Susanne Seymour

Rural Restructuring and the Regulation of Farm Pollution

In this paper the emergence during the 1980s of a water pollution problem associated with intensive livestock production is examined. Farm pollution is socially constructed and is shaped by rural social change. Rural areas are experiencing social and economic restructuring with a resultant shift in emphasis from production to consumption concerns. ‘New’ people are living in the countryside, with ideas about how its resources should be managed that often differ from those with traditional production interests. At the same time, the debates surrounding the privatisation of the water industry opened up the issue of water pollution in the countryside to greater critical scrutiny. It is in this context that pollution from farm ‘wastes’ (termed here ‘farm pollution’) has gone from being a ‘nonproblem’ in the 1970s to an issue of greater public and political concern and regulatory activity since the late 1980s. Based on evidence from a study of dairy farming in Devon, it is argued in this paper that the farm pollution problem and its regulation are as much a function of social change in the countryside as of environmental change in rivers.

Keeping Matter in its Place: Pollution Regulation and the Reconfiguring of Farmers and Farming

In this paper we examine the regulation of agricultural practice to reduce the risks of water pollution in England and Wales. We present case-study material concerning water pollution from farm livestock effluents and from agricultural pesticides, and focus on the ways in which farmers and farming practices are being reconfigured under the banner of a move towards a ‘more sustainable agriculture’. Pollution policies can be seen as attempts not only to ‘stabilise’ nature in the rural environment, but also as a process of social ordering as farmers are recast as responsible environmental managers with newly instrumentalised self-governing properties.

Church, landscape and community: rural life and the Church of England

Abstract In this paper we consider the influence of the Anglican Church on the rural landscape of England and its interpretation and use. We begin with a discussion of the Churchs role in the formulation of attitudes towards nature, land development and community. We then focus on the relationship of its major landscape feature, the church building, with ideas of community and heritage using material from an interview survey, undertaken by the Rural Church Project, with rural clergy and parishioners.