Paul Cloke

“Cracking the Canyon with the Awesome Foursome”: Representations of Adventure Tourism in New Zealand

The authors focus on the rise of adventure tourism in New Zealand and suggest that the growth of adventure-tourism attractions is related to important transformations in the sociocultural geographies of the places concerned. Three issues are addressed: first, the increasing importance of adventure-tourism facilities, practices, and subcultures, which have interconnected with the social spatialisation of places and landscapes; second, the ways in which adventure tourism transcends the metaphor of the tourist ‘gaze’, and suggests attention to the embodiment of tourist practice; and third, the implications for an understanding of nature—society relations inherent in representational texts used to advertise adventure tourism.

Dwelling, Place, and Landscape: An Orchard in Somerset

In this paper we seek to develop the concept of dwelling as a means of theorising place and landscape. We do this for two interconnected reasons. First, dwelling has come to the fore recently as an approach to nature, place, and landscape, but we argue that further development of this idea is required in order to address issues relating to romantic views of places, authenticity, localness, and the way we ‘see’ landscapes. Second, we turn to the notion of dwelling to develop interconnected views of the world which can still retain a notion of place, a key but problematic concept within geography, landscape studies, and environmental thinking. In particular, we seek to develop ideas of place within the context of actor network theory. We explore the notion of dwelling in Heidegger and as adapted by Ingold, and we trace how dwelling has been deployed subsequently in studies of landscape and place. We then develop a more critical appreciation of dwelling in the context of an orchard in Somerset which we have researched as a place of hybrid constructions of culture and nature.

Country backwater to virtual village? Rural studies and ‘the cultural turn’

Abstract In recent years, there has been something of a resurgence in rural studies, which has become somewhat more mainstream than previously in the academic space of social science. Increasing numbers of people have taken on important dualistic questions of society/space, nature/culture structure/agency and self/other from the perspective of rural studies. However, it is the ‘cultural turn’ in wider social science which has lent both respectability and excitement to the nexus with rurality, particularly with new foci on landscape, otherness and the spatiality of nature. With a conceptual fascination with difference, and a methodological fascination with ethnography, cultural studies have provided a significant palimpsestual overlay onto existing landscapes of knowledge. This paper seeks to convey some of the excitements and challenges which have been generated by this resurgence. Cultural studies of the rural have emphasized important new perspectives on real and hyperreal countrysides, but have also served to re-emphasize existing unresolved issues about politics, ethics and morality in rural research.

An index of rurality for England and Wales

Cloke P. J. (1977) An index of rurality for England and Wales, Reg. Studies 11, 41–46. Rurality is defined in terms of selected discriminating variables, from which an index of rurality is formulated using principal components analysis. Distributions of four classifications of rurality are presented and both problematical remote rural areas and those suffering extreme urban pressure are identified. Data generated by the index formulation is found to be both a useful tool for studies involving comparison or contrast between rural areas, and an aid to the possible standardisation of planning solutions in areas with similar problems. An insight is also offered into patterns of rural change and the changing nature of rurality itself.

Globalizing Responsibility: The Political Rationalities of Ethical Consumption

Globalizing Responsibility: The Political Rationalities of Ethical Consumption presents an innovative reinterpretation of the forces that have shaped the remarkable growth of ethical consumption. Develops a theoretically informed new approach to shape our understanding of the pragmatic nature of ethical action in consumption processes. Provides empirical research on everyday consumers, social networks, and campaigns. Fills a gap in research on the topic with its distinctive focus on fair trade consumption. Locates ethical consumption within a range of social theoretical debates –on neoliberalism, governmentality, and globalisation. Challenges the moralism of much of the analysis of ethical consumption, which sees it as a retreat from proper citizenly politics and an expression of individualised consumerism.

