Class, Culture and the Agrarian MythUsing examples from different historical contexts, this book examines the relationship between class, nationalism, modernity and the agrarian myth. Essentializing rural identity, traditional culture and quotidian resistance, both aristocratic/plebeian and pastoral/Darwinian forms of agrarian myth discourse inform struggles waged 'from above' and 'from below', surfacing in peasant movements, film and travel writing. Film depictions of royalty, landowner and colonizer as disempowered, ‘ordinary’ or well-disposed towards ‘those below’, whose interests they share, underwrite populism and nationalism. Although these ideologies replaced the cosmopolitanism of the Grand Tour, twentieth century travel literature continued to reflect a fear of vanishing rural ‘otherness’ abroad, combined with the arrival there of the mass tourist, the plebeian from home. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Culture Tradition and Modernity | 21 |
Screen Images of Rural Struggle | 159 |
Culture Class Struggle and Travel | 245 |
Conclusion | 386 |
| 395 | |
| 429 | |
| 441 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abroad Africa agrarian myth agricultural American and/or Apocalypse Now Redux argued aristocratic bourgeois bourgeoisie British capitalism capitalist Chiapas civil society class struggle class traveller colonialism conjuncture conservatism conservative context contrast democracy depicted deployed disempowered economic England English ethnic European existing ezln farmer film foreign Grand Tour Guiton Hartley Hence Herder Herzen hierarchy ideological Indiana Jones indigenismo indigenous kind Kneale labour land landlord landowning class latter Leigh Fermor linked M.R. James Marxist mass tourism mob-in-the-streets mobilization modernity monarchy Morand Naipaul national identity nationalist natural neoliberal object observation original emphasis pastoral peasant peasantry plebeian political right popular culture populism populist populist discourse populist postmodernism postmodern revolutionary role ruling class rural grassroots smallholders social socialist socio-economic structure subaltern tenant theory Thesiger tion tourist traditional travel literature travel writing Trimingham upper class urban variant Venetian Venice village Waugh workers Zapatistas