Michael Leyshon

On being ‘in the field’: practice, progress and problems in research with young people in rural areas

Abstract Alongside growing research interest in the lifestyles of young people has come recognition of the need for ethical codes of conduct to protect children and young people from exploitation. While many academic papers provide valuable guidelines for researchers, little consideration has been given to how methodological issues are actually played out in practice. In particular, the practicalities of fulfilling methodological obligations whilst at the same time managing often challenging research situations is elided. In this paper I foreground how methodological considerations impact upon research with both individuals and groups of young people in the countryside.

The betweeness of being a rural youth: inclusive and exclusive lifestyles

In this paper I demonstrate the ways in which young people imagine, define and create discourses of the countryside, in particular how they envision both the place of the countryside and their place in the countryside. I focus on how rural youth situate themselves within discourses of the rural and in so doing, I challenge previous constructions of the relationship between young people, the rural idyll and cultural marginality. Specifically, I assess the role and importance of place-myths and practices in the formation of identity. In particular, this paper offers a more developed account than previously conceived of how rural youth identity is formulated in and between complex social and material relations predicated on difference. My analysis takes account of the ways in which young people actively produce culture and experience and understand belonging and not-belonging, their different views of rurality, their production of an ‘intensive-self’ and the extent to which the countryside is, on one hand, enabling and nurturing (inclusive), and on the other, restrictive and prohibitive. This paper makes an important contribution to the geography of youth by presenting a framework for understanding young people in the countryside that is predicated on exposing conflicting and sometimes contradictory feelings of inclusion and exclusion.

Embodied rural geographies: Developing research agendas

This paper responds to the scarcity of work on rural embodiment. We argue that a consideration of ‘the body’ can contribute significantly to an understanding of rural social relations and communities. In particular, this paper provides an additional critical dimension to the understanding of the relationship between changing femininities, masculinities, rurality and the performance of sexuality in rural areas. It shows how dominant constructions of rural masculinity and femininity incorporate highly traditional assumptions about the body and reflect conventional attitudes to sexuality and gender identity. This paper gathers together some partial and underdeveloped ideas and data in the production of a more coordinated and sustained consideration of embodiment and rurality, and details some emerging research directions.

‘We’re stuck in the corner’: Young women, embodiment and drinking in the countryside

In this paper I extend our understanding of the ways in which young women in rural areas produce, negotiate and experience identity through an exploration of their drinking practices. Through a close ethnography of three groups of young women in the rural south west of England this paper shows how pubs, clubs, bedrooms and other informal spaces such as ‘in the park’ provide arenas of performance in which identities are constructed, negotiated and reproduced. In particular this paper explores the significance given by rural young women to their discursive drinking practices and the extent to which these practices lead to inclusionary and/or exclusionary experiences. Eschewing conventional notions of the body, by recognizing the body as malleable, porous and an unfinished product, subject to socially produced alteration, this paper teases apart the different lived experiences of rural young women by arguing that much of their behaviour in pub(lic) and private space(s) can be seen in terms of acts of spectacle, compliance and challenges to disciplinary frameworks. To illustrate this point I discuss how rural young women employ various embodied strategies to move between spaces to experiment with alcohol and alternative femininities and ‘do’ gender, thereby contesting acceptable rural gender roles and expectations. Through shedding light on drinking practices, I reveal how this experimentation affects their sense of their body, femininity and belonging in the countryside.

The bricolage of the here: young people's narratives of identity in the countryside

Memories are crucial to our construction of place. They simultaneously offer an anchor for identity and different temporalities to encounters with landscapes. Memory allows different spaces, pasts, and futures to become embedded in particular locales. Yet the spontaneous assemblages of meaning that memory enables are not apolitical. Thus the mechanisms and processes by which meaning is articulated in these encounters are fundamental to our understandings of place. This paper, therefore, brings together the work of Henri Bergson on memory and Paul Ricoeur on narrative, to examine the stories individuals produce which define the self. By drawing on research into the lives of young people in the countryside, the paper does three things: it discusses the role of memory in creating identity; it examines the political process of narrative by which memories become woven into understandings of place and create a bricolage of the here; and finally, it offers the ‘storied-self’ as a resolution of the competing constructions and experiences of personal continuity and the inconsistencies and constant change in the project of the individual.

Mobile Technologies and Youthful Exploration: Stimulus or Inhibitor?

In this paper, an examination is made of how young people locate themselves in the world through using GPS-enabled mobile phones. Three research themes are explored. First, how GPS mobile phones encourage young people to explore new territory by providing both spatial information and a ‘lifeline’ to security. Secondly, how parental surveillance encourages or discourages exploration. Finally, how the accessibility of spatial data reduces the need to try new routes or memorise landscape features. In so doing, two myths of mobile phone use are challenged: that the revolution in mobile technology has caused the ‘death of distance’ and created a borderless world through space–time compression and that mobile technologies atomise quotidian life into a series of impersonal mediated encounters. The research, conducted in New Jersey, USA, and Cornwall, UK, shows that mobile phones appear to give young people more confidence in exploring new places, but also distract them from observing their surroundings.

