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This paper explores the relations between older people, poverty and place in rural Britain. It develops previous work on rural poverty that has pointed both to the significance of older people within the rural poor population and to their denials of poverty. The paper also connects with recent discussions on the complexity of relations between poverty and social exclusion in later life, as well as key themes emerging from studies of older people in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. Drawing on findings from a survey of 4000 households in rural Wales and interviews with older people in poverty in three rural places, the paper provides a detailed examination of the materialities and experiences of poverty among older people in rural places. In particular, it highlights how older poor groups construct their lives in complex terms with references made to both social inclusions and exclusions. The research also points to the significance of the socio-cultural contexts of place in shaping older people's understandings of poverty in rural areas. (Contains 3 tables.)

Rising demand for emergency food during the last couple of decades in the UK has led to a great deal of academic interest in food aid provision, and food banking in particular. Efforts have also been made to examine food poverty and responses to it in more critical terms, which has entailed moving beyond a focus on emergency food support to engage with 'more than food aid' approaches. In this paper, I discuss how these latter approaches are beginning to be mobilised by national organisations, local authorities and place-based food partnerships in the UK. An important catalyst for this shift was the Covid-19 pandemic, which provided the crisis conditions that encouraged public and third-sector actors to think about, and act upon, food poverty in different ways. Drawing on an analysis of submissions to a Covid-19 food inquiry, place-based food initiatives implemented during the pandemic period and more recent initiatives instigated by national food support and anti-hunger groups, the paper examines how a diverse range of organisations are becoming more critical of existing (food aid) responses to food poverty and are seeking to develop more supportive local foodscapes based on a 'more than food aid' approach. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this shift for future research on food poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent academic critiques of poverty have pointed to the need to pay more attention to the relations between the material, social, and cultural dimensions of poverty as well as to the lived worlds of those on low income. This paper addresses these themes by exploring the ways in which people living in situations of material poverty discuss their everyday lives. Drawing on survey and interview materials from a recent study of poverty in rural Wales, the paper illustrates how people on low income construct their lives more in relation to their social and cultural worlds than to issues of low income and material deprivation. Key findings from the study reveal important disconnections between material and sociocultural aspects of rural poverty, with community belonging and attachment to landscape appearing more significant than material hardship and social exclusion within poor people's narratives of their everyday lives. Community belonging is also bound up with particular moral discourses of welfare and rurality that act to perpetuate situations of material poverty within rural places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed increased academic interest in the relations between poverty, environment and place. Studies of poverty in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods have pointed to the contribution of despoiled local environments to social exclusion. Work in urban political ecology has highlighted the socio-environmental hybridity of injustices in the city, bringing a political dimension to debates on urban sustainability, while research on environmental justice has directed critical attention towards the local and everyday (urban) contexts of socio-ecological forms of injustice. This paper explores the everyday spaces and mundane forms of (in)justice through a case study of community gardening in cities. Drawing on materials derived from a recent study of 18 community gardening projects in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods in the UK, this paper highlights how these projects are using ordinary forms of environmentalism to produce new socio-ecological spaces of justice within the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent years have witnessed increased interest in the geographies of poverty and welfare. This article provides a critical review of three important themes emerging from this growing body of literature. First, it explores the spatial unevenness of poverty and the persistence of poverty in particular regions and places. Second, attention is given to the complex relationship between poverty and place, and the ways in which poverty is shaped by the local contexts of place. Third, the shifting relations between central and local welfare systems are examined within the context of recent welfare reform. The article ends by outlining new geographical agendas for research on these themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in the spaces of poverty in Britain. An increasing number of geographers have placed poverty back `on the map'' by pointing to its complex spatial manifestations. In addition, the increased importance attached to the concept of social exclusion within UK social welfare discourse has led to social policy researchers thinking more critically about the broader social and spatial contexts of poverty and, consequently, new connections between poverty and space have been identified. However, within these new spatialised accounts of poverty in Britain, scant attention has been given to the local geographies of poverty. In fact, relatively little is known about the complex connections between poverty and place, and, more specifically, the ways that poverty is associated with different material forms, representations and experiences in particular local contexts. This paper develops these kinds of connection between poverty and place through an exploration of the local geographies of rural poverty in South-west England. Based on an analysis of local poverty data, in-depth interviews with a broad range of key agencies and a case-study of poverty in a particular village, the research highlights the complex socio-spatial nature of poverty, the different spatial scales and visibilities of poverty, and important connections between poverty and the shifting social composition of local space. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Homelessness remains a neglected component of rural studies in Britain and Europe. Research has tended to skirt around the subject, focusing either on groups in need located within rural housing markets or on those people experiencing rural poverty living within conventional properties. In this paper we want to connect homelessness with rurality by drawing on key findings from recently completed research on rural homelessness in England. We want to make connections between homelessness and rurality in two main ways. Firstly, given the limited knowledge base on rural homelessness, we set out the overall extent and profile of homelessness in rural England based on an analysis of unpublished official statistics. We also highlight how homelessness in rural England is bound up with a great deal of spatial unevenness and suggest that it is through localized investigation that important connections between homelessness and rurality can be best understood. In the second part of the paper, we draw on findings from local research conducted in two rural districts in Gloucestershire to provide a range of evidence that points to the significance of the local spaces of rural homelessness. In particular, this work demonstrates the ways in which local structures of housing provision and socio-cultural and political processes in these districts impact on the nature and experiences of rural homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]