Abstract
Through a close reading of a 2018 special issue of the popular British magazine Country Life guest edited by Prince Charles, this paper highlights the tension between its stated inclusive view of the rural and the exclusionary paternalistic-conservative politics pursued under this veneer. Combining a narratological method with a posthuman perspective grounded in the recent work of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, which undoes binary oppositions such as nature-culture and rural-urban by radically reconfiguring notions of agency, difference, and responsibility, we ask: who and what makes up ‘country life’ in the stories presented in the special issue, who and what gets to tell these stories, and which human and non-human actors are marginalised or left out by how the stories are told? Our analysis, which focuses on the special issue's engagement with notions of rural resilience and conservation, advances debates in rural studies about how to challenge non-inclusive narratives of the rural by: 1) highlighting the continued urgency of critiquing such narratives, especially when they appear in popular outlets like Country Life ; 2) drawing attention to the way these narratives may be implicitly rather than explicitly exclusionary, which indicates a need to pay close attention to exactly how their politics of the rural is constructed; and 3) proposing that more intensive engagement with Barad and Haraway can advance the work of rural studies scholars who have long sought to think the rural as more-than-human. • Analyses the politics of the rural in an issue of Country Life guest edited by Prince Charles from a posthuman perspective. • Shows how the issue's paternalist-conservative view on rural resilience and conservation belies its claim to inclusivity. • Draws attention to the way popular narratives of the rural may be implicitly rather than explicitly exclusionary • Builds on ongoing discussions in rural studies about how to establish more inclusive accounts of the rural • Advances the thinking of the rural as more-than-human through the recent work of Karen Barad and Donna Haraway.
Highlights
To commemorate his 70th birthday, Charles, Prince of Wales—heir apparent to the British throne—was asked to guest edit the November 2018 issue of Country Life, a glossy weekly magazine which focuses on the British countryside and has been published since 1897
Drawing on the recent work of feminist posthuman theorists Karen Barad and Donna Haraway, which has not received much attention yet in rural studies, we examine who and what makes up country life in the stories presented in the special issue of Country Life, who and what gets to tell these stories, and which human and non-human actors these stories—as a result of how they are told—marginalise or leave out
In its association with the empowerment of vulnerable rural communities, and conservation, in suggesting a concern for animal and plant life, are foregrounded in the special issue as part of its claim to be standing for the British countryside as a whole. It is by parsing the narratives constructed around these notions through the lens of the radical reconfigurations of agency, difference and re sponsibility proposed by Barad and Haraway, which undo binary op positions such as nature-culture and rural-urban, that it becomes clear how the special issue, on a largely implicit level, configures both resil ience and conservation in a manner that reinforces these binaries, con tinues to centralise the human, and furthers a conservatism that consolidates the power of rural elites and can be linked to a xenophobic nationalism
Summary
To commemorate his 70th birthday, Charles, Prince of Wales—heir apparent to the British throne—was asked to guest edit the November 2018 issue of Country Life, a glossy weekly magazine which focuses on the British countryside and has been published since 1897. In its association with the empowerment of vulnerable rural communities, and conservation, in suggesting a concern for animal and plant life, are foregrounded in the special issue as part of its claim to be standing (up) for the British countryside as a whole It is by parsing the narratives constructed around these notions through the lens of the radical reconfigurations of agency, difference and re sponsibility proposed by Barad and Haraway, which undo binary op positions such as nature-culture and rural-urban, that it becomes clear how the special issue, on a largely implicit level, configures both resil ience and conservation in a manner that reinforces these binaries, con tinues to centralise the human, and furthers a conservatism that consolidates the power of rural elites and can be linked to a xenophobic nationalism. The conclusion summarises our findings and underlines the need to advance a posthuman understanding of both the rural and concepts like resilience and conservation not just in rural studies research and in more popular outlets, which play an important role in shaping the (perception of) the British rural
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