The Village Pub and Young People's Drinking Practices in the Countryside

Abstract This paper explores the ways in which young people in rural areas experience their identity through their drinking practices. This research is founded on a close ethnography of three pubs and explores the significance given by young men and women to their discursive leisure and drinking practices and the extent to which these practices lead to inclusionary and/or exclusionary experiences. Through understanding identity formation as a contingent process, subject to socially produced alteration, this paper teases apart the different lived experiences of rural young people by arguing that much of their behaviour in pub(lic) and private space(s) can be seen in terms of acts of spectacle, compliance and challenge to disciplinary frameworks. This is illustrated though ethnographic case study examples and discussion on how young people employ various embodied strategies to move between spaces to experiment with alcohol. Through shedding light on drinking practices, this research reveals how this experimentation affects their sense of belonging in the countryside.

The design of decision-making: participatory budgeting and the production of localism

This paper examines participatory budgeting (PB) as an instrument of localism – the devolution of political governance with the aim to produce sustainable democratic communities. This will be achieved through a detailed exploration of the decision-making mechanisms for creating local governance through PB schemes designed and organised by the Cornwall Council (UK). First introduced in the UK by the previous Labour administration in 2008, PB has become a tool of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and is central to the neoliberal ethos of Big Society and localism. In a time of rapid political change, we respond to Eatons [2008. From feeding the locals to selling the locale: adapting local sustainable food projects in Niagara to neocommunitarianism and neoliberalism. Geoforum, 39, 994–1006, 996] suggestion that greater attention be paid to “the specificities of particular neoliberal projects” by focusing on the micro-politics of PB. We draw upon empirical evidence from PB pilot schemes run in rural Cornwall in 2008, examining the effect of “nudging” decision-making. Grounding this inquiry in the existing literature on neoliberal statecraft, this paper investigates the role of government technologies which seek to frame local governance using mechanisms of libertarian paternalism [Painter, J., 2008. European citizenship and the regions. European Urban and Regional Studies, 15, 5–19; Painter, J., 2010. Rethinking territory. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 42, 1090–1118; MacLeavy, J., 2008. Neoliberlising subjects: the legacy of new labours construction of social exclusion in local governance. Geoforum, 39, 1657–1666]. We argue in this paper that neoliberal ideology has integrated the epistemology of behavioural economics. We draw conclusions commensurate with the outcomes of PB projects conducted in Latin America, namely that citizens can be steered towards making certain decisions. We assert that in order to direct decision-making successfully, governmental “top-down” frameworks and goals need to be married with local geographies and “bottom-up” local desires and aspirations, thereby enabling a “countervailing power” [Sintomer, Y., Herzberg, C. and Rocke, A., 2008. Participatory budgeting in Europe: potentials and challenges. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32, 164–178] to develop. This power is exercised by a participating and scrutinising citizen that contribute towards, and balance, governmental practices of PB. With a wider governmental emphasis on designing or “architecting” choice in opportunities for local governing, there is now an even greater necessity to recognise the context of geography in local government community-orientated initiatives.

Communicating climate change – Learning from business: challenging values, changing economic thinking, innovating the low carbon economy

The risks and opportunities presented by climate change for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) have been largely overlooked by previous research. The subsequent lack of knowledge in this field makes it difficult for SMEs to engage with climate change in a meaningful, profitable, and sustainable way. Further, current research cannot explain why SMEs rarely engage with climate change. We examine critically 30 SMEs, which engage with climate change knowledges and 5 Innovation-Support-Organizations (ISOs) that communicate climate change knowledges. Over a three-year period we explore why and how these businesses approach the knowledge gap between climate change science and business practice, drawing on a variety of ethnographic research methods: (1) in-depth semi-structured and open interviews; (2) participant observations; and (3) practitioners’ workshops. The results demonstrate that business’ mitigation and adaptation strategies are lay-knowledge-dependent, derived from personal values, space, and place identity. To enhance the number of SMEs engaging with climate change, maximize the potential value of climate change for the econo- my and establish a low carbon economy, climate change communication needs to target personal values of business leaders. The message should highlight local impacts of climate change, the benefits of engagement to (the local) society and economy, and possible financial benefits for the business. Climate change communication therefore needs to go beyond thinking about potential financial benefits and scientific evidence and challenge values, cultures, and beliefs to stimulate economic, political, and social frameworks that promote values-based decision-making.

Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place

ordering of our social space. While we seem to live in postpolitical times, these times have been among themost politicized since at least the 19th century. Perhaps, it is time for geography to ascertain itself again as the preeminent discipline concerned with the political organization of the territory and its accompanying power games.