Living in a postcard: community and inequality in the English countryside

我的研究计划是在英国的一个乡村理事会庄园进行的一个项目中研究乡村性、社区和乡村生活。乡村通常被认为是静态的，代表着“古老”或田园诗般的英格兰，然而它当然是不断变化的，尽管往往是无形的。村庄可以促成或构成一个国家想象的身份。研究这些叙事与生活经验将突出这些故事与乡村生活现实之间的差距，开启关于“真实的”和“非真实的”的讨论。我感兴趣的是生活在农村的人们如何居住在这些地方，以及创造自己的。这说明“黑暗人类学”是一个研究紧缩和结构性贫困的透镜。然而，通过关注亲属关系，社区和日常生活，我也希望从事“善的人类学”，并通过社区的意义和它凝聚的过程来关注边缘化，排斥和斗争的主题，并了解人们在一个地方快乐或至少持久的方式。这种对社区的关注的核心将是种族、空间和地点的框架，因为它们与乡村的物质性和概念相交。鉴于这种主题和框架的纠缠，我将采用人类学，这是唯一能够参与不仅与农村生活的斗争，而且也是欢乐，连接，幸福，和笑声蓬勃发展。

My research proposal is to study rurality, community, and village life in a project conducted on a rural council estate inthe UK. The countryside is often conceived of as static and representative of 'old' or idyllic England, however it is ofcourse constantly changing, though often invisibly. Villages can contribute to, or constitute, a national imaginary andidentity. Studying these narratives alongside lived experience will highlight the gaps between these imaginaries and therealities of village life, opening discussions of the 'real' and the unreal. I am interested in how people living in rural placesinhabit these imaginaries, as well as creating their own. This speaks to 'dark anthropology' as a lens through which tostudy austerity and structural poverty. However, through focus on kinship, community, and everyday life, I also wish toengage in the 'anthropology of the good' and attend to the themes of marginalisation, exclusion, and struggle through thelens of community and the processes through which it coheres, and understand the ways in which people are happy, orat least enduring, in a place. Central to this focus on community will be framings of race, space, and place, as theyintersect with the materiality and conceptions of rurality. Given this entanglement of themes and framings, I will employan anthropology that is uniquely able to engage not only with the struggles of rural life, but also the joys, connections,happinesses, and laughs that thrive too.