This paper presents a rapid assessment of current and likely future impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on rural economies given their socio-economic characteristics. Drawing principally on current evidence for the UK, as well as lessons from the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak and the 2007/8 financial crises, it outlines the likely key demand and supply effects, paying attention to the situation for agriculture as well as discussing the implications for rural communities. A distinction is made between the effects on businesses offering goods and services for out-of-home as opposed to in-home consumption. Gendered dimensions are also noted as likely business and household strategies for coping and adaptation. The paper concludes with a brief mapping of a research agenda for studying the longer-term effects of COVID-19 on rural economies.

Rural areas are recognised for their complex, multifunctional capacities with a range of different interest groups claiming their rights to, and use of, different rural spaces. The current rural development paradigm that is evident across the globe is epitomised by the European LEADER approach. Using evidence from the proposed National Park in Northern Ireland, we ask the question: what is the potential for sustainable rural tourism to contribute to rural development? In our analysis we consider the scope for adaptive tourism to overcome some of the ongoing challenges that have been identified in the LEADER approach. Four themes are revealed from this analysis: institutional (in)capacity, legitimacy of local groups, navigating between stakeholder interests and sustainable tourism in practice. These issues, discussed in turn, have clear implications for the new rural development programme.

Research and processes of knowledge production are often based on racialised and imperialistic frameworks that have led to either the exclusion or the pathologisation of minority groups. Researchers address issues of exclusion by adopting recruitment strategies that involve negotiating with gatekeepers to ensure the inclusion of minority or marginalised groups. This often involves in-depth scrutiny of gatekeepers and requires the researchers to negotiate deals and to make personal disclosures. However, there remains relatively little discussion on the pragmatic ethical issues facing researchers in the field as a result of these interactions. This article suggests that interactions with gatekeepers present ethical issues that can be effectively addressed and managed by researchers through the exercise of phronesis. Phronesis allows researchers to make critical ethical decisions based on the specific characteristics of the research sites and subjects, not least of which are those issues that emerge as a consequence of researcher positionality. Such decisions are not necessarily identified or accommodated through bureaucratic processes which govern research ethics. We advance the notion of research ethics as an ongoing process that requires researcher skills and engagement, rather than a one-off bureaucratic exercise.

This article identifies and positions micro‐politics within rural development practice. It is concerned with the hidden and subtle processes that bind groups together, including trust, power and personal perceptions and motivations. The first section of the article provides a theoretical context for micro‐political processes which reveals subtle distinctions from social capital. The section following describes the ethnographic approach that sets the methodological framework for the research. The findings reveal how micro‐political processes manifest in a rural development group affect norms and relations both positively and negatively. Finally the causes of and factors affecting micro‐politics are considered before concluding with a discussion on how micro‐politics may be managed in rural regeneration.

No abstract