Seeking Authenticity In Place Culture And The Self

In recent times, there has been a substantial push by people to escape the metropolis for lifestyles in small coastal, country, or mountainside locales. Called amenity-led migration, this movement is cultural with places of relatively quiet and peace standing against the city with its stressful, risky, and polluted environment.

This book explores the narratives emerging from this extraordinary phenomenon using methods developed within the strong cultural sociology. Using narrative theory combined with broader sociological concepts, the book illustrates effectively how the city has declined in value against a countryside left behind in modern progress.

Review: This fine book significantly contributes to our understanding of modern social and emotional life. Written from a neo-Durkheimian perspective, it persuasively demonstrates that the contemporary search for a bucolic Eden derives from a pervasive desire for authenticity and self-realization. The unintended consequence is that the 'last real places' tend to evolve into overcrowded playgrounds for the rich.

This irony, and much else, is fully explored in a text that is both sophisticated and elegiac. - Charles Lindholm, University Professor of Anthropology, Boston University In this pioneering book, Osbaldiston sheds light on the cultural phenomenon of seachange, the migration of urbanites in search of meaning.

Through the lens of cultural sociology, he presents a compelling and theoretically rigorous argument for how the construction of authentic places by planners, promoters, and seachangers is thoroughly and inextricably entangled with a sense of the authentic self. The result is unmatched, with Osbaldiston narrating a nuanced and thoroughly engaging account of the impact of seachange on places and on individuals. - Michaela Benson, author of The British in Rural France