Citizenships, Contingency and the Countryside defines citizenship in relation to the rural environment. The book expands and explores a widened conceptualization of citizenship and sets out a range of examples where citizenship, at different scales, has been expressed in and over the rural environment. Part of the analysis includes a review of the political construction and use of citizenship rhetoric over the past 20 years, alongside an historical and theoretical discussion of citizenship and rights in the British countryside. The text concludes with a call to recognise and incorporate the multiple voices and interests in decision-making, that all affect the British countryside.

In Contingent citizenship, Sandra Mantu examines the changing rules of citizenship deprivation in the UK, France and Germany from the perspective of international and European legal standards. In practice, two grounds upon which loss of citizenship takes place stand out: fraud in the context of fraudulent acquisition of nationality and terrorism in the context of national security. Newly naturalised citizens and citizens of immigrant origin are mainly targeted by these measures. The resurrection of the importance attached to loyalty as the citizen’s main duty towards his/her state shows that the rules on loss of citizenship are capable of expressing ideals of membership and identity, while the citizenship status of certain citizens remains contingent upon meeting these ideals.

Contingent Citizens examines the ambiguous state of South Africa's public sector workers and the implications for contemporary understandings of citizenship. It takes us inside an ethnography of the professional ethic of nurses in a rural hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, shaped by a deep history of mission medicine and changing forms of new public management. Liberal democratic principles of 'transparency', 'decentralization' and 'rights', though promising freedom from control, often generate fear and insecurity instead. But despite the pressures they face, Elizabeth Hull shows that nurses draw on a range of practices from international migration to new religious movements, to assert new forms of citizenship. Focusing an anthropological lens on 'professionalism', Hull explores the major fault lines of South Africa's fragmented social landscape – class, gender, race, and religion – to make an important contribution to the study of class formation and citizenship. This prize-winning monograph will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, development studies, sociology and global public health.

A comparative study of how citizens define their civic duty in response to current threats to advanced democracies.

The idea of citizenship is widely used in daily life. ‘Citizenship tests’ are used to determine who can inhabit a country; ‘citizen charters’ have been used to prescribe levels of service provision; ‘citizens’ juries’ are used in planning or policy enquiries; ‘citizenship’ lessons are taught in schools; youth organisations attempt often aim to instil ‘good’ citizenship; ‘active citizens’ are encouraged to contribute voluntary effort to their local communities and campaigners may use ‘citizens’ rights’ to achieve their goals. What is meant by citizenship is never static and the subject of debate by academics, politicians and activists. These ideas are manifest and contested at a range of different scales. This book therefore argues geography is crucial to understanding citizenship. The text is organised around a number of spatial themes to examine how spatialities of citizenship are played out at a range of scales. Ideas about locality, boundaries, mobility, networks, rurality and globalisation are used to reveal the importance of space and place in the constitution, contestation and performance of citizenship. In doing so, the book reveals how different ideas of citizenship can include or exclude people from society and space. Consideration is given to ways in which different groups have sought to empower themselves through various actions associated with and beyond conventional notions of citizenship. Written in an accessible way with detailed case studies to illustrate conceptual ideas and approaches, this book offers social scientists new spatial perspectives on citizenship while also bridging together strands of social, cultural and political geography in ways that deepen understandings of people and place.

This book analyses the specific ways in which family lives have changed and how they have been affected by the major structural and cultural changes of the second half of the twentieth century.--

The Anthropology of Citizenship introduces the theoretical foundations of and cutting edge approaches to citizenship in the contemporary world, in local, national and global contexts. Key readings provide a cross-cultural perspective on citizenship practices, and an individual citizen’s relationship with the state. Introduces a range of exciting and cutting edge approaches to citizenship in the contemporary world Provides key readings for students and researchers who wish to gain an understanding of citizenship practices, and an individual’s relationship with the state in a global context Offers an anthropological perspective on citizenship, the self and political agency, with a focus on encounters between citizens and the state in education, law, development, and immigration policy Provides students with an understanding of the theoretical foundations of citizenship, as characterized by liberal and civic republican ideas of political belonging and exclusion Explores how citizenship is constructed at different scales and in different spaces Twenty-five key writings identify what is a new and vibrant subfield within politics and anthropological research

Interest in citizenship has never been higher. But what does it mean to be a citizen in a modern, complex community? Richard Bellamy approaches the subject of citizenship from a political perspective and, in clear and accessible language, addresses the complexities behind this highly topical issue.

This collection of essays examines representations of the English countryside and its mutations, and what they reveal about a nation’s, communities’ or individuals’ search for identity – and fear of losing it. Based on a pluridisciplinary approach and a variety of media, this book challenges the view that the English countryside is an apolitical space characterised by permanence and lack of conflict. It analyses how the pastoral motif is actually subverted to explore liminal spaces and temporalities. The authors deconstruct the “rural idyll” myth to show how it plays a distinctive and yet ambiguous part in defining Englishness/Britishness. A must read for both scholars and students interested in British rural and cultural history, media and literature.

In recent decades agricultural commodity surpluses in the developed world have contributed to a mantra of 'land surplus' in which set-aside, extensification, alternative land uses and 'wilding' have been key terms in debates over land. Quite suddenly all this has changed as a consequence of rapidly shifting commodity markets. Prices for cereals, oil seeds and other globally traded commodities have risen sharply. A contributor to this has been the shift to bioenergy cropping, fuelled by concerns over post-peak oil and climate change. Agricultural supply chain interests have embraced the 'new environmentalism' of climate change with enthusiasm, proudly proclaiming the readiness of the industry to produce both food and energy crops, and to do so with a neo-liberal confidence in markets to determine the balance between food and non-food crops in land use. But policy and politics have not necessarily caught up with these market and industry-led changes and some environmentalists are beginning to challenge the assumptions of the new 'productivism'. Is it necessarily the case, they ask, that agriculture's best contribution to tackling climate change is to grow bioenergy crops or invest in anaerobic-digesters or make land over for windfarms? Might not there be an equally important role in maximising the carbon sequestration or water-holding properties of biodiverse land? What is Land For? tackles these key cutting-edge issues of this new debate by setting out a baseline of evidence and ideas.