J. Renard (Ed.), La Vendee: un Demi-Siecle D’observation

d’un Geographe Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes,

Rennes, ISBN 2-7535-0075-4, 2004 (312pp., h20 pbk).

The Vendee, just to the south of the mouth of the riverLoire, is one of those regions of France that evokes astrong set of mental images, some of which remain validbut others were more appropriate in the past than in thepresent. In terms of political orientation, the Vendeeformed a major territory of counter-revolution and after1789, and continued to retain its leanings to the politicalright. It was an area of strong religious observance,contributing one of the pays pratiquant on the map ofFrench Catholicism. The Vendee remained an emphati-cally agricultural area, with sections of enclosed bocage

evoking the traditional rural landscapes of Brittany andother parts of northwestern France. Not surprisingly,industrial activity was poorly developed. Here was one ofthe ‘backward’ areas of the Hexagon of France.

Professor Emeritus Jean Renard taught rural geogra-phy at the University of Nantes from its creation in 1964to his retirement in 1999, devoting the whole of his careerto that institution and specialism. In 1975, he completedhis major thesis on Les evolutions de la vie rurale dans les

campagnes nantaises et les bocages vendeens. In subse-quent years he continued to undertake a large number ofrural projects, many of which were written up in localjournals that are not particularly accessible outsidewestern France. In his highly productive retirement,Jean Renard has not only written a textbook but also hasassembled a selection of his etudes vendeennes into asingle volume. A few years back, in the company of agroup of French ruralistes, I had the pleasure ofspending 2 days in the field with Monsieur Renard andI can testify that he knows every village, hamlet andcountry road like the proverbial back of his hand.

In fact, Renard’s discovery of the region extends backto 1956, enabling him to reflect on a full half century ofchange. His introduction to La Vendee he evokes thebackwardness of the area at that time; its narrow, tree-lined roads that made rapid travel impossible; its smallfarms and abundant livestock; its active Catholicism,and its fundamental rurality. In 17 essays, organizedunder five main headings (myths and realities, agricul-ture, industry, tourism, towns), Jean Renard outlineshow each of these conditions has changed. ‘La Vendee,

entre mythes et realites’ reveals the diversity of this partof France, extending from the dunes and marshes of theAtlantic coast to the old hard rocks of the interior, andforming a north/south zone of transition with respect tovernacular building styles. Almost a century ago, thegreat political geographer Andre Siegfried argued thatscattered farmsteads on large estates deep in the bocage

constituted a territory of right wing voting, whereasinhabitants of the marshlands, larger settlements andsmall-farm territory of southern Vendee were moreinclined to vote for the left. Recent elections reveal asimilar contrast one hundred years later, although left-wing support has strengthened not only in the south butalso around the main town of La Roche-sur-Yon.

The canton of Saint-Fulgent has served as a ‘fieldlaboratory’ for social geographers from Nantes to tracethe collapse of agricultural employment, retreat ofreligion, and modernization of rural lifestyles. Thenumber of farms in the Vendee declined from 43,000in 1955 (with fewer than a thousand over 50 ha) to only6700 in 2000, when 4100 exceeded 50 ha. Farm enlarge-ment was accompanied by drastic changes to the fabricof the bocage, with extensive areas undergoing plotconsolidation and the felling of hedgerows and copses.Over the past half century, rural industrialization(textiles, mechanical engineering, food processing) hada particular impact in the northeastern part of theVendee—closest to Nantes—and around La Roche-sur-Yon. Tourism now generates new sources of incomealong the coast and also on some farm holdings in theinterior. La Roche-sur-Yon and a number of smallerurban centres have emerged as vibrant service centres toenergize surrounding rural areas.

With the help of some excellent maps and a copiousbibliography, Jean Renard has demonstrated the dramaof socio-economic change and landscape transformationin the Vendee. His work is, of course, a case study butmany of his messages may be projected on to the biggerscreen of rural France, and arguably also on to that ofthe countrysides of the European Union as a whole.

Hugh CloutDepartment of Geography, University College London, 26

Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP,UK

E-mail address: h.clout@geog.ucl.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2005.05.006

L. Sargisson, L. Tower Sargent, Living in Utopia: New

Zealand’s Intentional Communities, Aldershot, Ashgate,

ISBN 0-7546-4224-0, 2004 (227pp., £45.00 pbk).

Approaching this book, knowing little of NewZealand’s history of intentional communities, what

initially struck me was the utopian, Pakeha (European)desire to build a ‘better/great Britain’ in New Zealandthat marked the very colonization process (and itssubsequent discourses). However, Living in Utopia

eschews this broader argument to focus on those myriadsmall communities founded throughout New Zealand

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with the deliberate intent of creating a better lifethrough separation and sequestration from the main-stream.

