Michael Woods 
Rural Geography [EPUB ebook] 
Processes, Responses and Experiences in Rural Restructuring

’Michael Woods has taken on the formidable task of giving an overview of rural places and society in advanced economies as a single author and has presented a book that rightly deserves to be called state-of-the-art.’


– Geographische Rundschau

’With Rural Geography Michael Woods remedies the often underestimated dynamism of rural places and rural society by providing the much-needed synthesis of the European and North American literature on rural restructuring and globalization processes.’
– Patrick H Mooney, University of Kentucky

Rural Geography is an introduction to contemporary rural societies and economies in the developed world. It examines the social and economic processes at work in the contemporary countryside – including the more traditional: like agriculture; land use; and population; as well as wider themes like: rural health, crime, exclusion, commodification; and alternative lifestyles.

With a contextualising section defining the rural, the text is organised systematically in three principal sections:

• Processes of Rural Restructuring


• Responses to Rural Restructuring


• Experiences of Rural Restructuring

Using the most recent empirical material , statistical data and research, the text is global in perspective using comparative examples throughout. Rural Geography is a systematic introduction to the processes, responses, and experiences of rural restructuring.

Innehållsförteckning

INTRODUCING RURAL GEOGRAPHY

Defining the Rural

Understanding the Rural

PART TWO: PROCESSES OF RURAL RESTRUCTURING

Globalization, Modernity and the Rural World

Agricultural Change

The Changing Rural Economy

Social and Demographic Change

Changing Communities

Restructuring Rural Services

Environmental Change and Rural Areas

PART THREE: RESPONSES TO RURAL RESTRUCTURING

Rural Policy and the Response to Restructuring

Rural Development and Regeneration

Rural Governance

Selling the Countryside

Protecting the Countryside

Rural Conflicts

PART FOUR: EXPERIENCES OF RURAL RESTRUCTURING

Changing Rural Lifestyles

Living in the Countryside

Housing, Health and Crime

Growing up and Growing Old in the Countryside

Working in the Countryside

Hidden Rural Lifestyles

Poverty and Social Exclusion

Rurality, National Identity and Ethnicity

Alternative Rural Lifestyles

PART FIVE: CONCLUSION

Thinking again about the Rural

Om författaren

Michael Woods is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth