Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
6545862 Journal of Rural Studies 2014 15 Pages PDF
Abstract
The paper explores the concept of baroque rurality through employing concepts of affect and affordance within a study of an English village experiencing rural gentrification. The paper begins by outlining the concept of baroque rurality, contrasting it with so-called romantic approaches that have employed abstract notions of environmental or natural factors in accounts of rural in-migrational decision making. This paper then outlines conceptions of affect, affordance and more-than-representational perspectives before moving to an empirical examination of the relations that residents in a gentrifying village in the East Midlands of England have with the natures that surrounds them. The presence of positive and negative emotions with respect to a range of actants taken to be natural is highlighted, along with the significance of non-representation and pre- or semi-conscious relations with these actants. Attention is also drawn to the range of material affordances and ecologically embedded positionings and sensings described in accounts of rural living and rural in-migrational decision making. The paper concludes by considering the diversity of such positioning and the complexity associated with studies of baroque ruralities.
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