Griff Rhys Jones is searching for that Welsh part of himself that he has felt ever since being forced to sing in the choir in church and pack down for the school first XV, all in suburban Essex.

Concentrating on three countries, Spain, France and the United Kingdom, and three regional case studies of Galicia, Brittany and Wales, this book offers an analysis of the development of political regionalism after regionalisation.

Living Off-Grid in Wales addresses broad debates about the possibility of planning for a sustainable future, by an examination of rural development off the grid. Contrasting Wales’s policy on One Planet Development – a planning policy that encourages living off-grid – with a more DIY approach to living off-grid, the book presents case studies from eco-villages that imagine off-grid very differently. The text pivots on the problematic question that if planning is about the spatial reproduction of society, then why should it encourage autonomy from societal systems. The ethnographic case studies in the book comprise an ethnography of rural Wales, and the focus on eco-villages brings a fresh perspective to the anthropological literature on community by considering off-grid as a radical form of social assemblage.

It is a study of the relationship between identity and religion in women’s lives in Wales today. It will help the reader have a better and more comprehensive understanding of the religious context in Wales to the present day. It will introduce the reader to theological and religious themes as well as reflections on identity in the work of several key female Welsh writers – Menna Elfyn, Jasmine Donahaye, Jam Morris, Charlotte Williams and Mererid Hopwood. It will help the reader to engage with issues of Welsh identity and religion and gain insight into challenges facing the churches today and engage with the lived experience of women in Wales.

Migration, Community and Identity analyses experiences of migration to rural Wales from 1965-1980. It focuses on people who were part of the era’s counterculture, looking for an escape from mainstream society. Using original interviews, the book shows why people moved and how the move shaped their lives and identities. Drawing together geographical and historical research, this book explores the significance of this migration phenomenon. It provides a unique insight into late 20th century Welsh society and shines a new light onto the counterculture itself. Through analysing the experience of life in Wales, and ongoing developments to the migrants’ sense of identity, it argues that rather than being a uniform group, the counterculture encompassed a diverse range of beliefs and aspirations. The book will be suitable for upper-level undergraduates and above, the broad range of themes covered in this book is relevant not only to rural and historical geographers and migration researchers, but also those interested in sociology, anthropology, and the modern history of Britain and Wales. The theories and concepts discussed have global appeal and will be of interest to those studying similar migration phenomena elsewhere.

Making Sense of Wales gives an account of the main changes that have taken place in Welsh society over the last fifty years, as well as analysing the major efforts to interpret those changes. By placing work done in Wales in the context of broader developments within sociological approaches over the period, Graham Day demonstrates that there is a body of work on Wales worth considering in its own right as a specific contribution to sociology. He also shows the relevance of sociological accounts of Wales for understanding contemporary empirical and theoretical concerns in social analysis. Beginning with post-war analysis which considered Wales in terms of regional planning and policy, Day shows how more theoretically informed perspectives have come to the fore in recent years. He also examines more contemporary developments, such as gender and class transformations, the emphasis on the centrality of the Welsh language for conceptions of Wales and Welshness, as well as the impact of new forms of governance and questions of social exclusion.

By examining the origins of emigrants from Britain, Mr Baines challenges notions of emigration as a flight from poverty.

This book looks at the fundamental components of national identity as understood by ordinary nation members, and the way in which it is mobilised by political elites. Drawing on an original case comparison between Wales and the Basque Country, the author suggests there are many commonalities between these two nations, particularly around the fundamentals of their national identities. However, differences occur in terms of degree of intensity of feeling and around the politicisation of identity, with more entrenched and hostile political positioning in the Basque Country than Wales. Through a multi-level comparison, the book generates insights into national identity as a theoretical concept and in a ‘stateless nation’ context. It argues for national identity's intangible, yet polemical, nature, looking at the primordialist way it is understood, its permanence and importance, coupled with its lack of everyday salience and consequent obligations.