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Another country: Real life beyond rose cottage
228
Book Reviews
exercise of the geographical imagination will expand our knowledge of the connections among forces and perspectives and anchor this knowledge to our everyday actions and experiences of being in the world” (p. 209). LOUIS
CREWE
Depurtment of Geography, University of Nottingham, U.K.
Another Country: Real Life Beyond Rose Cottage, James Garo Derounion, 185 pp., 1993, NCVO Publications, London, 57.95
The aim of Another Country is to get beyond the seductive postcard image of rural life and to expose its many problems. Derounian’s concern is that the rural myth of ‘Rose Cottage’ has both deflected popular concern for poverty and rural areas, and adversely influenced policy makers; as such this book appeals to both the general reader (highlighting the ‘rural problem’) and to those interested in policy (stressing the variety of bottom-up alternatives in existence). The book is divided into three parts. The first is an overview aimed at an audience unaware of the ‘rural problem’. The second part will be of more interest to readers of this journal. The first two-thirds deals with what is now a fairly standard review of rural deprivation and rural housing; the final section of this part is more unusual: a study of community and health care. The third part of the book reviews policies; first by reference to integrated rural development programmes and then to the appropriateness of administrative units in rural areas: comparative material is brought in here from Denmark, France. Sweden and Switzerland. What many readers may find rather unusual is the lack of attention to ‘transport problems’ and ‘employment’. However, it may be argued that these issues are addressed in other ways. Indeed, it might be considered that the strength of Derounian’s book, and its distinctive quality, is its ‘rootedness’ in human experience. Not for Derounian the broad sweep of the institutions. It is an attempt to highlight, and to encourage, the role of the rural activist. It is to this end that there is a substantial list of ‘useful addresses’ at the back of the book. Interestingly the individuals and groups that are referred to in the text are not simply divided by class as has been the norm in rural studies when such differentiation is noticed at all; rather, there is an awareness of the diversity of identities (ethnic and sexual) and their associated discrimination, as well as the constraints of age, health and wealth. This is a welcome aberration for a text on rural areas. Whilst it is not an academic book - in the traditional sense - it will appeal to many undergraduates because of the clarity and immediacy of the writing which is enlivened by reported speech and case study material. Whilst it does not offer a systematic study of (British) rural problems (it would have to be read alongside other texts) it does quickly give a good ‘feel’ for them. This, together with the low cover price, makes it an attractive buy.
The form of presentation of material in this book does, on first appearance, share much with the ‘new writing’ of cultural studies and cultural geography; drawing upon direct experience and stressing difference. However, it should be emphasised that the reported speech and ‘case study’ material presented here is merely illustrative; like journalism it is neither systematic nor exhaustive. Moreover, it is not related to a broader epistemological position: although traces of humanism and empiricism may be recovered. Thus at first sight, many may consider this book as an example of Philo’s (1992; 1993) call for the visibility of the ‘Other’ in rural studies; as I have argued, it does achieve this end. The point is that this is not sufficient as an end in itself, as Murdoch and Pratt (1993; 1994) argue. What can result - and what is demonstrated here -is an atomistic picture of diverse and fragmented groups (which is, without a doubt, ‘true’); but we are not given any sense of either a potential conceptual integration that might help us to understand the nature of these diverse experiences and how they articulate one with another, or of the processes that have given rise to them. Moreover, such a conception of knowledge feeds through into policy prescription. My over-riding feeling at the end of the book was that rural areas were being held together by a variety of un-coordinated, shoestring operations, run mainly by volunteers. Derounian’s argument seemed, in a perverse way, to support such a state of affairs in that it was considered appropriate for the scale and character of rural areas. Such a view reveals a more fundamental problem with rural policy making; the replication of an urban-rural dualism based upon essentialism* (rural areas are intrinsically different from urban areas). I think that it could be argued that throughout the intellectual history of rural studies/rural geography such a conception has given rise to a whole series of analytical problems (and blind alleys). Most seriously the concept of the urban-rural dualism denies the influence of urban change on rural change (and visa versa); it points to endogenous rather than exogenous factors. Furthermore, in policy terms, it fails to question the validity of ‘area based’ policies for rural areas; just because the ‘problem’ is experienced at the local/specific scale it does not mean that it is generated (and hence modifiable) at that scale.? In such cases - as, for example, in gender studies - it is instructive to switch the key terms around and see whether the meaning is changed. I would recommend the little exercise of replacing ‘rural’ with ‘urban’ in any key text about rural problems and policies: how is the meaning changed? What does this tell us about our characterisations of the rural (and the urban). For example, I could not see the policy approach apparently favoured in this book receiving much support if it was put forward for
*Of course, this is why the debate about ‘rurality’ matters so much; what is at stake is the escape from a debilitating ‘pigeon hole’: the very classification of which appears to explain all (but in fact explains nothing). t It is not surprising that we often get a situation of ‘blaming the victim’: rural areas are the problem, rather than that these processes produce the type of rural areas that we come to know (of course the ‘coming to know’ is another tricky question, see the discussion in Murdoch and Pratt, 1993).
