In much of the existing literature on everyday life the spaces, rhythms and routines of the modern city are overwhelmingly privileged as sites of the everyday. This research relocates the topography of the everyday from its habitually urban focus, out into the English countryside by presenting an account of certain aspects of everyday life from a non-metropolitan perspective. The rural is often portrayed as existing outside of modernity, or as its passive victim. This thesis recasts the rural as an active and complex site of modernity and as such contributes to alternative ways of thinking the rural and a new perspective on the everyday. A central concern is to complicate established distinctions between the city and the country through developing the notion of the non-metropolitan. Also important, is discussion of how the ongoing tension between ancient and modern, and preservation and development, is articulated in non-metropolitan everyday practices. This study theoretically repopulates the rural, thinking it not only as a space to be looked at, moved through or visited, but as a space which is lived in. The first chapters examine everyday practices more often associated with the urban such as driving and littering, and rethinks them through a rural perspective. The later chapters focus on practices that are more traditionally embedded in the non-metropolitan: membership of the Women's Institute and calendar customs such as village fetes, examining how these activities might be re-situated in discourses of modernity. The work is primarily informed by visual cultures including scrapbooks, photographs and films, that articulate how these aspects of the everyday might operate differently in non-metropolitan places. In addition, textual and original archival work contributes significantly to this study.

Through the lens of the everyday, this book explores ’the countryside’ as an inhabited and practised realm with lived rhythms and routines. It relocates the topography of everyday life from its habitually urban focus, out into the English countryside. The rural is often portrayed as existing outside of modernity, or as its passive victim. Here, the rural is recast as an active and complex site of modernity, a shift which contributes alternative ways of thinking the rural and a new perspective on the everyday. In each chapter, pieces of visual culture - including scrapbooks, art works, adverts, photographs and films - are presented as tools of analysis which articulate how aspects of the everyday might operate differently in non-metropolitan places. The book features new readings of the work of significant artists and photographers, such as Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, Stephen Willats, Anna Fox, Andrew Cross, Tony Ray Jones and Homer Sykes, seen through this rural lens, together with analysis of visually fascinating archival materials including early Shell Guides and rarely seen scrapbooks made by the Women’s Institute. Combining everyday life, rural modernity and visual cultures, this book is able to uncover new and different stories about the English countryside and contribute significantly to current thinking on everyday life, rural geographies and visual cultures.

Through the lens of the everyday, this book explores ’the countryside’ as an inhabited and practised realm with lived rhythms and routines. It relocates the topography of everyday life from its habitually urban focus, out into the English countryside. The rural is often portrayed as existing outside of modernity, or as its passive victim. Here, the rural is recast as an active and complex site of modernity, a shift which contributes alternative ways of thinking the rural and a new perspective on the everyday. In each chapter, pieces of visual culture - including scrapbooks, art works, adverts, photographs and films - are presented as tools of analysis which articulate how aspects of the everyday might operate differently in non-metropolitan places. The book features new readings of the work of significant artists and photographers, such as Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, Stephen Willats, Anna Fox, Andrew Cross, Tony Ray Jones and Homer Sykes, seen through this rural lens, together with analysis of visually fascinating archival materials including early Shell Guides and rarely seen scrapbooks made by the Women’s Institute. Combining everyday life, rural modernity and visual cultures, this book is able to uncover new and different stories about the English countryside and contribute significantly to current thinking on everyday life, rural geographies and visual cultures.

Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods brings together visual studies and childhood studies to explore images of childhood in the study of rurality and rural life. The volume highlights how the voices of children themselves remain central to investigations of rural childhoods. Contributions look at representations and experiences of rural childhoods from both the Global North and Global South (including U.S., Canada, Haiti, India, Sweden, Slovenia, South Africa, Russia, Timor-Leste, and Colombia) and consider visuals ranging from picture books to cell phone video to television.

The 2011 revolution put Egypt at the centre of discussions around radical transformations in global photographic cultures. But Egypt and photography share a longer, richer history rarely included in western accounts of the medium. Decolonizing images focuses on the country’s local visual heritage, continuing the urgent process of decolonizing the canon of photography. It presents a new account of the visual cultures produced and exhibited in Egypt by interpreting the camera’s ability to conceal as much as it reveals. The book moves from the initial encounters between local knowledge and western-led modernity to explore how the image intersects with the politics of representation, censorship, activism and aesthetics. It overturns Eurocentric understandings of the photograph through a compelling narrative of contemporary Egypt’s indigenous visual culture.

Socio-political thesis explores the effects of politically induced neo-liberal anxiety on White Australian society. 'White paranoia' is placed in the context of such contemporary events as the Tampa situation, border protection, mandatory detention of asylum seekers, delayed reconciliation with the Aborigines, and Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party. Promotes the notion of a 'caring society' that generates citizens who support and nurture each other. Author teaches Anthropology at the University of Sydney and has also written 'Arab-Australians Today: Citizenship and Belonging' and 'White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society'.

What can Russian images and objects—a tsar’s crown, a provincial watercolor album, the Soviet Pioneer Palace—tell us about the Russian people and their culture? This wide-ranging book is the first to explore the visual culture of Russia over the entire span of Russian history, from ancient Kiev to contemporary, post-Soviet society. Illustrated with more than one hundred diverse and fascinating images, the book examines the ways that Russians have represented themselves visually, understood their visual environment, and used visual images in social and political contexts. Expert contributors discuss images and objects from all over the Russian/Soviet empire, including consumer goods, architectural monuments, religious icons, portraits, news and art photography, popular prints, films, folk art, and more. Each of the concise and accessible essays in the volume offers a fresh interpretation of Russian cultural history. Putting visuality itself in focus as never before, Picturing Russia adds an entirely new dimension to the study of Russian literature, history, art, and culture. The book enriches our understanding of visual documents and shows the variety of ways they serve as far more than mere illustration.