Rurality Re-Imagined

Villagers, Farmers, Wanderers and Wild Things

Ben Stringer (Editor)

Rurality Re-imagined is divided into four loosely themed sections: Villagers, Farmers, Wanderers, and Wild Things with each comprised of five or six diverse chapters. In the section on Villagers, rural communities are considered as assemblages and spaces of vernacularity, as dark settings for TV dramas, new wave photography, and as sites for community arts projects.

The Farmer’s section critically re-invigorates the historical fascination with peasantry and farming in the arts through essays, painting, and photography that collectively place the agency of the artist under as much scrutiny as images of agricultural space and people. Stereotypically, the word ‘Wanderers’ conjures images of gypsy caravans, or country ramblers, but Rurality Re-imagined stretches the label to include not only the traditional migrations of reindeer herds, but also that of the motorway driver, and migrations of cultural forms as well, such as the hip hop clubs of New York to the fields of rural Devon. In the essays and images about Wild Things, wilderness emerges as a highly contested cultural terrain far from any state of purity as it manifests itself in the behaviour of people, flora, and fauna in cultivated and uncultivated landscapes and parks.

Specifications
Size: 8″ x 10″ Portrait
Pages: 284pp
Binding: Softbound
ISBN: 978-1-940743-34-9
Rights world: Available

Order online at http://appliedresearchanddesign.com/book/rurality-re-imagined