Picturing Gentrification: Co-Producing Affective Landscapes in an Agrarian Locale

Abstract

In this paper, a photo elicitation methodology applied in “Strathben Parish,” Scotland is utilized to assess how gentrified landscapes are produced on rural smallholdings. Analysis revealed a complex, embodied landscape which is produced on an ongoing basis with a range of human and “more-than human actants,” such as wildlife, trees and landforms. Amenity migrants to Strathben Parish have actively developed their holdings to facilitate desirable sensory experiences, which embed their personal histories and future imaginaries in the physical features of their holdings. Study participants thus interact with, privilege and displace a range of actants, producing both active and passive sites of resistance to industrialization. Their narratives emphasized the protection and production of biodiversity on their land but rationalized highly consumptive lifestyles. Findings demonstrate the utility of photo elicitation for understanding how landscape changes are co-produced on amenity holdings, and the privileges and exclusionary processes associated with land ownership.

Keywords:

• Amenity migration
• displacement
• environmental gentrification
• photo-elicitation
• rural gentrification
• taskscape

Introduction

Studies across North America, Europe and Australia have identified the increasing area of agricultural land which is being managed for amenity purposes (e.g., Abrams et al. 2012; Sutherland, Barlagne, and Barnes 2019; Argent et al. 2014). Amenity migrants to the countryside seek attractive locales in which to pursue a range of activities and experiences, including the protection of wildlife and biodiversity (Gosnell and Abrams 2011), playing important roles in local ecologies (Cooke and Lane 2015a,b; Abrams et al. 2012; Iles et al. 2021). In this paper I assess the co-production of landscapes on small-holdings through amenity migration, focusing particularly on how these processes enact particular forms of privilege, and enroll a range of “more-than-human actants” (such as wildlife, trees and landforms).

The research brings together the environmental gentrification, rural gentrification and amenity migration literatures. Davidson and Lees (2005), in their commonly referenced definition of gentrification, described four intersecting processes: reinvestment of capital, social up-grading, landscape change, and displacement of low-income residents. Initial studies of gentrification particularly emphasized how neighborhoods with degraded housing were refurbished by newcomers or property developers, leading to visible changes to the neighborhood or “landscape” and displacement of existing residents (Glass 1964). Gentrification concepts make direct linkages between physical changes to landscapes, residential mobility and the expression of socioeconomic power.

Over the past decade, a subset of the gentrification literature specifically focusing on “environmental” or “green” gentrification has emerged (Pearsall 2018). Environmental gentrification can be defined as a process in which:

environmental improvements result in the displacement of working-class residents as clean-up and reuse of undesirable land uses make a neighbourhood more attractive and drive-up real estate prices. (Curran and Hamilton 2012, 1027).

Environmental gentrification studies critique how environmental improvements – often undertaken under a rubric of increasing sustainability—can pose social justice issues, through marginalization and displacement of existing residents (e.g. Anguelovski et al. 2018; Maantay and Moroko 2018). Perverse consequences arise, for example where local residents resist environmental improvements in order to avert gentrification processes (e.g., Curran and Hamilton 2012; Pearsall and Anguelovski 2016). Particularly important for this paper, the environmental gentrification literature has taken some steps toward highlighting the agency of more-than-human actants within landscapes; these actants resist certain uses or lend themselves easily to others (Kern, 2015). For example, wildlife, such as nesting birds, shape both the function of a locale and how that function is imagined (Sandberg 2014).

Abrams, Bliss, and Gosnell (2013) and Sutherland (2012) have argued for situating land management change within the rural gentrification literature. Early studies of rural gentrification identified the specific attractions of rural areas, particularly the proximity to greenspace and associated pursuits (e.g., hiking, horse riding), as well as to “open space,” scenic views and idealized notions of rural community life (Phillips 1993). Amenity migration research similarly addresses the movement of people based on the draw of natural and/or cultural amenities (Gosnell and Abrams 2011, 303). The primary distinction between the amenity migration and rural gentrification literatures is the emphasis within gentrification studies on social justice issues and broader power structures (Abrams et al. 2012). The rural gentrification literature also addresses drivers beyond amenity for migration to rural areas, including proximity to family, employment opportunities, and cheap(er) housing (Solana-Solana 2010; Stockdale 2010).

The amenity migration literature focuses on the actions of amenity migrants (Lekies et al. 2015). A number of recent studies have demonstrated the changes that amenity migrants have made to their land holdings, particularly in the American West (e.g., Abrams, Bliss, and Gosnell 2013; Abrams and Gosnell 2012). These changes are often oriented toward protecting the natural environment. Abrams and Bliss (2013) in particular, drew attention to the efforts of new ranchers to develop “working landscapes,” that is, landscapes of both production (of agricultural commodities and forests) and increased environmental protection. Through their “actions in place,” amenity migrants develop “place attachment”—the emotional and affective component of people’s relationships with places (Trentelman 2009). Actions in place also influence “place meaning”—the particular meanings associated with a specific place (e.g., its purpose and personal association, such as with wildlife). Both place attachment and place meaning can influence environmental concerns (Brehm, Eisenhauer and Stedman 2013). The process of amenity migration can thus be expected to shape the meanings, attachments and environmental concerns of new residents, as well as local ecologies.

