policy and tourist services provision makes for a strong contrast. French rural society is being prepared for adjustment. In general, British rural society has to adjust without much help or warning. The result is disarray in critical marginal areas, notably the harsher uplands, while the French arc actively stemming depopulation. If only the policy-makers would attend such workshops, rural change might not be so haphazardly managed. TIMOTHY O'RIORDAN
School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia, U.K.
Emile Zola, who one would not normally consider to be a geographer, wrote in 1867 that: 'Every great artist who comes to the fore gives us a new and personal view of nature'. This book sets out to document and classify the views of nature of artists great and small as they have changed over time using a geographical perspective. The landscapes discussed are primarily British and the evidence adduced to show patterns of behaviour is taken from the Royal Academy of Arts annual exhibitions. The book falls into three parts. Two introductory chapters are entitled 'Why study pictures' and "gaiMscape studies: a new field'. These chapters set out the intent of the book, the author's case, his evidence, its strengths and weaknesses. The author attempts to fit his perspective of the study of landscapes into a wider frame, showing examples of other disciplines (such as environmental psychology) which are approaching an understanding of landscapes from differing directions. The main component of the book consists of six chapters, each of which is devoted to a 'period' of between 20 and 40 years. These are entitled with a certain degree of rigidity "Classical landscape 1770-
1790; "The picturesque period 1790-1830; "The romantic period 1830-1870'; 'The heroic period 1870-1910'; 'The vernacular period 1910-1950; and "The ./ormal period 1950-1980'. Changes in tastes, style and perceptions do not of course run in neat 10-year periods, nor in consistent coherent patterns: how many different styles can be seen in representations of landscape today in galleries, exhibitions, and calendars? Nevertheless, the RA annual exhibition sets the clock by which the author measures change. Each of the six central chapters contain graphs and histograms plotting the rise and fall of interest in various counties and regions. Sometimes these show expected results: Cumbria was of great interest in the 1780s. Other less-expected results become clear; there were two distinct peaks of interest in Welsh landscapes in 1805 and 1865. Sometimes the diagrams show a surprising consistency of interest, or lack of it: County Durham landscapes exhibited in the RA exhibitions have accounted for 0.9% of all English landscapes, _+0.1%, in the periods 1769-1980. The concluding chapter entitled 'Processes and possibilities" forms the third part of the book and speculates on tile causes of the changes in artistic tastes. Under subheadings such as 'locals and visitors', 'access: propinquity', and
Book Reviews
In the Introduction to the book it is explained that rural areas are seen to experience a different ensemble of changes and hence challenges to urban areas. Both are, however, seen to originate within urban Europe: hence one has suburbanisation, agricultural support aimed at heightening the security of urban populations but also creating commodity and land surpluses, and the latter feature in turn permitting an expansion in the tourist industry. As in the case of the urban studies, these 'challenges' are seen to have produced changes in the material landscapes and from those living in rural areas. Although this book is not an explicitly 'theoretical" book, its organisation as outlined by the editor can be seen as resting very much on the notion of 'restructuring', interpreted very much in terms of changes in the material arrangements and associations of landscape elements through changes in productive relations. Within rural geography there have been a number of explicit attempts to achieve this very objective, and it is in this light that this reviewer found the book to be both illuminating and frustrating. On the positive side, Fielding's chapter on counterurbanisation follows the stated structure of the book quite closely illustrating how the distribution of one landscape e l e m e n t - - people - - has changed in association with changes in productive relations and has produced new problems and prospects for particular classes of the contemporary rural populace. Fielding provides a wellargued example of how a notion of 'restructuring' can be used to understand social recomposition.
national, regional, urban and rural studies on a wide range of economic subjects. In addition, the book will no doubt become required reading in undergraduate courses upon Western Europe. This book serves these two tasks admirably. The third potential strength of the book is in sensitising us to spatial and economic differentiation and interconnection. In this regard it is unfortunate that more is not made of the different scales of analysis through debate between the various chapters. In the case of rural studies a consideration of the material on the differential nature of the contemporary world economy might have challenged some closely cherished assumptions.
