From dropping out to leading on? British counter-cultural back-to-the-land in a changing rurality

Abstract

Counter-cultural back-to-the-land experimentation is a very long-standing social phenomenon across the global North but has been little studied by geographers. This paper provides a critical overview of its manifestation in Britain over the last 40 years. It emphasizes the importance of placing it in its entangled context of the dominant form(s) that rural space takes. While 1960s/1970s back-to-the-land raised critical questions about the countryside, it mainly `diverted' marginal spaces to alternatives outside the mainstream. In contrast, it exists today at a time when rural spatiality's `productivist' alignment is being sorely challenged. This presents, in principle, greater scope both for its longer-term survival and for it to engage in a `productive' critique of the mainstream rurality that is emerging. The paper suggests that interrogating critically the extent of consubstantial relationships between land and everyday life is also essential for evaluating back-to-the-land experimentation.