These literatures provide a foundation for assessing the social and environmental justice issues associated with amenity migration onto (formerly agricultural) smallholdings. I progress the literature by focusing on the role of affect and more-than-human agencies in landscape change processes, developing a conceptualization of “affective landscapes.” Studies of affect emphasize relations between bodies, going beyond emotions to include automatic, relational and physiological responses (Thrift 2008, 236). Affect has been studied in physical spaces (e.g., the shared sensations inherent in experiences at stadiums or theme parks), with an emphasis on understanding how particular affective responses are intentionally elicited (Edensor 2012). Amenity migrants seek to achieve desirable experiences, balancing practical realities of housing prices and cost of living with how they want to “feel” when they live there (Halfacree and Rivera 2012; Kern 2015). I will demonstrate how amenity migrants co-produce “affective landscapes” (i.e., landscapes with high affective potential) with a range of human and more-than-human actants.

To structure the paper, I first delve deeper into the conceptual underpinnings of “affective landscapes.” I then position the research method—photo elicitation—within this conceptual framework. This is followed by an analysis of landscape change processes in an empirical case study in “Strathben Parish,” a locale in north-east Scotland.

Conceptualizing Affective Landscapes

Olwig (2002) demonstrated the complex history of the term “landscape,” pointing out that there is no agreement among even amongst scientists about whether “landscape” refers to landforms or the visual image of a particular area. Within gentrification studies, it is housing, rather than landforms, which are typically termed “landscape,” although the rural and environmental gentrification literatures have begun to broaden the term to its more conventional usage. The extent to which landscape is understood as having agency (i.e., the ability to resist or facilitate particular change processes), is highly variable within the gentrification literature (Phillips 2018).

My conceptualization of landscape in this paper draws on work by Tim Ingold (2000, 2011, 2017), who conceptualized landscape as a taskscape. For Ingold, tasks are the practical operations carried out by a skilled agent as a normal part of life, the “constitutive acts of dwelling” (Ingold 2000, p.195). For amenity migrants, these acts range from sitting in the garden, to interacting with wildlife, and constructing or refurbishing buildings. However, activities are not solely or even primarily human: animals, insects, and weather all have an impact on plants, buildings, walls etc, each acting within their own “spaces of possibility” (Ingold 2011). Landscape is understood as a “doing,” an ongoing performance involving human and more-than human actants, gaining meaning through the practices for which it is used (Ingold 2017). A key tenet of Ingold’s approach is that human perceptions of the environment are indivisible from human experiences of that environment; the processes of inhabiting a landscape produces unanticipated ecological assemblages (Cooke and Lane 2015b). That is, collections of human and more-than-human elements together form a landscape which is never static—it is constantly being reshaped by acts of dwelling (McKee 2016, 12). This understanding of landscape as an evolving taskscape is the definition of landscape utilized in this paper.

Olwig (2008) built on Ingold’s conceptualization to consider how these “doings” of landscape intersect with how landscapes are sensed (e.g., touched, smelled and heard). He argued that the feeling of belonging or attachment to particular pieces of land result from moving through it and performing tasks; humans are changed and being changed by the experience. Landscape is thus conceptualized as performative and inherently affective, leading to senses of place attachment and meaning that shape how the occupants understand what it is and should be used for. Singh (2013) similarly argued that human ways of relating to the biophysical environment emerge in affective relations; that is, tasks such as working the land involve “affective labor”—engaging the senses, as well as intellect and emotion, shaping how workers think about and engage with the land on an ongoing basis. Carolan (2008), in specific reference to agricultural land, argued that landscapes are known in the body—reflecting the kinesthetic and somatic sensations of being in the land. How a farmer knows a piece of land is very different from how a hiker knows the same land. Halfacree and Rivera (2012) also argued for recognizing the sensory nature of rural migration, describing the “sense of slowing down” amongst others, which characterizes the experience of staying in the countryside following relocation. They argued that migrants become “reattuned” to the rhythms of nature and connectedness to nature as they enact change and are themselves changed by their new locales.

This lived experience shapes what Lorimer (2015) termed the “affective logic”—in his case of wildlife management—which results from habitual practices of engaging with, knowing about, and feeling. Priorities for conservation and land management are based on these affective logics, which themselves arise from lived experiences and personalized understandings. In this paper, I will demonstrate that study participants actively sought to produce affective responses through the management of their landholdings, actions which they described as “environmental,” but privilege a particular form of environmentalism which they then reinforce through their actions. Daily experiences of undertaking tasks inform these affective logics and lead to new ways of knowing.

