REGULATING RURAL CHANGE - PROPERTY-RIGHTS, ECONOMY AND ENVIRONMENT - A CASE-STUDY FROM CUMBRIA, UK

A new set of priorities increasingly determines the development of the British countryside. It is encouraging a more economically and socially differentiated countryside in which spatial patterns of development will be less predictable and environmental concerns more evident. New means of examining these complex processes of change are urgently required. In particular, they must engage with and adequately reflect the significance of local circumstances. Drawing upon Clark's notion of 'real' regulation, with its focus upon administrative processes, a framework is presented which re-directs our understanding of regulation as a focus for examining the relations between the market, the state and civil society. The framework is operationalized through an examination of the redefinition and redistribution of real property rights. Changes to property rights provide a means of establishing altered priorities. These priorities are reflected in the nature and outcomes of the rural land development process which, it is argued, continues to afford a particularly powerful 'window' on the nature of rural change. The field enquiries are based upon a detailed, case study approach using an 'actor-in-context' methodology. A case study drawn from Allerdale in Cumbria, England, which examines the debates and outcomes surrounding the Lostrigg open-cast coal site, is used to illustrate the methodology, to indicate the growing political substance of environmental as opposed to employment concerns in the countryside, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of local resistance to established norms of land development.