New countryside? New country: visible communities in the English national parks

This chapter references quantitative and qualitative research that is concerned with the visible communities' perceptions and use of the English national parks. It is split into two main sections. The first section is concerned with addressing the concept of resistance, and considers visible community challenges to a mythologised absence in the countryside. The second section focuses on visible community ‘claims’ to the countryside that go beyond resistance. This section also looks at the variety of ways in which rurality may be implicated in – and/or extricated from – national-identity formation.