Methodology: Photo Elicitation

Ingold (2011) argued that landscapes are emergent in the stories that people tell about them; how we elicit those stories becomes of critical importance to understanding landscape change. The use of photos and visualization tools in research has a lengthy history (Boucher 2018), and have become increasingly common in landscape research in recent years (e.g., Dunkel 2015; Stotten 2016; Schattman, Hurley, and Caswell 2019; Mellegård and Boonstra 2020; Li and Seymour 2019) but are still relatively uncommon within gentrification studies. Empirical gentrification research remains reliant on tradition methods (e.g., surveys, interviews). Recent textbooks on gentrification (e.g., Lees and Phillips, 2018; Lees, Shin, and López-Morales, 2015) are notably missing focused critiques of research methods. I will demonstrate that photo elicitation is particularly helpful for producing rich, in-depth interview transcripts which illuminate the performances of gentrification.

The particular value of photo-based research is the potential to elicit extended personal narratives of experiences (Clark-Ibáñez 2004), arguably evoking deeper elements of human consciousness than words alone (Harper 2002, 13). Beckeley et al. (2007, 926) found that engaging study participants in taking photos added an increased level of nuance to resultant interviews. Photo elicitation also builds an easier rapport between interviewer and interviewee (Richard and Lahman 2015), offering participants considerable autonomy in deciding what to portray, and thus substantive influence on interview content (Oliffe and Bottorff 2007; Beckeley et al. 2007). Photo elicitation is thus particularly suited to the elicitation of descriptions of affective responses, although in this particular case, descriptions emphasized emotions, and occasionally sensations (e.g., sounds, smells) but stopped short of descriptions of pre-cognitive (e.g., sense of fear) or physiological responses (e.g., increased heart rate). Affect as described empirically in this paper thus emphasizes emotional responses, while recognizing that the concept is broader.

The photo elicitation study was conducted as part of a larger research project in “Strathben Parish” (Scotland), which aimed to engage every landholder with more than two hectares of land. Initial interviews and mapping were followed by second interviews based on photo elicitation (Sutherland 2020). Although about three quarters of the 56 study participants agreed to participate in the photo elicitation study, only 19 submitted photographs and participated in the second interview. Loss of study participants is a known weakness of photo elicitation and other intensive research processes. Nevertheless, as the initial sample included about two thirds of the amenity migrants in the locale (determined by comparison to land holding data, see Sutherland 2019), it can be determined that the subsample who participated in the photo elicitation component represent a good cross section of the study participants as a whole (gender, holding size, date of migration), although the most recent migrants to the locale—three migrants from the 2010s—did not participate in this second stage. This likely reflects the time available to participate, as these later respondents were busy with young families. Respondents can broadly be grouped as: four “pioneers” who migrated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, an “oil boomer” who migrated in the late 1970s, a cluster of seven people who migrated to small holdings in the late 1980s/early 1990s, two migrants who arrived later that decade, and a further migrant in the 2000s. Analysis thus contributes to the limited literature on the actions of migrants post-migration (see Halfacree and Rivera 2012).

The approach adopted in this present study was “autodriven” photo elicitation (Clark 1999), whereby participants were asked to take photos. The approach has similarities to photo voice methods, where participants are also asked to take photos and reflect on them (Wang 1999). The aim of photovoice is to empower by “giving voice” to the study participants (see www.photovoice.org), and typically focuses on marginalized groups. In this present study, the participants were a privileged group; participants shaped the narrative through the photos they chose to take, and the resultant content of the interview, but the researcher directed the interview and derived the findings of the research. The aims of the photo elicitation process utilized here were to increase the depth of narrative in the resultant transcripts, rather than to empower study participants.

The method followed the photo elicitation approach described by Torre and Murphy (2015), whereby the researcher identifies the research question and participants, the participants take photos, and the researcher directs the interview and subsequent data analysis. Study participants were invited to take photos of three specific topics:

1. important changes you've made to your property (e.g., house, buildings)

2. important changes you've made to how you manage your land (including livestock, horses)

3. things you like best about living where you live

Each image provided by the study participants was printed and brought to the second interview for discussion. Participants took between 15 and 36 images, focusing primarily on the first two questions. These two questions yielded images of active changes to their holdings—tasks they have undertaken. The final question specifically elicited affective responses—descriptions of what they most enjoy. The use of the term “important” also suggests prioritization associated with selecting which spaces to photograph. Interviews were transcribed in full and entered into NVIVO qualitative data analysis software. The photos were not analyzed, although this an option for future research (for an example see Beckley et al. 2007)

Initial coding was thematic, reflecting the questions posed to study participants (see Sutherland 2019, 2020). Coding for this present paper reflected the initial framework grounded in gentrification concepts, particularly emphasizing landscape change and the affective responses and performances of participants included in this paper. From this initial framework, codes reflecting emergent findings were added. Coding categories thus comprised:

• gentrification concepts: (ongoing) investment, class, displacement by dispossession, labor

• landscape change and agency: active green or natural, trees, wildlife, water, horses and other animals, vegetable gardens and foraging, government grants, farming changes, future plans, agency of the landscape

• affective landscapes: family stories, standards or esthetics, lifecourse, a “good day,” a “bad day,”¹ fun

• emergent findings: layered landscapes, becomings, environmentalism, conflict, land as resource, latent productive capacity, layered landscapes, resistance to industrialization, health, landscape and walking, view.

