Abstract
This essay grew out of an empirical study of a village in Southern England which, from its inception, was a fraught and emotionally entangled undertaking. I was born in this place and have retained a strong connection to it through my family. I soon found, however, that my attempts to think analytically were blocked by my own contradictory feelings: an umbilical pull to house and land tempered by alienation from what was becoming, in my lifetime, an increasingly homogenous and suburbanized enclave. Childhood memories of people, events and spaces provided a reservoir from which I could draw selectively, but having shaken the dust off my shoes so long ago I had lost any sense of belonging to a community.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Writing otherwise |
| Subtitle of host publication | experiments in cultural criticism |
| Editors | Jackie Stacey, Janet Wolff |
| Place of Publication | Manchester, U.K. |
| Publisher | Manchester University Press |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780719089428 |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2013 |
Keywords
- Englishness
- Sociology
- agriculture
- landscape
- life-writing
- local history
- poultry
- rural