Book reviews Contesting Rurality. Politics in the British Countryside, M. Woods. Ashgate, Aldershot (2005). 209Dx pp., £49.85 hbk, ISBN: 0 7546 3025 0 Marking two decades as a student of ‘rural studies’, I have remained inspired and excited throughout by so much of the academic work that has taken place in this field. In particular, early on it was the application of political economy ideas, then it was the impact of the cultural turn, and at present it is the increasing recog- nition that is being shown in what Mike Woods calls in this book the ‘politics of the rural’. Of course, the absurdity of seeing the rural world as ‘apolitical’ has long been acknowledged but, in the UK, it is particularly through the work of people such as Woods that we have increasingly recognised an explicit political dimension to all aspects of rural life including, crucially, our very understanding of rurality itself. This book brings together much of the work that Woods completed over a decade from the mid 1980s, from early research around his PhD in Somerset, Southwest England, to broader studies of rural politics undertaken whilst based at his present location, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Much of this material will be familiar to many readers, having been published widely in high profile journals, but it is pleasing that this book does not just cobble together a set of articles but has a strong structure of its own, plus much original material. As reinforced in his Rural Geography (Routledge) textbook, pub- lished the same year as the present book, Woods recognises that the changes being experienced by rural places (largely in the global North, which is very much the focus of both books) justify the label ‘rural restructuring’, not withstanding, of course, a rejection of the ideological idea of a past rural stability. I agree with this. Such ongoing restructuring, with its key leitmotif probably being ‘diver- sity’, has underwritten much of the aforementioned recent vibrancy of rural studies and this is equally true for rural politics. Within this context, in short, Woods’s central argument is that we have seen a shift from a ‘rural politics’, defined as ‘politics located in rural space, or related to rural issues’, to a broader and deeper ‘politics of the rural’, where ‘the centrality of the meaning and regu- lation of rurality [becomes] the primary focus of conflict and debate’ (p. 18). Furthermore, as we progressed though the 20th century, the latter ‘gained momentum and jumped scales’ (p. 21) to make the politics of the rural a national, international, even global issue today. The structure of the book maps this 20th century trajectory. Following an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 outlines the changing balance of local power in the countryside, from squirearchy, to agrarian elites, to middle class in-migrants, each stage being more ‘complex and fractious’ (p. 46) than the last. Chapter 3 consol- idates this shift to examine contemporary power in rural Somerset, utilising Woods’s own fieldwork to trace out key ‘elite networks’ in the shadow of increased counterurbanisation. The book next steps across from the local to the national, beginning in Chapter 4 with an account of the increasing electorally-driven undermining of an erstwhile strong linkage between Conservatism and rural represen- tation, which opened up the potential for the increased contesta- tions over rurality that are present today. Reflecting this, Chapter 5 mostly examines the actions and quite turbulent existence to date of the Countryside Alliance, an organisation formed in 1997 and associated most strongly with huge demonstrations in London associated primarily with the (unsuccessful) struggle to prevent the banning of hunting fox and deer with hounds, and which Woods considers part of a more general ‘rural social movement’ (p. 108) across the global North. Chapter 6 considers agricultural politics at the end of the century, with exploration of the political turmoil that accompanied epidemics of BSE and then Foot and Mouth, both of which fuelled rising political militancy amongst farmers. Finally, and most clearly illustrating the politics of the rural, Chapter 7 focuses on rural development conflicts, most notably over housing development but including road-building and wind- farm construction. Here, the issue of competing rural representa- tions – what the rural is and/or should be and who it is and/or should be for – clearly take centre stage. The book is written in a clear and accessible style, with a very sound theoretical basis and one which does not overshadow the comprehensive empirical material, mostly obtained by the author. The book is very much a study of rural politics in the UK, and with a special focus on Somerset. This geographical bias is perhaps unavoidable given the book’s scope and, as with Howard Newby’s work on East Anglia, should not deter its ideas being picked up more generally and tested in different geographical contexts. Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend this book, wishing that it was also available in paperback, as a clear insight into the ‘politics of the rural’; and the continued power of representational rurality today; as Woods powerfully concludes, ‘it seems that the real power in the British countryside is the very idea of rurality itself’; (p. 192). It will appeal to fellow rural studies academics from Geog- raphy, Sociology, Planning, Agriculture and even it is hoped Politics, as well as to students from advanced level first degree modules upwards, where I recommend it as a teaching resource. Keith Halfacree Department of Geography, Swansea University, United Kingdom E-mail address: k.h.halfacree@swansea.ac.uk doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2008.03.006 Slow Food Revolution – A New Culture for Eating and Living, Carlo Petrini, Gigi Padovani. Rizzoli, New York (2006). 312 pp., £16 pbk, ISBN: 978-0-8478-2873-9 The gastronomic social movement that is the Slow Food move- ment, has been spreading far beyond its roots in Italy in the last few years becoming one of the newest global social movements. With Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Rural Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud Journal of Rural Studies 24 (2008) 478–481