Search

Rural studies now has a well-established corpus of work exploring how rural spaces and practices become (re)presented within various media and how these representations serve to perpetuate the 'cultural fantasy' of the rural idyll. To date, however, there has been a dearth of studies which have considered the role that social media may play within representing rural spaces and activities. The following paper attends to this omission through a consideration of farmers' use of social media and an exploration of how it may be used to document and (re)present their everyday working lives and practices. Drawing on the communicative practice of "working out loud" (WOL) and through analysing 5000 farming tweets, the paper shows how social media may offer a more broadly sourced, grassroots, depiction of rural farming life and examines how farmers assemble a range of sources – including the non-human – in (re)presenting the countryside and revealing the nature of their work. The paper notes how social media might enable farmers to reveal the often-hidden aspects of farm work, share and document practices as well as express and reflect their perspectives in communicating to (and with) farming and non-farming audiences, and how such communicative practices might serve to (re)construct their farming identities. • Social media plays a role in representing rural spaces and activities. • Social media can offer a grassroots depiction of farming life as it happens. • Farmers assemble a range of sources in (re)presenting the countryside. • Twitter allows farmers to share and document the often-hidden aspects of farm work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a perspective on the overlooked 'more-than-human' emotional dimensions of the British war effort of 1939 to 1945. We focus on the relationships between British soldiers and their mules in Burma. We argue that the British soldiers who were required to become muleteers, together with their officers and veterinary personnel, formed an 'emotional community' (Rosenwein), based on a shared idea of a close and mutually beneficial relationship between men and mules. The soldiers' ability to connect emotionally with mules helped bind the community together, but the material circumstances of jungle warfare constantly threatened the viability of those bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract A vibrant literature has emerged around Bourdieusian-inspired notions of the 'good farmer' and how such concepts might aid our understandings of agriculture and agricultural change. To date, however, studies of the good farmer have been framed largely in relation to land management, with little consideration given to riparian environments which make up a significant part of the farmed landscape. Drawing on in-depth interviews with farmers in a river catchment in the North of England (UK), this paper considers how farmers' engagement with riparian environments on their farms feature in, and are (re)shaped by, notions of good farming. The paper observes how riparian environments' (im)materiality, unpredictability and untidiness limit their ability to generate and exhibit capital(s) and how an infrequency of direct engagement with rivers – arguably reinforced through recent regulatory changes on what farmers can and cannot do to riparian environments – mean that farmers have often not developed skills and capitals associated with rivers in the same way that they have for land. These observations are used to consider farmers' engagement with more recently introduced river health-enhancing managements and to consider whether, when taken together, we might be witnessing a shift in how riparian environments contribute to good farming and good farmer status. Highlights • Bourdieusian-inspired literature on the 'good farmer' might be expanded to encompass the discussion of riparian environments. • Riparian environments offer fewer opportunities for capital accumulation and capital demonstration for farmers. • There is evidence that positive river management(s) may be starting to be incorporated into good farmer status as the rules of the game change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide semi-natural habitats of high biological value are in decline. Consequently, numerous Agri-Environment Schemes (AESs) intended to halt biodiversity loss within these habitats have been implemented. One approach has been the application of “adaptive management”, where scientific knowledge is applied alongside the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of stakeholders in order to establish an integrated approach that is adjusted as outcomes are assessed. In this paper we examine the effectiveness of the adaptive management approach of Norway’s Action Plan for Hay Meadows (APHM). Twenty-nine hay meadows from fourteen farms in the county of Møre og Romsdal were ecologically surveyed over a 2 year period. Interviews were also conducted with owners and land managers to explore TEK and management issues. The interdisciplinary study found that the disembedding of hay meadow management from its initial commercial purpose (in particular the loss of much of the livestock from the region) has contributed to a significant loss of TEK – which is now largely limited to knowledge of how the fields were managed recently. While, the APHM is limiting biodiversity decline by promoting traditional practices there were indications that the standardisation of management actions might negatively affect species composition in the long term. More critically, continued farm abandonment within the region means that without alternatives to management by farmers many of these meadows are likely to disappear in the next couple of decades. We conclude that adaptive management provides an effective short-term means of preserving hay meadows, but long term conservation will require a means of addressing the continued decline of local farming communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first chapter of the book discusses the context of the survey and outlines the methodological approach of combining this with oral histories to provide a more detailed and nuance picture of the story behind the survey. Paul Brassley, David Harvey, Matt Lobley and Michael Winter have produced an excellent book which focuses on the "agricultural revolution" of the post-war period in the UK. The chapter opens with a logical justification as to why these two sectors are considered together and moves on to discuss the evolution of these enterprises and how they impacted on broader agriculture. [Extracted from the article]