Book Reviews urban areas, The question is, what does this tell us about rural (policy) studies? ANDREW
PRATT
The London School of Economics and Political Science, U.K.
References Murdoch, J. and Pratt, A.C. (1993) Rural studies: modernism, postmodernism and the ‘post-rural’ Journal of Rural Studies 9, 41 l-427. Murdoch, J. and Pratt, A.C. (1994) Rural studies of power and the power of rural studies: a reply to Philo. Journal of Rural Studies 10, 83-87. Philo, C. (1992) Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies 8, 193-207.
Philo, C. (1993) Postmodern rural geography? A reply to . Murdoch and Pratt. Journal of Rural Studies 9,428-43
Peopfe and Environment: Behavioural Approaches in Human Geography, 2nd edn, D.J. Walmsley and G.J. Lewis, 290 pp., 1993, Longman Scientific, f14.99
Revising ageing textbooks can be challenging. As time elapses from the original date of publication, authors find themselves making ever-increasing amendments not only to assimilate new material but also to accommodate changes in the structure and organisation of knowledge. When the field of study in question itself is gripped by rapid change, as is true of human geography over the last decade, the task becomes doubly demanding. This situation undoubtedly confronted Walmsley and Lewis when writing People and environment, the second edition of a text initially published in 1984 as Human Geography: Behavioural Approaches. The first edition was the last of a clutch of books that aimed to provide undergraduates with an overview of the behavioural approaches that proliferated in the 1970s in geography and related disciplines (most notably psychology). It offered an up-to-date coverage of the literature, but contained an uneasily appended final section on ‘humanistic approaches’ which made little direct contact with the rest of the book. The reason was simple. Even in 1984, synthesis of available research under the headings of ‘behavioural approaches’ or ‘behavioural geography’ was looking dated. The positivist and humanist strands that had jointly fuelled the behaviouralist movement were diverging rapidly, effectively fracturing any sense of shared purpose. Seen in this light, the section on ‘humanistic approaches’ could just as easily have been read as a critique of, rather than a complement to, the foregoing text. Divergence increased during ensuing years. The hitherto dominant positivist strand was sidelined apart from the efforts of a small, but highly active, group of American geographers who developed an ‘analytical behavioural By contrast, researchers interested in geography’. humanist and culturalist perspectives returned to first principles and drew on new frameworks derived from landscape studies. radical European philosophy and critical theory. Any new version of a textbook in this area of study would need to take these changes into account.
