Otherness, representation and the cultural construction of rurality

In a recent editorial in the Journal ofRural Studies Cloke (1997) remarked on the buoyant state of rural studies. Identifying major advances in both the quantity and quality of rural research he argues that 'we are now experiencing the most exciting period of rural studies, certainly within the last 20 years ' (Cloke, 1997: 371). One of the major break-throughs identified by Cloke, and now filtering through to published work, is the engagement by rural geographers with the much referenced 'cultural turn'. Major themes from within this cultural perspective, for example the representation and con-struction of rurality, the marginalization of 'others ' and the spatiality of nature (Cloke, 1977) have become an accepted, if not central, part of the writing and teaching of academic rural geography. While an interest in new theoretical/conceptual debates in rural geography is to be welcomed- especially given a traditional reluctance to take on other theoretical developments in the subject- there is a sense in which the application of the 'cultural turn ' has, at times, been simplistic and uncritical. This review provides a timely opportunity for a critique (albeit brief and necessarily selective) of rural geographers ' engagement with some of the themes of cultural geography and of the