Abstract :
The paper reviews the assembly of the Country Code and its wider project circulated to reify a particular construction of countryside citizenship. The Code can be read as an attempt to pursue a particular moral project and an effort to influence behaviour through the design of a particular regime of conduct. Numerous alterations, most recently in 2004, have not fundamentally changed the aims of the Code as first introduced in 1951; as such the new Code marks not a withdrawal from the attempted imposition of a uniform countryside citizenship but rather an extension and refinement of this project and a continuing influence on the production and consumption of rural space. It is argued that the revisions and wider changes in associated materials and mediation of the Code are indicative of the way that countryside politics is changing to reflect both a post-productivist and post-feudal countryside: a shift that is being performed on the part of government through a more managerialist and interventionist style of governance.
