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AbstractPhilip Lowe died in February 2020, and so an academic career spanning five decades in environmental and rural social science and the sociology of knowledge came to an end. A pioneer of the social science of environmentalism, since the early 1990s, Philip Lowe had been closely associated with the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University in the UK and had been the intellectual force behind establishing rural economy as both a subject and mode of social science analysis. This article reflects on a career and the evolving concept of 'rural economy' as an economic form, a policy realm and a knowledge practice. Through this history, it presents an account of the contribution of Philip Lowe's research and writing that, as a result of his death, now stands as a bounded and complete body of work for the benefit of future generations of scholars.

AbstractAxis 4 of the European Fisheries Fund is an important new opportunity for fishing communities which offers the prospect of integrating local territorial approaches and strategies to support the fishing sector. But what does it mean to find a 'middle way' where households, businesses and localities dependent on fishing are part of an integrated strategy for local territorial development? In this article we review these models of development and draw on case‐study findings to discuss how Fisheries Local Action Groups (FLAGs) provide lessons for the future. The article reveals a need for greater clarity regarding the intended beneficiaries and overarching novel purpose of Axis 4 and sets out an original typology of fisheries dependency to help guide local strategies. Looking beyond local impacts, the article argues that the success of the initiative may be judged in terms of how far steering a middle course can contribute to the broader transformation of fisheries policy and to what extent FLAGs can play a role in evidencing the resilience and vulnerabilities of fishing communities.

In a recent paper in this journal it was suggested that the conventional knowledge practices of disciplines are the fundamental obstacle to mutual understanding between academic experts. Such a position, we argue, underplays the institutional relationships that recreate expert and disciplinary divides. To demonstrate our case we discuss how in the UK the evolving relationship between the government and research councils has crucially altered the context for efforts to stimulate interdisciplinary research. Our analysis highlights the scope for changes in institutional structures and practices that would facilitate broader and more encompassing research into complex sustainability problems.

Research on the coping behaviour of micro‐businesses during the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak of 2001 in the UK revealed the importance of households to micro‐businesses. However it was not just family members who helped businesses to cope with the crisis. Non‐family members of households also took part in activities to help businesses survive declines in turnover. Whilst business families have received considerable attention in research that examines how small firms are socially embedded and the consequences of this for business growth and decision making, this paper explores business households and how these enabled small firms to cope with the FMD outbreak. The paper develops the concept of the business household, explaining it from three (connected) perspectives: work, consumption and people. It is influenced by an institutional approach to the household, which relates the organisation of tasks inside the household to political and economic processes outside it, and is based on qualitative and quantitative data collected from both farming and non‐farming businesses in the north of England in 2001/2.