Ethnography beyond the country and the city: Understanding the symbolic terrain of rural spaces

Abstract

The 2012 London Olympic Games opening ceremony presented onlookers with a carefully choreographed vision of the British countryside. There were sheep, hillocks, trees, hedgerows and even working rainclouds. It was familiar, homely and bucolic and, according to the artist Danny Boyle, was intended to represent a humorous 'picture of ourselves as a nation ' (Boyle, cited in Magnay and Heath, 2012). Condensing like the water droplets from the fake rain clouds suspended overhead, a moment of British culture was coalescing on the grass and tarmac of the east London Olympic Park; a stadium that was constructed painstakingly and expensively on the sanitized remains of centuries-old industrial brownfield that still smelled of wet coal (O'Hagan, 2012) and resonated with the echoes of long-closed warehouses and works. In place of 'derelict and weedy' came 'green and pleasant' -animated, magnified and given vibrant life against the roars and camera flashes of the assembled crowds.Despite the contemporary significance of the digital, virtual and the post-industrial, this pastoral spectacle served a timely reminder of the enduring significance of the rural landscape to identity and culture. A throwback to a simpler period of history, perhaps -a time when communities appeared to be more stable, authentic and 'real', or a time when people lived in close proximity with the land and other animals. Of course, many have questioned whether the countryside has ever really been a 'green and pleasant land'. But this is to miss the point. Rural myths are both real and imagined -a juxtaposition and a blending of the 'somatic' and the symbolic; the fleshy and the representational -and they are given life through praxis, the many and varied doings that constitute human life-worlds. This is where ethnography -turning a Janus face to both naturalistic social interaction and academic rigour -makes its unique contribution.Corresponding author: Lindsay Hamilton, Keele University, Keele, Newcastle under Lyme, ST5 5BG, United Kingdom. Email: l.hamilton@keele.ac.uk To approach an ethnography of rural life, it is often helpful to begin from a particular cultural space such as the village pub, the annual livestock or produce show, the shop. To hang around, chat and blend in is vital. But such spaces do not give us access to easy definitions of the countryside at large, its membership or borderlines. The very size and scale of 'the rural' seems to work against ethnography's close-grained approach. Its mythic, romanticized and imagined qualities make the terrain more unstable still. How, then, can ethnographers go about making a field for themselves if notions of rural territory are, themselves, fragmentary, mobile and contested? Are ethnographers reduced to highly specific -but also highly fragmented -sites of study? The articles included in this special issue share a concern about these issues, demonstrating that it is not enough to identify and locate a site; one must also carve out an ethnographic point of participation. Using a variety of ...

Reconfiguring the place of estate-based game management: challenge, change and opportunity within rural England and Wales today

“…As part one made clear, within rural research the countryside is no longer regarded a homogeneous space of pastoral idealism, but rather as a diverse and contested space (Hamilton, 2016;Neal & Agyeman, 2006). This diversity and contestation has fuelled academic and political enquiry into the diverse narratives of multiple stakeholders (Brouwer & van der Heide, 2012;Rønningen & Flemsaeter, 2019).…”