Class, culture and the agrarian myth / / by Tom Brass.

• Superior document: Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Volume 64
• VerfasserIn: Brass, Tom, 1946-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands : : Brill,, 2014.; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in critical social sciences ; Volume 64.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (459 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Using 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.

Table of Contents

Part 1. Culture, tradition and modernity -- Part 2. Screen images of rural struggle -- Part 3. Culture, class struggle and travel.