Neil Ravenscroft

Rights, citizenship and access to the countryside

Abstract This paper presents a reading of recent UK government policy on recreational access to the countryside of England, in terms of its citizenship and rights agenda. Given the continuity of traditional forms of land tenure and occupation, it is argued that the policy, as text, is less a recognition of the changing needs of a transitory society than it is a revisionist manifesto for resisting external influence and change. This is particularly so in terms of recreation, where the underlying organisation of the physical environment has been appropriated to reproduce a reflection of social order which increasingly discriminates between culturally legitimate and illegitimate uses and constructions of rural space.