On the negative side, the chapters on rural change exhibit a range rural myopia. The inclusion of rural studies in a book with global and urban foci provided a chance to widen and deepen notions of rural change. Unfortunately the chance was not really realised. In the rural studies there was a continued essentialist equating of the rural with agriculture. This was most apparent in the position (first in the rural section) and content of llbery's paper but even within the most generalised paper, that of Williams and Shaw on tourism, rurality entered into the text only through the issue of farm diversification. A second persistent feature of the rural studies in this book is the common reliance upon a rationalist view of politics and the state. This is particularly evident in the chapters by Ilbery on agricultural policy and Woodruffe on conservation, although as mentioned above is a recurrent theme in the book as a whole. A third, more recently established orthodoxy is the emphasis on the service class within contemporary rural social change. Within the rural studies in this book, it is the chapter by Fielding that exhibits this tendency. The reverse side of service-class relations - - a de-skilled, devalued and low-paid work force - - may be as significant a feature of contemporary social restructuring in some areas as is the emergence of a dominant service class in, say the South East. In addition other forms of economic relationships, such as petty-bourgeoisie ownership or state employment, may be of great significance in shaping the social composition of a rural locality. The chapter by Mason and Harrison in part one of this book certainly suggests that small firms increased in both absolute and relative significance in most Western European countries since the mid-1970s.
Technological Change and the Rural Environment, Philip Lowe, Terry Marsden and Sarah Whatmore (eds), 202 pp., 1990, David Fulton, London, ISBN 185346 112 1
This last point illustrates one of the potential strengths of this book. As is argued in the Introduction, each chapter of the book in a sense 'stands in its own right' and this indeed is one way in which this book will be received. All of the chapters are full of much empirical detail and therefore present useful comparative material for
M A R T I N PHILLIPS
St David's University College, Lampeter, U.K. Conflict and Change in the Countryside, Guy M. Robinson, 472 pp., 1990, Belhaven Press, London, ISBN I 85293 043 8, £14.95 pb Rural Studies in Britain and France, Phillip Lowe and Maryvonne Bodiguel (eds), 299 pp., 1990, Belhaven Press, London, ISBN 1 85293 083 7, £35 hb Rural Restructuring: Global Processes and their Responses, Terry Marsden, Philip Lowe and Sarah Whatmore (eds), 199 pp., 1990, David Fulton, London, ISBN 185346 I I I 3
Rural studies is in good heart if these four volumes are anything to go by. What is particularly pleasing is the interdisciplinarity of the authors, the international comparative nature of the contributions and the attention to theory that embraces social and economic change generally, not just in rural locations. Indeed, if there is any single message from all these contributions it is the pervasive influence of global and national economic forces on society in general that is shaping the rural scene. Rurality, in the form of a countryside that is distinct from the city, is hardly definable any longer. This tends to make any specialisation of rural studies somewhat problematic. The authors avoid this danger by diverting their attention to a wider canvas of influence and by attracting to their midst urban and economic theorists who like to see the fruit of their new thinking applied to non-urban space. It is probably fair to say that the decades of the 1980s and 1990s will see profound changes to the character of rural economies and society. The 1980s began the trend of counter-urbanisation which spread the physical commuter and the telecommuter into the smaller city and provincial town, and from there to nearby villages and hamlets. The increasing commercialisation of tourism and leisure, spurred by the acquisition of multi-conglomerates into hotels, golf courses, leisure complexes and specialised recreational pursuits has activated the land conversion process in a variety of peri-urban zones and on agricultural land no longer needed for good production. The 1990s will probably see an intensification in the crisis in European and North American agriculture, promoted by the Group of Seven major industrial countries demand for liberalisation of trade, and the determination in Brussels to reduce the unnecessary costs of agricultural subsidy. By and large rural geographers are well poised to examine the possible
B o o k Reviews
343
implications for the land, wildlife, the economy and society of all these changes. Certainly this collection of books and essays encourages that belief.
Landscapes; the Artists' Vision, Peter Howard, 260 pp., 1990, Routledge, London, £45.00 hb
Guy Robinson has produced a definitive text for the conventional rural geographer. This looks as though it is the result of many years of teaching a comprehensive rural geography course together with as many years of research. He concentrates on non-urban problems, notably depopulation, deprivation, dependency on primary activities and urban-rural conflicts over land and class. He looks systematically at rural resources, population movements, agriculture forestry and land-use planning considerations from the vantage point of comparative analysis across many countries, though most especially Western Europe, North America and Australasia, where he has taught and researched. The text is clear, authoritative, timely and well illustrated. It is always a pleasure to see a synthesis of key literature and research reports neatly placed between two covers in an orderly fashion. But this is more than a text book. There is plenty of insight and commentary to weld together the systematic coverage.