229
To their credit, Walmsley and Lewis clearly take this point on board. People and Environment is no cosmetic revision. One indication is that, despite its sub-title, the book’s ambit is expanded to cover structural as well as behavioural approaches to society-environment relations. Another lies in blending humanistic research into the body of the text rather than treating it separately at the end. The end-product is almost 100 pages longer than the previous version. Leaving aside a substantive introduction that charts the origins, growth, progress and criticisms of behavioural approaches in geography, the book’s contents are arranged into two main sections. The first comprises a five-chapter theoretical overview, which has two chapters on structural approaches, two on behavioural, and a reflective chapter on the criticisms that have been levelled. On the positive side, this section contains much useful material, bridging a spectrum from spatial modelling and simulation, through cognitive mapping and timegeography, to recent work on the meaning of place. Against this, too much is crammed into short chapters: chapter 3, for example, covering linguistic, Piagetian and anthropological structuralism, structural Marxism, and structuration in a mere 10 pages. There are also problems with the way that the contents are organised, especially in the chapters on structural approaches. The catholic definition given to the term ‘structuralism can only confuse. It is here used not just to cover research explicitly underpinned by structuralist philosophy-varyingly referred to as embracing ‘transactional’ (p. 30) or ‘transformational’ structuralism-but also studies dealing with spatial structures that make no reference to structuralism per se. In addition, there are curious classifications within chapters. Mainstream positivist research on spatial interaction models and factorial ecology appears under the banner of ‘empirical structuralism’, whereas the only mention of semiotics occur in the chapters outlining behavioural approaches. The second major section samples case-studies which flesh out the theoretical analyses, balancing material that stresses choice and selection against that which emphasises constraint. The authors’ rationale is to take “a broad view of ‘behavioural approaches’ and (use) the term to denote the entire variety of ways in which humans come to know and interpret the environments in which they operate”. Considerable claims are made. The topics chosen are “fundamentally important components of human existence”, selected “because of their intrinsic importance, not because of the amount that has been written about them” (p. 141); study of them is “not merely an academic exercise but rather an activity with very real value in the policy arena” (p. 143). In reality, however, the choice of material is conservative and the familiar expression of hopes for policy relevance again remains unfulfilled. What is offered is a standard selection of the topics and approaches that motivated behavioural geographers over the years -jobs and work; housing and migration; shops and shopping; leisure and recreation; and belonging and well-being. Once again, the result is a valuable and competent synthesis, but the authors only embrace that which fits their remit. Insights of cultural geographers and radical environmentalists on other ways in which people come to know and interpret environments are not presented. Recent research on ideology, imagination and the construction of environmental meaning scarcely figures.
Book Reviews
exercise of the geographical imagination will expand our knowledge of the connections among forces and perspectives and anchor this knowledge to our everyday actions and experiences of being in the world” (p. 209). LOUIS
CREWE
Depurtment of Geography, University of Nottingham, U.K.
Another Country: Real Life Beyond Rose Cottage, James Garo Derounion, 185 pp., 1993, NCVO Publications, London, 57.95
The aim of Another Country is to get beyond the seductive postcard image of rural life and to expose its many problems. Derounian’s concern is that the rural myth of ‘Rose Cottage’ has both deflected popular concern for poverty and rural areas, and adversely influenced policy makers; as such this book appeals to both the general reader (highlighting the ‘rural problem’) and to those interested in policy (stressing the variety of bottom-up alternatives in existence). The book is divided into three parts. The first is an overview aimed at an audience unaware of the ‘rural problem’. The second part will be of more interest to readers of this journal. The first two-thirds deals with what is now a fairly standard review of rural deprivation and rural housing; the final section of this part is more unusual: a study of community and health care. The third part of the book reviews policies; first by reference to integrated rural development programmes and then to the appropriateness of administrative units in rural areas: comparative material is brought in here from Denmark, France. Sweden and Switzerland. What many readers may find rather unusual is the lack of attention to ‘transport problems’ and ‘employment’. However, it may be argued that these issues are addressed in other ways. Indeed, it might be considered that the strength of Derounian’s book, and its distinctive quality, is its ‘rootedness’ in human experience. Not for Derounian the broad sweep of the institutions. It is an attempt to highlight, and to encourage, the role of the rural activist. It is to this end that there is a substantial list of ‘useful addresses’ at the back of the book. Interestingly the individuals and groups that are referred to in the text are not simply divided by class as has been the norm in rural studies when such differentiation is noticed at all; rather, there is an awareness of the diversity of identities (ethnic and sexual) and their associated discrimination, as well as the constraints of age, health and wealth. This is a welcome aberration for a text on rural areas. Whilst it is not an academic book - in the traditional sense - it will appeal to many undergraduates because of the clarity and immediacy of the writing which is enlivened by reported speech and case study material. Whilst it does not offer a systematic study of (British) rural problems (it would have to be read alongside other texts) it does quickly give a good ‘feel’ for them. This, together with the low cover price, makes it an attractive buy.