• photo comments (e.g., on why they took particular photos, what was missing)

This paper focuses on the findings from interviews with the 15 photo elicitation study participants identified as “amenity migrants,” a classification made on the basis of their stated purposes for migration to the locale (following Gosnell and Abrams 2011). Four commercial farmers also participated in the photo elicitation study, but with very distinctive results. They similarly photographed the larger landscape (e.g., views of Strathben mountain) as “things you like best about living where you live,” but photographed and reported planting few—if any—trees. Farmers’ active efforts toward biodiversity preservation were primarily limited to participation in state-subsidised agri-environmental measures. Photos instead featured images of livestock handling equipment and farm machinery. For more detailed findings from the larger study, see Sutherland (2020, 2019, 2021a, 2021b) and Sutherland and Huttunen (2018).

The photographs reveal a particular task or set of tasks involved in the story that was told during the interview. The material nature of the photograph focuses participant attention on what can be seen within the space of the image. The set of photographs thus atomized participant actions in a way which might not occur if, for example, a video or map was produced. The content of the photo also brought to mind and yielded discussion of different aspects than were originally intended—participants frequently could not recall why they had taken a particular photo, or described what was missing from it—but tethers the interview content largely to that set of representations. The act of taking a photo is thus a performance which elicits representations of the tasks and affective relations of landscape change.

Case Study: Strathben Parish

“Strathben Parish” is located in northeast Scotland, commuting distance from a city of about 250,000 people. Its history is industrial—farming and granite quarrying. Traditionally, Scottish estate owners (lairds) allocated small pieces of land to workers on their estates in lieu of wages, to enable their workers to self-provision. In this region, a local granite quarry adopted a similar approach in the late 19th century. The legacy is a landscape where the “good” (most fertile and accessible) agricultural land has been amalgamated into large farms (held by 12 farmers), and poorer quality or less conveniently managed land (e.g., beside rivers and forests) is organized in over 50 smaller-scale properties, which were once held by the workers on the quarry and estate. These holdings, typically of 2 to 10 hectares in size, are considerably smaller than the “ranches” addressed by Abrams and colleagues (Abrams and Bliss 2013; Abrams and Gosnell 2012) in the American West, but more similar in size to Cooke and Lane’s (2015a,b) amenity migrant properties in Australia.

The locale is visually attractive, located near a popular mountain hiking site (“Strath” is a broad mountain valley, and a “Ben” is a mountain in Scottish Gaelic). Pseudonyms for the locale and study participants have been adopted across the series of papers based on this study, in order to protect the anonymity of study participants. Maps of the holding boundaries within the locale—undertaken as part of the research—can be found in Sutherland (2020).

The arrival of the oil industry into the neighboring city led to exurban migration to Strathben in the early 1970s, primarily of white-collar professionals seeking a “good place to raise children.” Early migrants to the area described the inexpensive prices of local land; later migrants (in the 1990s and 2000s) described higher prices which restricted their options. Several amenity migrants in the study expressed their belief that when they came to sell their properties, they would be purchased by others like themselves: families with professional incomes. Rather than direct displacement through increased rents, taxes and property values, gentrification progressed slowly as existing residents aged out of small holding and were replaced by wealthier incomers. The project covered a transition processes which occurred over 40 years (late 1970s to the mid 2010s): gentrification processes tend to progress more slowly when agricultural properties are involved, because these holdings tend to change hands (at most) once in a generation (Sutherland 2012).

Producing Affective Landscapes

The amenity migrants to Strathben interviewed were uniformly heterosexual couples, who acquired properties by purchase. They typically relocated as young couples in their late 20 s or early 30 s, although a few moved to the countryside in semi-retirement. The initial interviews included a question on why they chose to move to this area. Practical considerations included proximity to employment, the size (or potential to develop) the house and the opportunity to keep horses, consistent with other studies of rural gentrification processes (e.g., Solana-Solana 2010; Phillips 1993). Several respondents described their first encounter with their prospective properties as highly affective. Respondent “Katherine” likened it to falling in love:

And I just fell in love with that wonderful view of Strathben Mountain, it reminded me of when I was a kid and climbing lots of mountains.

The new landscapes were identified as having strong emotional resonance, and were reimagined in relation to the history of the new occupants, offering opportunities to relive childhood experiences. The environment sought by some of these amenity migrants was an idealized version of what they themselves had experienced earlier in their lives, undertaken in a locale which was proximal to their urban employment.