Geographers have for many years looked at the perceived boundaries of their discipline and wondered at the delights that might lie beyond. The author of "Landscapes, the Artists" Vision" takes up the call of the President of the Royal Geographical Society in 1922, Sir Francis Younghusband, to regard "the beauty of the Earth's featt, res as within the purview of geographers'. He is keen to stress that this book does not fall within the discipline of art history but within the discipline of geography, being concerned 'not with the pictures themselves but what they can tell us about landscape in reality'. The art historian might raise an eyebrow at an interloper concerning himself with the always tenuous links between paintings and reality, reality being a very difficult matter for an art historian.
The "London Bristol mafia' of Lowe, Marsden, Munton and Whatmorc have long been active in bringing together researchers and commentators of diverse ideological hues to produce exciting and varied volumes. Some of this effort has been financed by ESRC grant aid: but much is the fruit of persuasion, hard work and boundless enthusiasm. The two volumes in the critical perspectives series, published by David Fulton, concentrate on international perspectives on rural restructuring of society and economy with contributions from Western Europe, Australia, the United States of America and Hungary. Unlike many edited volumes, these two collections provide a cohesive framework and powerful theoretical statements. They are not an easy read, but they are rewarding. They nicely complement the more factual and cartographic analyses of Guy Robinson. The U.K.-French anthology also edited in part by the tireless Philip Lowe is the outcome of a fruitful series of workshops held in both countries involving some 30 scholars from either side of the Channel, again funded by the ESRC and its French counterpart, the CNRS. What is intriguing is the capacity of both groups to benefit from each others' contributions to produce a remarkably international perspective on rural economic and social change in two very different histories and cultures. What emergcs is a fascinating mix of similarities and contrasts. The changing politics of the Common Agricultural Policv and the G A T T trade talks set the broad framework for a series of trends especially in agriculture, which are quite comparable. But the French still protect their small farmers, most of whom work in gainful (though not always taxed) off-farm income. The differentiation of social policy and tourist services provision makes for a strong contrast. French rural society is being prepared for adjustment. In general, British rural society has to adjust without much help or warning. The result is disarray in critical marginal areas, notably the harsher uplands, while the French arc actively stemming depopulation. If only the policy-makers would attend such workshops, rural change might not be so haphazardly managed. TIMOTHY O'RIORDAN
School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia, U.K.
Emile Zola, who one would not normally consider to be a geographer, wrote in 1867 that: 'Every great artist who comes to the fore gives us a new and personal view of nature'. This book sets out to document and classify the views of nature of artists great and small as they have changed over time using a geographical perspective. The landscapes discussed are primarily British and the evidence adduced to show patterns of behaviour is taken from the Royal Academy of Arts annual exhibitions. The book falls into three parts. Two introductory chapters are entitled 'Why study pictures' and "gaiMscape studies: a new field'. These chapters set out the intent of the book, the author's case, his evidence, its strengths and weaknesses. The author attempts to fit his perspective of the study of landscapes into a wider frame, showing examples of other disciplines (such as environmental psychology) which are approaching an understanding of landscapes from differing directions. The main component of the book consists of six chapters, each of which is devoted to a 'period' of between 20 and 40 years. These are entitled with a certain degree of rigidity "Classical landscape 1770-
1790; "The picturesque period 1790-1830; "The romantic period 1830-1870'; 'The heroic period 1870-1910'; 'The vernacular period 1910-1950; and "The ./ormal period 1950-1980'. Changes in tastes, style and perceptions do not of course run in neat 10-year periods, nor in consistent coherent patterns: how many different styles can be seen in representations of landscape today in galleries, exhibitions, and calendars? Nevertheless, the RA annual exhibition sets the clock by which the author measures change. Each of the six central chapters contain graphs and histograms plotting the rise and fall of interest in various counties and regions. Sometimes these show expected results: Cumbria was of great interest in the 1780s. Other less-expected results become clear; there were two distinct peaks of interest in Welsh landscapes in 1805 and 1865. Sometimes the diagrams show a surprising consistency of interest, or lack of it: County Durham landscapes exhibited in the RA exhibitions have accounted for 0.9% of all English landscapes, _+0.1%, in the periods 1769-1980. The concluding chapter entitled 'Processes and possibilities" forms the third part of the book and speculates on tile causes of the changes in artistic tastes. Under subheadings such as 'locals and visitors', 'access: propinquity', and