‘Everybody loves living here’: Beyond the idyll in life within the gentrified countryside

Abstract

Gentrification and well-being have emerged as major research foci, although have rarely been examined in relation to each other. Furthermore, in the few studies exploring gentrification and well-being, there has generally been little theoretical discussion of the latter, despite there being a growing range of conceptualisations of well-being. This chapter seeks to address these omissions, exploring how six different conceptual perspectives on well-being might connect to studies of gentrification in both urban and, more particularly, rural contexts. Economic, social, epidemiological/health, psychological, cultural and more-than-representational perspectives are discussed, with attention drawn to their intersection with gentrification studies making use of concepts of displacement, neighbourhood, psychological and health effects, social networks, therapeutic and scary places, affect and intra-action, as well as indices of well-being. The paper then explores well-being and rural gentrification through a study of three ´string-figures´ drawn from a study of nine English villages. The first of these focuses on the claims of idyllic rural living, with attention being paid to more-than-representational arguments concerning instabilities in feelings of well-being. The second makes connections between changing feelings of well-being associated with conceptions of living within a village and changing participation of networks of neighbourhood sociability. A third explores accounts of the formation, improvement and loss of atmospheres that contribute to senses of well-being.