Rurality in England and Wales 1981: A replication of the 1971 index

Cloke P. and Edwards G. (1986) Rurality in England and Wales 1981: a replication of the 1971 index, Reg. Studies 20, 289–306. In a previous issue of Regional Studies a methodology for an index of rurality was developed using principal components analysis on selected variables reflecting rural or non-rural characteristics in 1971. The results of this indexation procedure represented a rudimentary classification of different levels of rurality, but have been widely used by various rural researchers. This paper replicates the 1971 index using 1981 data. Problems concerning changing administrative boundaries and units, changing census format, and indeed the changing nature of rurality itself are fully discussed. However, these limitations are overcome sufficiently to permit the construction of a 1981 index at the post-1974 district level. The 1981 results are compared with the 1971 distribution of rurality at the district scale, and spatial changes in rurality classification illustrated.

Intra-class conflict in rural areas

Abstract Although the changing nature of rural society has received considerable attention over the last two decades, there is a sense in which the importance of class conflict in rural areas has yet to be fully explored. There has been a preoccupation with matters of local authenticity in these communities, and the portrayal of social relations has been founded on a theatre of ‘locals vs newcomers’. Thus, class conflict has been accepted as the staging of a play-off between middle class in-migrants and the indigenous working class element of the community. In this paper we attempt to deal with the problem of class conflict from a rather different perspective. Specifically, we are less interested in inter-class conflict, and more interested in intra-class conflict. We argue that intra-class conflict can be a significant motive force in the economic, social and cultural constitution of rural areas.

THE ELUSIVE SUBJECTS OF NEO-LIBERALISM

This paper assesses the degree to which conceptualizations of neo-liberal governance and advanced liberal governmentality can throw light on contemporary transformations in the practices and politics of consumption. It detours through theories of governmentality, stories about consumption and shopping, and different variations on what we can learn from Foucault. We explore the degree to which aspects of Foucaults discussions of government and ethics can be put to work methodologically without necessarily buying into fully systematized theories of governmentality that have been built around them. The idea that organizations and networks might share rationalities through which they problematize and seek to intervene in specified areas of social life seems worth pursuing. So too does the notion of various modes of ethical problematization through which people come to take their own activities as requiring moral reflection. In neither case, however, can the analytics of governmentality provide a coherent theoretical account of how political processes of rule and administration work, or indeed of how they connect up with cultural processes of self-formation and subjectivity.

Deprivation and Lifestyles in Rural Wales II: Rurality and the Cultural Dimension

Abstract This paper follows directly from the previous one in which an empirical study of deprivation in rural Wales by Cloke and Davies raises significant questions about the importance of a cultural dimension to rural problems. Here, we seek to build on those questions through a discussion of the cultural influences on rurality and community. Although acknowledging the ‘messy’ and interconnected nature of different productions and circulations of cultural constructs, we discuss three different scales — national, regional, local — at which the cultures of rurality can be identified as important components of the experience of rural lifestyle. Then we briefly focus on how the representation of ‘Welshness’ at different scales leads both to very complex manifestations of ‘community’ and to different representations of what the essence of rural living in Wales can and should be. The paper therefore reflects on the contributions of localism and larger-scale ‘idylls’ to the experienced nature of rurality and rural life.

Cetacean Performance and Tourism in Kaikoura, New Zealand

In this paper we use research into ecotouristic activities in Kaikoura, New Zealand, to discuss how the nonhuman agency of nature is implicated in the performance and meaning of place. Kaikoura has recently boomed as an ecotourist destination, and its changing nature has been coconstituted by the networked agency of whales and dolphins, whose charismatic animal appeal is a magnet for tourists. We discuss the power of representation to conjure up anticipatory ideas about place practices, the influence of mediating and staging tourist performances, and the importance of unconsidered habits and practices in prompting distinctive performances in particular places. Some tourists leave Kaikoura disappointed because the unpredictability of nature can disrupt anticipated experience. Others, however, in partaking in whale watching and swimming with dolphins, are presented with both educational experience and opportunities for relationally achieved connections with cetaceans which can result in intense experiences of immanence and unreflexive glee. This research poses significant questions about the ability of actor networks and relational assemblages to capture fully the power of the nonhuman to evoke sublime emotional and aesthetic relations with humans.