Welsh Journals

SOCIAL CHANGE IN URBAN HINTERLANDS: DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIAL SETTLEMENT STRUCTURES IN RURAL NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. KENNETH B. SHERWOOD Sherwood, K.B. 1986: Social Change in Urban Hinterlands: Demographic and Social Settlement Structures in Rural Northamptonshire. Cambria 13(1) pp. 41 to pp. 61. Part III of Davies, W.K.D. (ed) Human Geography from Wales: Proceedings of the E.G.Bowen Memorial Conference. ISSN 0306-9796. The utility of spatial variables in accounting for variations in the social character of rural settlements is often underestimated by a strictly social approach. A study of household turnover rates in rural settlements within an area on the fringe of metropolitan London shows high levels of migration and a sequence of turnover zones around the main urban nodes. The settlements in these zones have quite different housing and household characteristics. Families in these areas are shown to have different attitudes to future migration possibilities. Kenneth B. Sherwood, Dept. of Geography, Nene College ofHigher Education, Northampton, England. The study of rural communities in Britain by social geographers has passed through three major phases of interest since World War II (Lewis 1983): studies of the rural way of life prior to the 1950's, a phase that was illuminated by the pioneering work of social anthropologists and geographers trained in the University of Wales; studies of the crisis of rural depopulation in the 1950's; and finally those dealing with the contemporary population turnaround in rural areas, a phase that coincided with the slow growth of many metropolitan areas, one that is often called counter-urbanization. During the last two of these phases rural settlements have been subject to rapid social change, one usually conceptualized as the processes "by which individuals or societies change from a traditional way of life to a more complex technological advanced and rápidly changing lifestyle" (Rogers 1979 p. 14). In most cases social change in the countryside has been conceived as urban in origin, and as involving three distinct, yet interrelated, processes: first, changes in the system of values, attitudes and beliefs; second, changes in patterns of behaviour and social relationships; and third, changes in the demographic and social composition of the population. There has been general agreement amongst sociologists and geographers of the key role played by the third of these processes, the structural composition of the rural