Social Change and its Ecological Effects in Village England

Project Status: Completed (See Final Report Summary)
Type of Project: Scoping Study
Principal Investigator: Dr Martin Phillips, University of Leicester (Email)

Publications, Data and Other Outputs

Objectives

This interdisciplinary scoping study will address rural environmental change through integrated approaches and methodologies derived from the social and biological sciences. The main focus of this nature-society study is the impact of rural gentrification on the enrolment and modification of nature within village space. Previous studies have demonstrated the heterogeneity of rural gentrification, which has social, economic, political and cultural dimensions, but have failed to explicitly consider the ‘extra social’ or ‘natural’ dimensions. These environmental aspects of rural gentrification provide the innovative focus for this study.

A key component of the proposed research will be to document the range of ‘agencies of nature’ drawn upon in creating a desire for rural residency in one gentrifying village, and to consider their significance against a range of social agencies identified in earlier studies. The project will explore the degree to which differing conceptions of and relations to nature are held by rural social groups, including those identified as gentrifiers, and will assess these in the light of data obtained from ecological field surveys of land within and around the village envelope. The process of rural gentrification involves transformation of both rural built and rural ‘natural’ environments (with impacts ranging from domestication, through simplification to obliteration), thus this study will also explore the degree to which gentrifiers are actively involved in transforming rural biological diversity. The study outcomes will lead to an improved understanding of rural population change and its impact on rural environmental change; they will also inform social and economic debates on public and consumer perceptions and expectations associated with rural lifestyles.