In pursing this goal the book’s aims are threefold:to survey the history of New Zealand’s inten-tional communities; to provide answers to why NewZealand’s deeply varied intentional communitiesseem to be distinctive; and finally to examine theprocesses of managing conflict in intentional commu-nities. In tracing these questions the historical surveyforms a backdrop to the more substantial conside-ration of the latter two aims. This is evident in thebook’s introduction where the authors express thehope that the book will, ‘be of use to our friendsliving in community’ (p. xv). Structurally the bookclosely reflects these aims with the first four chaptersexamining both the theoretical case for classifyingintentional communities, and the historical genealogyof such communities in the New Zealand context.Chapters 5–7 examine particular types of intentionalcommunities including: religious, cooperative, and en-vironmentalist settlements. The book’s final chapterthen shifts its focus to analyze the sources of conflict inintentional communities, and how that conflict has beendealt with.

A theme running throughout the book is thedistinctiveness of New Zealand’s intentional commu-nities. This distinctiveness, argue the authors, includeselements such as the quantity of intentional commu-nities (and specifically urban and secular communities),the relative success of such communities, and theindifferent toleration accorded intentional commu-nities. The book does not come to a definite conclusionas to why New Zealand’s experience should bedistinctive, but does suggest both the existence of asense of space that fostered tolerance, and a historicallegacy of utopianism that has not been seen asthreatening the broader social fabric. These postu-lated explanations do, however, illustrate one of thebook’s weaknesses. The authors acknowledge a longhistory of Maori ‘traditional tribal communalism’which they contrast with notions of intentional com-munities based on understandings of intentionalityand choice: a distinction that perhaps misses theflexibility of Maori society in responding to coloniza-tion. More problematically, however, the authorslargely ignore the brutal processes of colonizationthrough which the sense of space they attest to wascarved out of a land already peopled, and during whichMaori communalism (or variously communism) wassystematically attacked by the New Zealand statethrough the use of its full panoply of means during thenineteenth and twentieth centuries. These silences hint ata romanticism in the book, which coupled withpressures associated with the book’s novelty, results inan narrative that is simulating in its portrait of lives led

less ordinary, but simultaneously, frustratingly generalin its analysis of the power geometries shaping thecontext of such lives.

As the book shifts to the present, the methods used,and the organization of the narrative alters. Whereas thefirst third of the book is organized chronologically, therest of the book is thematic. Likewise whereas thechronological section of the book relies upon documen-tary evidence, the thematic sections are shaped by anethnographic approach. One of the strengths in theselater sections is the broad range of different commu-nities that the authors are able to highlight. Conversely,this strength is also its weakness, since a degree of depthis sacrificed for breadth. This is a source of frustrationbecause the ethnographic approach adopted by theauthors could have been used to provide a nuanced anddense account of the quotidian, communal practices in asmaller range of communities. Such a ‘thicker’ accountof these mundane practices would have provided aninteresting counterpoint, for example, to disciplinaryaccounts of enclosed, dystopian communities such asprisons.

One of the interesting subplots in the book wasthe recognition of the importance and difficultiesassociated with the organization of space in main-taining intentional communities. Two points wereparticularly insightful. First, whilst intentional commu-nities are predicated on some degree of commu-nalism, the authors indicate that this communalismvaries both across different types of community, andalso within communities over time. Here the authorsargue, for example, that some of the more establi-shed communities have been marked by an increasingdesire for privacy, which in turn has meant a con-comitant refashioning of the material spaces of thecommunity to accommodate those desires. Second,whilst intentional communities may well represent aneffort to construct a utopian space distinct from widersociety, as the authors show despite this intent theyremain embedded within legal and regulatory under-standings and practices regarding the disposition ofland. Such regimes of practice significantly shape theorganization of intentional communities because ofthe normative assumptions over what constitutesappropriate land use that come freighted with theownership of land. This is particularly evident inquestions over land title, where the authors indicatehow the absence of any means of recognizing Pakekanotions of collective ownership of land has forcedintentional communities to constitute themselvesthrough a variety of awkward legal structures, whichin turn have significantly shaped the ongoing practiceand evolution of communities.

Living in Utopia’s success lies in surveying a hithertounrecognized lived geography. But the book remainsfrustrating because the breadth of ambition serves to

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undercut the depth of its analysis. In the end the bookends up trying to do too much leaving both a series ofquestions about the relationship between intentionalcommunities and the emergent society of new countrylargely unexplored, whilst providing glimpses into the

everyday life of the communities examined, glimpseswhich are all to brief.