The photo elicitation interviews yielded richer descriptions of the anticipated “doings” of their new homes than the initial interviews:

Joseph: We’ve got all the (bird) feeders out there right outside the kitchen and stuff, which was part of the sort of motivation for wanting to live in the country. Joanna [his wife] and I are both from sort of rural or semi-rural backgrounds, you know just quite like sort of wildlife and all the rest of it and we were quite keen to bring the kids up in that sort of environment where they’d see all this sort of thing, encourage them into the garden.

Like Katherine, Joseph described the purchase of his property in relation to his and his wife’s identities and backgrounds. A specific affordance of their new home was the opportunity for his children to spend time out of doors in a location where wildlife and “all the rest of it” associated with life in the country were immediately accessible.

In photos of the “things you like best about living where you live,” the view of the local mountain range was prominent. Whereas enjoyment of the view was key to the decision to move to Strathben, once located there, study participants came to “know” it in a different way:

Katherine: Oh the view of Strathben Mountain must be the most important thing yeah and the sky, watching the, oh yes and being able to predict if it’s going to rain or not by looking at Strathben Mountain! [Laughter] And if you’re going to hang out any washing, or walk the dog, or clean the car…

Katherine had learned to predict weather changes through observation of Strathben Mountain and referenced the influence that weather patterns had on the potential activities for her day. Consistent with Carolan (2008), how Katherine “saw” the local mountain when she first purchased her home—as an attractive visual feature—was much different from how she experienced it—as a predictor of weather—after living there for some time.

Enabling Affective Experiences

Study participants clearly aimed to enhance their affective experiences through a range of tasks which became embodied in their landscapes. Unlike local farmers, who largely resisted afforestation, amenity migrants to Strathben Parish almost ubiquitously planted trees. Some of these plantings were functional, to provide shelter and screening from neighbors (see Sutherland and Huttunen 2018). However, most trees were planted to promote biodiversity and to create a “nice environment”—a varied background of color that differed from the ubiquitous Scotch pine, planted in neat rows by the Forestry Commission in local forests. In some cases, planting trees also enabled amenity migrants to (attempt to) recreate affective environments from their past:

Elizabeth: Coming up from England, … I think we did miss broad-leafed; you know large broad-leafed trees you know deciduous trees. So I think there was some element of that, of sort of…yeah finding again what he’d [her husband] had in the past you know? … I think we wanted something a bit softer too you know? We came from a softer world in the south!

Elizabeth described this past experience as “soft”—a warmer climate and associated vegetation which they sought to recreate. The newly trees planted were intentionally diverse, and largely for visual appeal, but also integrated symbolic representation of the past—the re-creation of idealized imaginary of affective childhood experiences, made materially evident in the foliage and conformation of the trees planted. Cooke and Lane (2015a) similarly found that amenity migrants planted the same types of trees they had in their previous residences.

Trees also symbolized longevity and permanence:

Matt: We’ll never see them grow really to the full height but there’s something very solid and permanent about oak so yeah we’ve planted a few oaks…. A tree keeps growing for years and years and years and its just, yeah it’s almost the permanence of them I think that I like and what they bring to everything around them yeah.

Planting trees was a long-term investment by amenity migrants, which some saw come to fruition through decades of residency, a visible representation, which “signifies the length of time we’ve been here” (Hannah). Matt’s description of permanence suggests a feeling of security and longevity. Cooke and Lane (2015b) pointed out that amenity migrants are part of an unfolding story—flora in particular pre-date their interactions and will continue after they depart.

Through their actions, study participants also sought to actively include or exclude human actants from the affective potential of their properties. Hannah developed a pathway through her forest into a labyrinth, embedding intentional place meanings: she posted Bible passages and identified sites for meditation, specifically enabling affective experiences of her woodland for Christians at Easter:

… encouraging people just to use all their senses of smell, of sight, of touch, feel, whatever… this is a very old silver birch tree at the far end of the wood and I had a meditation on old age by that because silver birch usually live for about 60, 50, probably don’t go over 50 years. A lot sort of crumble in about 40 years or whatever, and this tree is very old, very large, maybe approaching 100 years … [I] thought it was interesting for people to sit and speculate and meditate on old age. And then somebody who actually came on the labyrinth afterwards wrote a poem about it … so I shall have that poem up there [next year], quite a simple poem about the fact that you see things growing but you don’t see the roots that are going out underneath and the way in which, God interacts with us in that way.

Hannah specifically sought to enable her guests to experience the multiple sensations of a woodland walk, heightened through written meditations, in order to facilitate deep spiritual reflection. The agency of one tree—in thriving past all expectations—became a symbol for human aging. Over the years, her event evolved with the participation of different actors.

