DEPRIVATION, POVERTY AND MARGINALIZATION IN RURAL LIFE-STYLES IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Research studies of the problems of rural life in Britain have often b een based on concepts such as 'deprivation' or 'disadvantage'. In this paper we explore the basis of these conceptualizations and note claim s that they have been appropriated by government at local and central levels, suggesting that criticism of such appropriation should not lea d to a neglect of material privation of opportunities caused by change s to the structure of rural life, brought about by economic restructur ing, social recomposition and the political-economy of deregulation. R ather, we draw on studies of rural poverty to suggest that the changin g material base of rural life has been accompanied by a range of discu rsive strategies which obscure rural problems and even filter them out altogether in the various constructions of idyll-ized rural life as t he spatial expression of self-supporting, self-sufficient, happy, heal thy and problem-free existence in a market place economy. Using some o f the findings from the Rural Lifestyles research programme in England and Wales we discuss some of the different experiences of opportunity privation in rural areas, and some of the different ways in which cul tural constructions of rural life can lead to a range of expectations from imagined rural geographies which are variously met and not met in day-to-day rural lifestyles. We suggest that rural problems are assoc iated with a wide range of experiences of marginalization - economic, political, social, cultural - which cannot be mapped out according to normative or cultural expectations, but which occur differently at the intersection of material and experiential elements of rural lifestyle s.