Within Europe concerns are rising for the loss of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) as agricultural communities continue to abandon traditional practices. TEK consists of a cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief concerning environmental management (specifically agricultural management in Europe) that supposedly developed through generations of interaction between local communities and their environment. However, being based on largely oral accounts concern has arisen about the availability and reliability of TEK data − with some studies reporting inaccurate or contradictory information. In this paper we assess the potential of mainly pre-1800 agricultural texts to contribute knowledge to TEK studies. Since 2000, projects to digitise and make freely available out-of-copyright books from the world’s libraries have made many of these pre-industrial agricultural texts easily accessible. These sources, we argue, provide a rich source of information. Specifically, we observe that knowledge emanating from contemporary TEK research can be found within this historical literature and question, therefore, whether contemporary European agricultural TEK is endogenously developed or represents vestiges of a wider pre-industrial agricultural knowledge system. Drawing on the English-language literature and using the case of hay meadow management, we provide examples of the types of information available, as well as detailing three examples of hay meadow management systems that are no longer associated with communities of practice − “fogging” of meadows, ant-hill management, and open-field, common or Lammas management. We conclude that while it may not be possible to reconstruct entire agricultural systems from literature-based knowledge, these sources can play an important role in complimenting and validating our understanding of traditional management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing concern that Agri-environment Schemes (AESs) may not be effective in conserving the countryside. Particular concern has arisen around whether the current approach of individual, farm-level, AES agreements are sufficient to offer landscape-scale environmental protection and enhancement. Whilst recent additions to AESs have sought to encourage more joined-up thinking by offering payments to farmers to form collective agreements, uptake is low and there is very little known about farmers’ (non)resistance to such collective conservation. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research with 74 farms across 5 sites in the UK, this paper provides new data on the barriers to farmers’ uptake of collective AESs and offers a new formulation of how we understand farming cooperation. The paper advances Bourdieusian-inspired ideas of the cultural construct of ‘good farming’ by synthesising these with recent reconceptualizations of ‘trust’ in order to provide a more contextually grounded and temporally-inflected understanding of farmers’ cooperative activities. The findings reveal that whilst working relations between farmers are often collegiate, and in places collective, several watershed events over past decades have led to a shift from community-level to process-based (peer-to-peer) trust and a move toward land management being depicted as a squarely individual rather than collective issue. Conceptually, the paper moves beyond the current limitation of viewing trust, and the associated development of social capital – seen as a prerequisite for more collective AESs – as cumulative and one-directional to highlighting their multiple, issue-specific, nature which may become eroded and (re)developed over time. Alongside this, the paper offers a new way of understanding the good farmer by shifting the focus from the individual farm/farmer level to a more fine-grained and contextualised issue-centered notion of good farming. This is then used to explain the seeming reluctance of land holders, evidenced in official statistics, to engage in collective AESs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Digital technologies draw together knowledge, practice and self-care in novel and productive ways. • Digital curation provides young farmers with the agency to connect or disconnect from others. • Digital mediation encourages young farmers to critically reflect on their own practices of digital self-care. This paper explores the geographies of digital curation and self-care among young farmers in the UK, examining how virtual and digital spaces are having a significant impact on how young farmers negotiate their identities, (dis)connection and self-care within their everyday lives. Drawing on interviews with 28 young famers in the UK, we observe how farming identities are (re)produced and practiced online, via carefully curated social media, and how these might constitute practices of self-care in overcoming issues such as disconnection and rural isolation. Our analysis reveals how social media posts are more than simple connections, they are curations of the self that are complexly bound up in the emotional, spatial and temporal contexts of the author's identities. We examine how digital curation is not just an act of the self, but something drawn relationally to others. Attention is given not just to what is posted, but how others are (dis)engaged with, and how posts of others are reacted to, or endorsed, implicitly or explicitly. Through our examination of young farmers' social identities, we therefore argue that digital identities are produced, practiced, managed and understood in very specific ways 'online', in ways that carefully overlap with other geographical identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent calls have been made to pay greater attention to the social and cultural contexts of fisheries and their management. This paper explores how the recent Bourdieusian-inspired literature on the ‘good farmer’ might inform our discussion of fishers and their activities. Bourdieu's ideas of habitus, field and capital(s), and how these interact in (re)shaping the positioning as a ‘good fisher’, allows us to move beyond the myopic, economic, framing of fishers seen in much previous literature and fishing policy. Through in-depth interviews and participant observations in a small-scale fishing community in North Wales (UK), the paper explores the particularity of the fishing field, and notes the multiple performances and demonstrations required in order for individuals to position as a ‘good fisher’. It goes on to highlight the importance of these performances in developing social capital and the associated access to networks of support and reciprocity at sea. Central to these interrelations, the paper observes, is adhering to and internalising various ‘rules of the game’ – which