In a survey of academic definitions of the ‘rural’, Halfacree (1993:32) posits a distinction between rural as locality and rural as social representation. As locality, rurality is a specific type of space that has a concrete geographical location where its character is objectified in the physical and social attributes of that location. In this mode, rural locations can be observed, analysed and mapped in various terms: topographical attributes, the social composition of the people living and/or working there, forms of activity, the nature of social relations and relations with other spaces of similar or different type in other geographical locations. In the mode of social representation, rurality is a de-spatialised cultural concept that has a ‘disembodied and virtual character’ because it is not linked to a concrete geographical location and thus it ‘lacks empirical clarity’ (Halfacree 1993:32). Instead, it is a discourse about a type of space that is usually morally charged and about the kind of social life that occurs in it. Often it includes landscape images, either visual or verbal, placing the rural at a distance and thereby presenting idealised pictures of society that are implied by but can never be attained in everyday life (see Hirsch 1995:9, 23). In this mode, the rural is something expressed rather than observed, interpreted rather than explained. It is related culturally (by meaningful contrast and similarity of image) to other representations of other types of spaces, particularly those of urban space (see Williams 1975; Creed and Ching 1997).

Since its inception in 1958 and throughout its ensuing development in the next five decades, the CAP has conflated these two modes of conceiving rurality, alternately adopting them first in producing agricultural policy on the basis of an image of rurality and then in analysing the concrete rural localities that are its effects. A third form of rurality mediates this dialectic of image and locality: rurality as place. Here, I am referring to the way in which rurality is experienced and practised by rural people in their everyday activities. I illustrate this mode of rurality in the activities of hill sheep farmers as they respond strategically to agricultural policy to maintain the economic and intergenerational viability of their farms.

I trace the development of the CAP from its inception as part of the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Community to the recent changes of the Agenda 2000 and Fischler II Reforms (2003). The development of the CAP is also a ‘history’ of the concept of rurality as it moves through its various forms—locality, representation, particular experience of place—in the progressive dialect of policymaking and agricultural practice through which rural space is produced.

My analytical location is a function of the timing of my ethnographic research among hill sheep farmers in Teviotdale, a locality of 15 farms that straddles an 18-kilometre stretch of the River Teviot from its source to the mill town of Hawick (see Figure 1.1). It is a landscape of a river valley surrounded by steep hills reaching 600 metres high at the watershed and gradually decreasing in height and density as one moves in a north-westerly direction towards Hawick. The farms range in size from 160 to more than 2000 hectares, carrying 400 to 4000 breeding ewes. Hill sheep farmers differentiated the physical terrain in terms of two categories of farmland. ‘Out-bye’—rough grazing or hill land—is predominant in the locality. It is characterised by steep gradients, altitudes in excess of 300 metres, harsh weather, boggy soil and nutrient-poor vegetation. ‘In-bye’—or park—are areas of lower-altitude flat fields that become increasingly prevalent nearer to Hawick. All farms in the valley have some of both types of land. The nine larger farms (more than 500ha) on the higher ground nearer the watershed have a greater proportion of hill land (more than 75 per cent) and the six smaller farms on generally lower ground have a smaller proportion of hill land (less than 50 per cent). I did fieldwork in Teviotdale from 1981 to 2001. It was during this period that I was able to describe how hill sheep farmers strategically implemented the contemporary policies of the CAP with which they were confronted. These policies reflected the CAP’s representation of rurality during the 1960s and 1970s and the effects this had on rural landscapes before my fieldwork. Assuming the actions of hill sheep farmers that I have observed are indicative of how other farmers have responded to the CAP during the 1980s and 1990s, I describe how their activities and their effects on rural space/landscape have been recorded and objectified in the understanding of rurality on which the Agenda 2000 and Fischler II reforms of the CAP are based.