Rural Poverty moves beyond the highly visual forms of poverty characteristic of the city, to explore the nature of poverty in rural spaces of Britain and America. The book sets out the key features of poverty in rural areas and highlights the important processes that act to hide key components of rural poverty. The book seeks to challenge dominant assumptions about the spatialities of poverty and the nature of rural spaces in Britain and America. Drawing on a broad range of new research material, it provides a comprehensive and critical review of the nature of poverty in rural spaces. Particular attention is given to the scale, profile and causes of poverty in rural areas; the spatial unevenness and local geographies of rural poverty; the experiences of different forms of poverty in rural spaces; and the shifting governance of rural welfare at central and local spatial scales. The book demonstrates that poverty represents a significant but neglected feature of rural life in Britain and America.
It highlights the processes through which rural poverty remains hidden from the dominant gazes of poverty researchers and policy-makers; the statistical significance and spatial unevenness of poverty in rural areas; the ways in which poverty is experienced in local rural spaces; and the complex governance of welfare in rural spaces. Case-study material used in the book has been drawn from a wide range of locations, including Wiltshire, Northumberland and Hampshire in the UK and New England in the US.