The form of presentation of material in this book does, on first appearance, share much with the ‘new writing’ of cultural studies and cultural geography; drawing upon direct experience and stressing difference. However, it should be emphasised that the reported speech and ‘case study’ material presented here is merely illustrative; like journalism it is neither systematic nor exhaustive. Moreover, it is not related to a broader epistemological position: although traces of humanism and empiricism may be recovered. Thus at first sight, many may consider this book as an example of Philo’s (1992; 1993) call for the visibility of the ‘Other’ in rural studies; as I have argued, it does achieve this end. The point is that this is not sufficient as an end in itself, as Murdoch and Pratt (1993; 1994) argue. What can result - and what is demonstrated here -is an atomistic picture of diverse and fragmented groups (which is, without a doubt, ‘true’); but we are not given any sense of either a potential conceptual integration that might help us to understand the nature of these diverse experiences and how they articulate one with another, or of the processes that have given rise to them. Moreover, such a conception of knowledge feeds through into policy prescription. My over-riding feeling at the end of the book was that rural areas were being held together by a variety of un-coordinated, shoestring operations, run mainly by volunteers. Derounian’s argument seemed, in a perverse way, to support such a state of affairs in that it was considered appropriate for the scale and character of rural areas. Such a view reveals a more fundamental problem with rural policy making; the replication of an urban-rural dualism based upon essentialism* (rural areas are intrinsically different from urban areas). I think that it could be argued that throughout the intellectual history of rural studies/rural geography such a conception has given rise to a whole series of analytical problems (and blind alleys). Most seriously the concept of the urban-rural dualism denies the influence of urban change on rural change (and visa versa); it points to endogenous rather than exogenous factors. Furthermore, in policy terms, it fails to question the validity of ‘area based’ policies for rural areas; just because the ‘problem’ is experienced at the local/specific scale it does not mean that it is generated (and hence modifiable) at that scale.? In such cases - as, for example, in gender studies - it is instructive to switch the key terms around and see whether the meaning is changed. I would recommend the little exercise of replacing ‘rural’ with ‘urban’ in any key text about rural problems and policies: how is the meaning changed? What does this tell us about our characterisations of the rural (and the urban). For example, I could not see the policy approach apparently favoured in this book receiving much support if it was put forward for
*Of course, this is why the debate about ‘rurality’ matters so much; what is at stake is the escape from a debilitating ‘pigeon hole’: the very classification of which appears to explain all (but in fact explains nothing). t It is not surprising that we often get a situation of ‘blaming the victim’: rural areas are the problem, rather than that these processes produce the type of rural areas that we come to know (of course the ‘coming to know’ is another tricky question, see the discussion in Murdoch and Pratt, 1993).
Book Reviews urban areas, The question is, what does this tell us about rural (policy) studies? ANDREW
PRATT
The London School of Economics and Political Science, U.K.
References Murdoch, J. and Pratt, A.C. (1993) Rural studies: modernism, postmodernism and the ‘post-rural’ Journal of Rural Studies 9, 41 l-427. Murdoch, J. and Pratt, A.C. (1994) Rural studies of power and the power of rural studies: a reply to Philo. Journal of Rural Studies 10, 83-87. Philo, C. (1992) Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies 8, 193-207.
