Cultural Change and Conflict in Rural Wales: Competing Constructs of Identity

Abstract

In this paper we suggest that understandings of social and cultural recomposition in areas of rural Wales need to consider issues of interacting and competing identities. We explore notions of cultural identity, change, and conflict in four areas of rural Wales, based on recent research involving interviews with around 1000 households. Attention is focused on the interplay between different scales of identity constructs: national-scale constructs of English and Welsh identities; regional constructs of Welsh identity; and more localised identity constructs. In the context of the first of these identity constructs, we consider Cohen's notions of significant ‘others’ and symbolic boundaries as a means of understanding processes of English in-movement to areas of the Welsh countryside.