Rural Governance in the UK

Adrienne Attorp is a Senior Social Researcher at Scottish Government and an Associate Researcher at the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise at Newcastle University, UK.Sean Heron is a PhD candidate in politics at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Ruth McAreavey is a Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University, UK.

• 1. Rural Governance in the UK: Towards a Sustainable and Equitable Society 2. What is the rural? 3. Rural Governance of the United Kingdom in and out of the European Union 4. Co-designing post-Brexit agri-environmental policy - focusing on environmental land management in England 5. Governing the UK agri-food system post-Brexit 6. Resistance to Mining and Pathways to a Sustainable Rural Environment: Rewriting the Maps 7. Governing like a forest: achieving diachronic integrity or emergency carbon sequestration through post-Brexit forest policy? 8. Sustainable rural development and rural energy communities in a post-Brexit UK: Paralysis or broader visions in uncertain times? 9. The impact of Brexit on the digitisation of rural areas in the UK 10. Sustainable rural communities and patriarchal structures: the case of Shetland’s Lerwick Up-Helly-Aa 11. Brexit and rural social entrepreneurship in the UK 12. Ongoing Challenges: for a Resurgent Rural in Post-Brexit, Post-Covid Times

"With its key emphases on rural governance, land use and rural communities, in the backdrop of sustainability, this edited volume provides valuable insights on ’the rural'. It undertakes an original examination of the issues and synergies around agri-food systems, energy production, forestry, mineral extraction, patriarchal structures and the growing topic around the impact of digitisation on rurality. The collection’s wide, holistic approach draws together perspectives from different disciplines reflecting the multifaceted and synergistic nature of the rural." Dr Ludivine Petetin and Dr Mary Dobbs, Authors of Brexit and Agriculture (Routledge 2022). Respectively, Senior Lecturer in Law, Cardiff University and Lecturer in Law, Maynooth University"This timely volume brings together a rich understanding of the rural which will inform discussions about the UK post-Brexit much more widely: too long has the rural been ‘left behind’ in analysing where the UK is going, or, when considered, only through the prism of farming and agricultural land-use. Here instead, the authors offer a multifaceted analysis of the rural and the challenges we face in making the rural, across the four UK nations, more sustainable." Dr Viviane Gravey, Queen’s University Belfast, co-chair of Brexit and Environment "What would it take to work towards sustainable and equitable rural governance in a post Brexit world? This timely book addresses this vital question, of relevance not only for the United Kingdom but for all of us working on questions of sustainability and justice in the present – in a time of great uncertainty, of climate change, the pandemic and of a full-scale war in our midst." Seema Arora-Jonsson, Professor, Rural Development in Sweden and Europe, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.