Philo, C. (1993) Postmodern rural geography? A reply to . Murdoch and Pratt. Journal of Rural Studies 9,428-43
Peopfe and Environment: Behavioural Approaches in Human Geography, 2nd edn, D.J. Walmsley and G.J. Lewis, 290 pp., 1993, Longman Scientific, f14.99
Revising ageing textbooks can be challenging. As time elapses from the original date of publication, authors find themselves making ever-increasing amendments not only to assimilate new material but also to accommodate changes in the structure and organisation of knowledge. When the field of study in question itself is gripped by rapid change, as is true of human geography over the last decade, the task becomes doubly demanding. This situation undoubtedly confronted Walmsley and Lewis when writing People and environment, the second edition of a text initially published in 1984 as Human Geography: Behavioural Approaches. The first edition was the last of a clutch of books that aimed to provide undergraduates with an overview of the behavioural approaches that proliferated in the 1970s in geography and related disciplines (most notably psychology). It offered an up-to-date coverage of the literature, but contained an uneasily appended final section on ‘humanistic approaches’ which made little direct contact with the rest of the book. The reason was simple. Even in 1984, synthesis of available research under the headings of ‘behavioural approaches’ or ‘behavioural geography’ was looking dated. The positivist and humanist strands that had jointly fuelled the behaviouralist movement were diverging rapidly, effectively fracturing any sense of shared purpose. Seen in this light, the section on ‘humanistic approaches’ could just as easily have been read as a critique of, rather than a complement to, the foregoing text. Divergence increased during ensuing years. The hitherto dominant positivist strand was sidelined apart from the efforts of a small, but highly active, group of American geographers who developed an ‘analytical behavioural By contrast, researchers interested in geography’. humanist and culturalist perspectives returned to first principles and drew on new frameworks derived from landscape studies. radical European philosophy and critical theory. Any new version of a textbook in this area of study would need to take these changes into account.
229
To their credit, Walmsley and Lewis clearly take this point on board. People and Environment is no cosmetic revision. One indication is that, despite its sub-title, the book’s ambit is expanded to cover structural as well as behavioural approaches to society-environment relations. Another lies in blending humanistic research into the body of the text rather than treating it separately at the end. The end-product is almost 100 pages longer than the previous version. Leaving aside a substantive introduction that charts the origins, growth, progress and criticisms of behavioural approaches in geography, the book’s contents are arranged into two main sections. The first comprises a five-chapter theoretical overview, which has two chapters on structural approaches, two on behavioural, and a reflective chapter on the criticisms that have been levelled. On the positive side, this section contains much useful material, bridging a spectrum from spatial modelling and simulation, through cognitive mapping and timegeography, to recent work on the meaning of place. Against this, too much is crammed into short chapters: chapter 3, for example, covering linguistic, Piagetian and anthropological structuralism, structural Marxism, and structuration in a mere 10 pages. There are also problems with the way that the contents are organised, especially in the chapters on structural approaches. The catholic definition given to the term ‘structuralism can only confuse. It is here used not just to cover research explicitly underpinned by structuralist philosophy-varyingly referred to as embracing ‘transactional’ (p. 30) or ‘transformational’ structuralism-but also studies dealing with spatial structures that make no reference to structuralism per se. In addition, there are curious classifications within chapters. Mainstream positivist research on spatial interaction models and factorial ecology appears under the banner of ‘empirical structuralism’, whereas the only mention of semiotics occur in the chapters outlining behavioural approaches. The second major section samples case-studies which flesh out the theoretical analyses, balancing material that stresses choice and selection against that which emphasises constraint. The authors’ rationale is to take “a broad view of ‘behavioural approaches’ and (use) the term to denote the entire variety of ways in which humans come to know and interpret the environments in which they operate”. Considerable claims are made. The topics chosen are “fundamentally important components of human existence”, selected “because of their intrinsic importance, not because of the amount that has been written about them” (p. 141); study of them is “not merely an academic exercise but rather an activity with very real value in the policy arena” (p. 143). In reality, however, the choice of material is conservative and the familiar expression of hopes for policy relevance again remains unfulfilled. What is offered is a standard selection of the topics and approaches that motivated behavioural geographers over the years -jobs and work; housing and migration; shops and shopping; leisure and recreation; and belonging and well-being. Once again, the result is a valuable and competent synthesis, but the authors only embrace that which fits their remit. Insights of cultural geographers and radical environmentalists on other ways in which people come to know and interpret environments are not presented. Recent research on ideology, imagination and the construction of environmental meaning scarcely figures.