ON PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS - THE REPRODUCTION OF PROBLEMS FOR RURAL COMMUNITIES IN BRITAIN DURING THE 1980S

Rural studies have long taken an interest in the problems besetting rural people, and in the ways in which these problems have been addressed by policy-makers. This paper briefly reviews the conventional analyses of problems and policy solutions in rural Britain during the 1980s and also raises the question of how rural researchers should regard the 'problematic' in these contexts. The move from regarding problems as the result of the structuring of opportunities to regarding them as a far more complex set of experiences and reactions to changing social, economic, political and cultural practices, raises interesting issues about the nature of power in rural lifestyles. It is argued that existing interpretative discourses of rural problems should be augmented by further study of problematic experiences relating to social constructions of belonging, feeling welcome, and cultural competence, and that the interconnected nature of power in politics, practice and discursive expectations about rural lifestyles will be an important subject for future research on these issues.