Hannah’s example also demonstrated the control that landowners have over how their affective landscapes are accessed and by whom. Hannah invited specific others—from her church—into her forest on an annual basis. However, other forest owners in the study installed fences in an effort to limit ramblers from walking through, thus restricting their affective landscapes to personal household use. Several study participants expressed their anger at another amenity migrant who had erected high fences around her holding, ending their access to established walking and riding trails. Under Scotland’s right to roam legislation, the general public are legally allowed to range through rural spaces with few restrictions, but obstacles placed by landholders are rarely formally challenged. These competing beliefs and practices relating to land access are similar to those raised between amenity migrants and long-term residents in literature on the negotiation of property access in other locales (e.g., the American West, Yung and Belsky 2007), and in the broader landscape justice literature (e.g., Egoz and De Nardi 2017).

Enabling More-Than-Human Actants

Trees were also linked to the production or facilitation of biodiversity: Matt (who described the permanence of trees) continued on to describe “what they bring to everything around them” as: “leaves, fruit, shelter, birds, animals, everything can live off that: when you have trees you get wildlife.” Study respondents actively created wildlife habitats. Joanna described the butterfly meadows which she and Joseph planted:

my husband as a child had reared butterflies and been always very keen on them and we did the same with the kids, we sent off for butterfly eggs and we did the whole lifecycle for a few years with the children. We made a butterfly net cage and a branch in some water and we put the eggs in there and we got the correct plants, the nettles, or whatever and we grew these butterflies and released them every year. …they just loved it! A lot of our friends loved it as well, they used to come and look at these butterflies! …It was just after The Big Hungry Caterpillar came out and so, it was their favourite book so we thought we’ll get some butterfly eggs [and] … we’d plant these two meadows in the hope that we would improve our native butterflies and whatever.

Joanna described the coming together of multiple elements within the spaces of possibility of their smallholding—her husband’s childhood memories, the portability of butterfly eggs and the butterfly lifecycle, her ability to source butterfly eggs, the growth of the “correct plants,” interest of their friends, popular culture and the narrative of nature conservation. What once was a lawn became a butterfly habitat, achieved through a progressive series of tasks which made up the history of the landscape in Image 1. The photo thus represented a set of meanings that she associated with a particular space on her property. Critically, her description was in past tense—these were activities she undertook when her children were young. Although the butterfly-friendly plants survived, Joanna had ceased active propagation. The affective logic of butterfly propagation was grounded in what it brought to her children’s lives.

Image 1. Layered landscape: butterfly area, croquet lawn, hedge and native species trees.

Land was thus understood, with varying degrees of consciousness, as a resource with which amenity migrants could achieve desirable affective encounters, transforming their landscapes to meet consumptive desires. These were not necessarily beneficial to the environment, in the short or long term. For example, although some of study respondents like Joanna reported seeking information the “right” species to plant for biodiversity, others simply went to the garden center and selected a variety of species with visual appeal.

The affective opportunities of landownership also included domesticated interactions; Phillips (2014) similarly noted that migration to his rural study site and subsequent modifications to gardens and were undertaken with animals in mind. “Pet” livestock in some cases were described as having personalities, with whom personal relationships were developed. For example, Hannah described her hens as “nice people to have around,” blurring the distinction between hens as livestock and hens as companion animals. Acquiring land in order to keep horses was a specific objective for many of the amenity migrants. Study participants described the affective relations of horse keeping, using terms such as “trust,” “respect” and “friendship,” and expressing pleasure in the sound and smells of horses (see Sutherland 2021a). Horse-keepers invested considerable labor and money in ensuring these relationships developed, installing stables, sanded riding arenas and fencing pasture fields and investing hours of time in grooming, feeding, and cleaning, substantially modifying the landscape to support these affective relationships.

Study participants also reported unplanned encounters, made possible by the scale of their land holdings. Examples included chance encounters with hedgehogs—which were found eating their catfood—and befriending an injured fox. Unanticipated encounters then became stories which they told through photos of where these events had occurred. The outcome of amenity migrants’ activities were intentional, layered landscapes. Intersecting functions and their associated landscape conditions were actively cultivated and negotiated as holders learned their landscapes, yielding layered spaces for play, garden and wilderness.

Negotiating the Contradictions of Amenity Migrant “Environmentalism”

Study participants were clearly conscious of the agency of the more-than-human actants they worked with. Amenity migrants’ tasks were often contested by more-than-human actants, as wildlife and vegetation followed their own “spaces of possibility.” Foxes killed hens. Young trees were destroyed by deer or rabbits. Herons ate the fish in decorative ponds:

Elva: Yes! I had some very nice little fish who when your feet went down those steps they could feel the vibrations and they all came haring over. And they lined up for their breakfast, they were so sweet and the herons ate them all! I was well cheesed off!

Amenity migrants “learned with their bodies” (Carolan 2008) what would and would not thrive, developing a sense of satisfaction in the skilled introduction of species. They learned to protect their fish (by netting ponds). Hannah located her bird feeders in her woods, where she needed to walk some distance to observe them, in order to protect them from her cat. High fencing was erected around vegetable plots to protect them from deer (Image 2). This conflict with wildlife was thus clearly stamped onto the landscape, evident even when the wildlife was not.

Image 2. Vegetable garden protected from wildlife incursion.

