A new book for 2013: Interpreting Rurality; multi-disciplinary perspectives to be published by Routledge in the Autumn. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415696722/
1. Introduction and official/statistical definitions, Gary Bosworth and Peter Somerville Part 1 Material Rurality
2. Challenging Western perceptions: a case study of rural Zambia, Juliana Siwale
3. Economic approaches to the rural, David Gray
4. The potential for rural co-operatives in the UK, Ignazio Cabras
5. Rural parishes and community organisation, Rebecca Herron, Jennifer Jackson and Karen Johnson Part 2 Represented Rurality
6. English historical perspectives on rurality: viewing the country from the city, Andrew Walker
7.Pits, pylons and posts: writing under the English rural idyll, Catherine Parry
8. A place for grazing livestock in defining rurality?, Stephen Hall
9. A case study in the literary construction of the rural idyll: the English Farm, Rupert Hildyard
10. Horncastle brass band: revising the banding myth from the edges of rurality, Sue Frith Grau Part 3 Contested Rurality
11. Dairy farming and the fight for ownership of the concept ‘rural’, Alison Moore
12. Contested attitudes towards wildlife in Britain,Sue Bestwick
13. Changing social relations in the English countryside: the case of housing,Peter Somerville
14. Rural crime and policing , Angus Nurse
15. Gypsies and Travellers in modern rural England, Margaret Greenfields Part 4 Consumed Rurality
16. Capitalising on rurality: Tourism micro-businesses in rural tourism destinations, Clare Haven-Tang and Eleri Jones
17. Ageing in rural communities: from ‘idyll’ to ‘exclusion’?, Wesley Key
18. The rural public house: cultural icon or social hub?, Claire Markham Part 5 Conclusions 19. Interrogating rural coherence, Peter Somerville, Keith Halfacree and Gary Bosworth
The new series of Rural Reading Groups started off on 2nd October with our visiting researcher Valeria Sodano from Naples University introducing Coase’s classic paper “The Nature of the Firm”. Written in 1937, the paper originates from a time where economics thinking was developing apace – just a year earlier John Maynard Keynes published his General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. Coase’s paper went somewhat unnoticed for many years but since the 1970s, its relevance for understanding the co-ordinating function of entrepreneurs within firms and the increasingly blurred organisation boundaries of firms within networks has been increasingly recognised. Valeria has applied this theoretical basis in studying food supply chains and the approach brings into question some of the fundamental assumptions of neo-classical economics.
