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Mobilities and the E nglish Village: Moving Beyond Fixity in Rural West Yorkshire
Author(s) -
GoodwinHawkins Bryonny
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
sociologia ruralis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.005
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-9523
pISSN - 0038-0199
DOI - 10.1111/soru.12043
Subject(s) - mobilities , urbanity , modernity , idyll , dynamism , sociology , ethnography , centrality , geography , economic geography , anthropology , political science , art , economy , epistemology , law , philosophy , literature , economics , mathematics , combinatorics
Abstract ‘Rural idyll’ nostalgia situates the E nglish village as timeless, bounded and static. It is contrasted to urban modernity and dynamism. The urban moves; the rural is held still. This has been echoed by limited scholarly engagement with rural mobilities. Against spatio‐temporal boundedness, this article emphasises the centrality of rural mobilities and conceptualises movement as occurring in, of and through the village. Drawing upon ethnographic research undertaken during 2011–2012 in ‘ L yng V alley’, a post‐industrial rural district in W est Y orkshire, N orthern E ngland, I illustrate the village as on the move in both the past and the present. Arguing for rural mobility as continual and intrinsic, I challenge the concatenation of mobility with urbanity.