Outsiders in Rural Society? Constructions of Rurality and Nature—Society Relations in the Racialisation of English Gypsy-Travellers, 1869 – 1934

Abstract

In this paper I explore what Little (1999 Progress in Human Geography23 page 438) terms “the complexity and fluidity of rural otherness” through an examination of the racialisation of Gypsy-Travellers in late-19th-century and early-20th century England. Drawing on social-constructionist and psychoanalytic accounts of difference, I explore both the specificity of racialisation in different places, and the ways in which processes of racialisation can produce highly spatialised understandings of difference. In so doing, I consider the importance of nature – society relations in the othering of this minority group, and the contested construction of their place in the rural idyll.