include managing territories, respecting fishing gear, maintaining safety at sea, and the importance of keeping secrets. The paper moves on to consider the implications of these observations for the current and future management of fishing in such areas – noting how pre-existing and context-specific relations between fishers offer boundaries to what change might be achieved by new policies – before examining future agendas for research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much debate and conjecture over how participation in agri-environment schemes (AESs) (re)shapes farmers’ environmental actions, understandings and associated identities. This paper develops a unique, temporally sensitive, qualitative approach of revisiting farms—which acts as a corrective to the current, speculative, understandings of how farmers’ relationships with AESs change over time. The paper advances Bourdieusian-inspired ideas of the cultural construct of ‘good farming’ and ‘knowledge cultures’, bringing in the notion of hysteresis in order to develop a temporally-inflected consideration of farmers and their AES involvement. The findings reveal how, over the 10 year period, constructive interchanges have taken place between farmers and conservation officers, and stress the need, when thinking about the cultural sustainability of AESs, to recognise the multiple forms of capital that farms may produce. Conceptually, the paper reshapes the concept of the good farmer to: (1) recognise the geographically-contingent nature of the term; (2) redefine the concept away from the hitherto predominant focus on farming individuals; (3) give closer appreciation of the multiple forms of capital which constitute the good farmer identity (as well as how these intersect with each other); (4) and offer clearer recognition of how the good farmer ideals may evolve and be redefined over time. The paper moves on to make practical recommendations for those developing and administering AESs. Beyond the consideration of farmers, the paper has implications for wider understandings of environmental behaviours and associated identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of joint interviews – interviewing two people together focussing on the same topic – has been a relatively underutilised research approach. Whilst the pages of this journal have demonstrated the vitality of research utilising more qualitative research methods, the research therein has reflected the wider social science literature in which the use of joint interviews has been a relatively ad hoc application, with little critical reflection on what such an approach might offer the research process. Drawing on interviews with farming fathers and sons in Hampshire and West Sussex (UK) this paper fills this research gap by exploring the interview dynamic(s) and narratives that joint interviewing might bring forward. It is seen that processes of co-narration can add to the research encounter not only through the material that it may reveal, but also in terms of how such narratives are constructed, shared and (re)worked within the interview. In addition to seeing a second interviewee as a co-narrator, the paper also shows that they may provide an audience which challenges their partner to reflect on their own interview contribution as well as providing a second interviewer–interviewee dynamic through which they may reflect on and rework their own contribution. Set within the literature influenced by the ‘reflexive turn’, which recognises that the interview is a site of performance, the paper considers how joint interview narratives might be used to develop particular subject positions and illustrates how this a conjoined process between the narratives of fathers and their sons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen an increasing number of councils begin separate food waste collections from domestic premises, a change that has resulted in householders having to sort food waste and keep it in separate bins until collection. Yet bins - of any kind - have been subject to little investigation, despite being a central element of the waste infrastructure. This paper attends to this omission by examining food bins. First of all, it explores the ways that bins have agency through an exploration of how their presence has affected waste practices. We find that their agency is three-fold: it is symbolic, relational and, importantly, material - an aspect which has been overlooked all too often in analyses of material culture and consumption. Secondly, we show how this material agency can be troubling: we explore how this agency is managed by households through practices of accommodation and resistance. Examining the food bin's agency and how it is consumed gives an insight into the implementation of, and engagement with, waste policy 'on the ground'. This allows us to make some suggestions for how to improve the implementation of this policy. This paper also opens up two new areas of study: first, a more sustained and developed exploration of bins, giving some pointers as to other possible issues. Secondly, and more broadly, the paper examines the extent to which the objects that materialize policy can be useful in the implementation of that policy, especially if the policy seeks 'behaviour change'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Through a focus on agricultural retirement, this paper extends on the recent work considering human–livestock relations. Drawing on research conducted in Hampshire and West Sussex (UK), the paper utilises farmers’ narratives of farm work and retirement to explore the themes of [dis]connection between farmers and their dairy cattle. The paper attempts to add complexity and nuance to assumptions about the nature and extent of animal objectification with commercial dairy farming, and consider the intricate moral geographies [re]created within the individual farm. The discursive and material ‘placings’ of animals are considered alongside an exploration of how the intricate temporality and spatiality of these are disturbed and disrupted by the move to retirement. In discussing these relations the paper examines how animals are central to the everyday lives and identities of farmers and how separation from them alters farmers’ attachment to particular practices, places and social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on pathogen surveillance through monitoring of sewer systems. It explores human pathogens secreted in bodily fluids and the duration of release and concentration in bodily fluids and skin. It discusses the concentration of biological agents in sewage. It investigates laboratory methods and detection of human pathogens in sewage.