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OUT OF PLACE IN THE COUNTRY: TRAVELLERS AND THE “RURAL IDYLL”
Author(s) -
Halfacree Keith H.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8330.1996.tb00671.x
Subject(s) - idyll , rural area , conservatism , representation (politics) , authoritarianism , sociology , order (exchange) , position (finance) , law , political science , democracy , politics , economics , art , literature , finance
A controversial new Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in Great Britain contains measures to curb the lifestyles of a group known collectively as “New Age Travellers”. This paper examines these travellers as “folk devils” of the Conservative “New Right” on a number of levels: their lifestyle does not conform to that espoused by authoritarian or libertarian Conservatism; moreover, they violate the spatial order of contemporary British society by trespassing against the dominant social representation of the countryside — the “rural idyll”. In Parliamentary debates speakers drew on the rural idyll to defend the exclusivity of access to the countryside. Notably, whilst Gypsies were seen as having a legitimate if highly marginalized position in the rural representation, few saw any place for New Age travellers.