Sometimes more drastic steps were taken. Joseph—whose family installed the butterfly area (Image 1)—described how:

In theory the garden is supposed to be a wildlife friendly garden and bushes would come up with berries, and there’s a mixed hedge out the back and stuff. But the ironic thing is the first bit of wildlife to show its head was a mole that made mole hills and I spent a long time trying to kill it! [Laughter]

Joseph’s “place meaning” of his property included a playing field for croquet, where he invited friends and colleagues for an annual tournament. He sought to maintain a level, weed-free lawn for that purpose, sandwiched between the butterfly area he and Joanna had created, and a woodland planting of native species trees. The mole’s incursion jarred with Joseph’s preferred image of his garden, but so did his response. Joseph’s laughter indicated his discomfort with his actions—he could and did eventually kill the mole—an action out of keeping with the peaceful, wildlife friendly environment he sought to produce. His lived experience in his landscape led to a behavior that he had not anticipated: the task of killing the mole became part of how he saw and understood his croquet field. The photos thus yielded stories of the negotiated outcomes of tasks in the landscapes, but humans routinely emerged as victors—when wildlife were allowed to thrive and pursue their spaces of possibility it was typically at human discretion. Over time, Joseph developed the skill of killing a mole, rather than a new awareness of the agency and value of the mole. Consistent with the broader literature on affective logics (Lorimer 2015), larger, easily recognizable, attractive species which did not interfere with recreational activities were privileged, demonstrating an affective logic that justified the removal of species which were “out of place.”

Study participants’ personal affinity for wildlife and green space was presented as a form of environmentalism, “green in its way” (Elizabeth). Tree planting was often linked somewhat awkwardly to a biodiversity discourse, linked to the variety which amenity migrants found visually attractive. Participants were uncomfortably aware of that their lifestyles did not match their environmental ideals:

Anna:We’re all trying to do as much as we can, sort of recycling materials, trying to save energy, low energy light bulbs what else can we do? I suppose try and cut down the amount of travelling that we do but [laughter], look after our own place for the wildlife that’s here.

Elva:We had to be realistic because we still have a deep freeze, and a fridge, and a phone, we’re not, we’re not going to chuck out everything and go back to candles and matches, and what not. But we did want to, we have the opportunity to make this place more sustainable, that little thing [the wood stove]. Blasts out heat, we do not have to pay for fuel for that, there is enough wood kicking about.

The environmental ideals underpinning study respondents’ affective logics—particularly facilitating the natural development of wildlife (within boundaries)—juxtaposed uncomfortably against their alignment with broader societal rhetoric about climate change and energy conservation. Anna’s laughter indicated her discomfort—she was conscious that low energy lightbulbs and recycling were unlikely to compensate for the energy spent reaching their urban jobs or foreign holidays. Her household’s pursuit of amenity was not limited to the space where they lived, or to biodiversity protection. Elva drew attention to the sustainable resources that could be accessed from her location—the woodstove was described as a low impact source of renewable energy, although she subsequently revealed that their log splitter was run by their diesel tractor, an activity she described as “cheating” on their environmental agenda. Rice et al. (2020) pointed to the socio-environmental contradiction of neighborhood transformation—in her case the proximity to public transport and low carbon infrastructure were outweighed by the other consumptive practices of affluent newcomers. In Strathben, where afforestation and habitat creation appear largely beneficial, benefits may be outweighed by the consumption of fossil fuels and energy associated with these lifestyles.

Respondents’ environmental aspirations similarly did not extend to supporting renewable energy projects which would interfere with their amenity aspirations. On-farm renewable energy production was rapidly developing in the form of turbine construction in the broader region at the time of the study (Sutherland and Holstead 2014). Although many of the migrants had installed solar panels on their houses or outbuildings for both environmental and economic reasons, they had actively (and successfully) protested local planning applications for installation of a large wind turbine. A proposed redevelopment of the local quarry—transforming it into a nature reserve—was met with approval and allowed to proceed.

Resistance to industrialization also took on more passive forms. Unlike the respondents in the “working landscapes” of the American West (e.g., Abrams and Bliss 2013), Strathben study participants identified little sense of obligation to make productive use of their holdings. The size of contemporary agricultural equipment makes it difficult to access the small fields of the original crofting plots, requiring the removal of trees and stone walls:

Elva: I don’t particularly want to get rid of all the trees and to me the walls with the brambles, and the elderflowers, and things are a useful resource for the [wild] animals and for me! I mean I make jam, I made elderflower cordial, and all that sort of thing but to do something with the land I’d have to take all the walls away.

Elva was justifying her decision not to rent her fields to local farmers on the basis of the meanings and associated tasks she had associated with her smallholding. She privileged her amenity aspirations, and the needs of local wildlife, leaving her fields essentially unmanaged. The larger landscape of the parish thus retained intersecting large-scale, production oriented commercial farms, and smaller amenity properties oriented toward affective landscapes of forestry and wildlife preservation.

