Outsiders in Rural Society? Constructions of Rurality and Nature—Society Relations in the Racialisation of English Gypsy-Travellers, 1869 – 1934

Abstract

In this paper I explore what Little (1999 Progress in Human Geography 23 page 438) terms “the complexity and fluidity of rural otherness” through an examination of the racialisation of Gypsy-Travellers in late-19th-century and early-20th century England. Drawing on social-constructionist and psychoanalytic accounts of difference, I explore both the specificity of racialisation in different places, and the ways in which processes of racialisation can produce highly spatialised understandings of difference. In so doing, I consider the importance of nature – society relations in the othering of this minority group, and the contested construction of their place in the rural idyll.

De-centring White ruralities: Ethnic diversity, racialisation and Indigenous countrysides

“…In the same manner as the idealisation of the English countryside allows no place for the travellers, ravers, and off-roaders who ephemerally occupy and appropriate the rural (Cresswell, 1996;Holloway, 2004), it denies the presence of ethnic minorities. This absence serves to consolidate a stereotyped image of ethnicised Others as entirely urban, their identities being configured by the environments in which they are both present and absent.…”

“…Such work illustrates how rurality perpetuates a privileged whiteness that serves to exclude not just non-White groups, but also minority White groups who are imagined as 'not-quite' White. The ambivalent position of such groups in the English countryside is demonstrated with reference to gypsy-travellers, a group whose representation as dirty and deviant has tainted their whiteness and provoked a variety of exclusionary acts (Holloway, 2004;Sibley, 1997). 2 In the US too, some White migrant groups have been more easily accommodated than others within the rural, with Vanderbeck (2006Vanderbeck ( , 2008 demonstrating that poor White incomers have been problematic for elite Whites because they undermine discourses of 'natural' White superiority, suggesting that whiteness and class intersect in distinct ways to construct ideas of proper rural life.…”

Talking about Gypsies: The Notion of Discourse as Control

“…During the Victorian era Gypsies and Travellers were certainly `othered' in discourse (Holloway, 2002), this is discussed in more detail in chapter five. 1908 saw the introduction of the Children's Act in England which made education compulsory for…”

“…There are two Eastern European examples which will be examined later, but only a small number of pieces of work on discourse analysis of Gypsies and Travellers emerged in England. Holloway (2002) examines this, but she applies the analysis of discourse to the writings about Gypsies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She refers to a `fluidity of otherness' in the discursive construction of the Gypsy: 159 First, it shows that the meaning of the category Gypsy/gipsy was far from stable in the late 19`h century and early 20th century.…”

Land-use Planning and Traveller-Gypsies: Towards Non-prejudicial Practice

“…From the Garden Cities Movement onwards (Hall, 2002) this has tapped into wide-ranging and historical discourses that have led to distinct representations of threatening and dangerous urban environments and bucolic rurality (Williams, 1973) often still reified through the planning system. 8 Caught within this discourse are the traditional portrayals of Traveller-Gypsies as having a natural place within the 'rural idyll', where their nomadic existence through activities such as fruitpicking was in tune with the seasonal rhythms, yet deviant and problematic within an urban context (Sibley, 1981;Okley, 1983;Halfacree, 1996;Holloway, 2003). The significance of this has been widely discussed by the aforementioned authors, but none appear to have emphasized the specific role of the planning system by reproducing the rather artificial distinction of town and country (e.g.…”