Matthew HenryMassey University, New Zealand

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2005.07.001

P. Brunet, P. Girardin, Inventaire regional des paysages

de Basse-Normandie, vol. 2, Caen, Conseil Regional de la

Basse Normandie & Direction Regionale de l’Equipement,

ISBN 2-9117-0719-2, 2004 (324+548pp.).

Basse-Normandie occupies the western half of thehistoric province, lying beyond the estuary of the Seineand displaying a variety of predominantly rural land-scapes that are very different from the arable openfieldsof Haute-Normandie or the drained marshlands of theSeine valley. This remarkable Inventaire, published bythe Conseil Regional together with the Direction del’Equipement, is the work of Pierre Brunet, professoremeritus of geography at the University of Caen, and ofPierre Girardin, who is a landscape architect withteaching responsibilities at the Ecole Nationale Super-ieure de Paysage de Versailles. In addition, Brunet is anaccomplished photographer, while Girardin is anexcellent draughtsman and artist. Their skills comple-ment each other superbly, with Brunet bringing histor-ical insights to help understand the present scene, andGirardin capturing the fundamental geometry of thelandscape. The two-volume work is large in size(300� 230 cm) and in content (872 pages), and ishandsomely illustrated with numerous full-colourphotographs, maps and facsimiles. Printed on high-quality paper by the Corlet company at Conde-sur-Noireau, this is the kind of luxury that perhaps only aconseil regional in France can afford.

Professor Brunet begins the Inventaire with a sub-stantial essay on the history of rural landscapes in Basse-Normandie. Traditionally, these are summarized bythe fundamental contrast between the openfields ofthe Campagne de Caen and the surrounding bocage ofhedged enclosures. I remember these landscapes wellfrom my student days when we participated in mapclasses that analysed detailed topographic sheets ofvarious parts of France. Such a simple distinc-tion between openfield and bocage retains some vali-dity, however Brunet’s chronological discussion teasesout greater complexity with regard to the formationof bocage in medieval times (11th–13th centuries)and in later centuries of pastoral specialization.The Pays d’Auge and the wetlands around Isigny(further west) emerge as early foci of dairy farmingfrom which later swathes of bocage spread. Thesubstantial forests of Basse-Normandie are surrounded

by landscapes resulting from centuries of woodlandclearance. Plot consolidation (remembrement) since 1941has given rise to ‘new’ landscapes from which hedge-rows, earthen banks, isolated trees and small copseshave been erased, with profound visual and ecologicalresults. The development of tourism along manysections of the Basse-Normandie coastline has hadvariable impacts on the immediate hinterland. Thenfollows an analysis of the presence of trees in thelandscape, with respect to botanical composition andvertical morphology. From these discussions 75 land-scape units are recognized.

The remainder of the Inventaire is devoted to abeautifully illustrated examination of the eight ‘families’of landscape in Basse-Normandie: landscapes betweenland and sea (wide bays, cliffs, sandy shorelines,islands); marshes; openfields; bocage country; mixedlandscapes; forest landscapes; scarplands and gorges(for example, the scarp face of the Pays d’Auge,northern Perche, and the gorges of the ‘Suissenormande’ (the so-called Switzerland of Normandy);and, finally, peri-urban landscapes. Photographs fromthe air and from the ground, coloured maps, fieldsketches and other forms of visual representation areused to excellent effect to display and to explain culturallandscapes and the buildings contained within them.Finally, issues of use and of representation areexamined. Second homes are concentrated along thecoast, as are gıtes ruraux that are remarkably sparse inthe Campagne de Caen (with rather ‘unattractive’landscapes and broad horizons) and in the Perche wherethe scenery is far more varied and is widely recognizedas ‘appealing’, Guidebooks and works of art havetended to highlight the features of coastal Normandyand the inland scenery of the Suisse Normande to therelative neglect of other areas.

Professor Brunet and Pierre Girardin conclude bystressing how humanized—or cultural-landscapes areconstantly changing, with some being degraded bythoughtless ‘suburban’ development, others being offi-cially protected (with the great mudflats of the Baie duMont Saint-Michel being accorded highest status), andthe majority of the region undergoing the kind ofrelatively slow or sharply punctuated change thatcharacterizes the agricultural world. This Inventaire isan amazing production of which its authors andtechnical support staff must be rightly proud. The

ARTICLE IN PRESSBook reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 21 (2005) 487–493 491