Discussion

In this study I have introduced the concept of affective landscapes, and demonstrated how they are co-produced in Strathben Parish, Scotland. The research was based on a small sample, but advances the literature in four ways: employing photo elicitation as a method for engaging in gentrification research; integrating amenity migration, rural gentrification and environmental gentrification literatures with “more-than-human” approaches; identifying opportunities to more actively enroll amenity migrants in natural resource conservation; and illuminating the privileged production of and access to affective landscapes.

The conceptualization of landscape as a doing—an evolving taskscape—was operationalized through a photo elicitation process, yielding inventories of “tasks” study participants had undertaken on their holdings and rich descriptions of the associated affective responses. The use of photos was found to be particularly helpful for eliciting rich descriptions, illustrating the learning processes and emotional experiences inherent in living on a smallholding. Study participants described the particular affective appeal of biodiversity—yielding rich descriptions of the specific types of interactions sought, the emotions experienced and the conflicts embodied in co-producing desired landscapes. Findings thus demonstrated the value of enrolling study participants in producing visual images to elicit descriptions of activities or “tasks.”

This consideration of affective landscapes is novel to studies of gentrification, which have largely avoided the “affective turn” (Clough 2007) in the social sciences. Phillips’ (2014) rural gentrification research demonstrated the wide range of positive feelings associated with rural life, and how senses of sight, sound and smell were employed to engage with rural nature. This present paper has emphasized change processes—how the conditions for affective responses have been intentionally produced post-migration. These actions included habitat creation, particularly favoring biodiversity. Whereas amenity migrants in the study actively sought to enable interactions with wild flora and fauna, longer term farmers—in broad terms—did not. Strathben’s commercial farmers undertook few environmental actions outside of agri-environmental measures and were reticent to plant trees (Sutherland and Huttunen 2018).

Amenity migration thus offers the potential to improve environmental conditions, but this does not necessarily occur. Amenity migrants are difficult to influence: they are unlikely to respond to traditional levers (e.g., farm subsidies) because they are not strongly financially motivated and are often disconnected from established agricultural knowledge systems (Sutherland 2019). Work by Singh (2013) has demonstrated how intentionally engaging particular populations in “affective labor” can foster connections to nature and food. Cooke and Lane (2015a,b) argue that engaging amenity migrants in affective actions (i.e., actions which involve them both emotionally and physically) as part of experiential learning initiatives, could have the potential to shape their practices. In this present study, respondents recognized their internal conflict, suggesting that they may be willing to reduce their level of consumption if they could see viable alternatives. However, they also expressed good intentions toward facilitating biodiversity, but nevertheless continued to privilege their recreational activities. The specific form and effectiveness of initiatives to facilitate change in amenity migrant behavior is an important subject for future research.

The particular value of gentrification research is the attention it brings to power imbalances. The freedom with which amenity migrants to Strathben experience and intervene in their holdings, deciding whom to invite onto their land and which species will be encouraged and rooted out reflects a specific form of privilege. Recent research has demonstrated the importance of access to greenspace for human wellbeing (Rishbeth, Blachnicka-Ciacek, and Darling 2019; Egoz and De Nardi 2017); access to greenspace a social justice issue also underpins the environmental gentrification literature. Amenity migrants in this study were all white-collar professional households. Stockdale (2010) found that rural in-migrants in Scotland earning less than £25,000 per annum generally purchased homes within rural settlements, whereas it was those earning in excess of £25,000 per annum who acquired the type of isolated rural dwellings discussed in this paper. Amenity migration to the type of holding described here is thus restricted to a particular socio-economic cohort. In Strathben Parish, this cohort then selectively include and exclude human and more-than-human others.

Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated how amenity migrants to Strathben Parish sought to embed their personal histories and preferred imaginaries of rural life in place post migration. Wildlife and other actants enable and resist the tasks and imaginaries of amenity migrants, yielding a landscape that is co-produced. Foregrounding the agency of non-human actants, rather than treating them as “other,” recognizes and increases their power within landscape change processes (Kern 2015). This present paper represents a small step in that direction, demonstrating the dominance of humans within the landscape studied. Future research could usefully focus more directly on more-than-human agencies. Visual methods may be particularly helpful, de-centring human agency through enabling the visualization of multiple actants, if human direction can be reduced (e.g., through multispecies ethnographies, Hamilton and Taylor 2017). Affect and more-than-human agencies play critical roles in landscape change, yielding important opportunities to better understand and enable natural resource conservation.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Rowan Ellis of the Hutton Institute and five SNR reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been funded by the Scottish Government's Rural Affairs, Food and the Environment Strategic Research Programmes (2011-2016) and (2016-2021) and the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme Project FarmPath (Farming Transitions: Pathways Towards Regional Sustainability of Agriculture in Europe) under grant agreement 265394.

Notes

1 For an analysis of the utility of a “good day” and “bad day” as interview questions see Sutherland 2021b.