Rural Poverty and the Welfare State: A Discursive Transformation in Britain and the USA

Abstract

In this paper some of the issues raised in researching the ‘problematic’ of rural life-styles are discussed. It is argued that traditional normative approaches to the study of deprivation and poverty need to be supplemented by an understanding of varying social and cultural constructions of reality, community, living standards, and welfare. The importance of such social and cultural constructs is illustrated in a discussion of the discursive transformation of previous codes, symbols, and concepts of welfare and poverty during the Thatcher and Reagan eras in Britain and the USA, respectively. In a series of contested transformations, the relationship between individual, society, and state in the provision and receipt of welfare has been redefined. Moreover, it is suggested that there are important spatial differences between the urban and the rural within this discursive context, with the urban construction of ‘underclass’ contrasting with rural constructions of ‘idyll’, the latter suggesting codes and symbols of self-help which negate the need for state intervention in welfare.