Abstract

The village pub has been described as part of England’s history (Kingsnorth, 2008) but changing rural populations and economic transformations have seen a decline in their number. This paper explores the inter-related social and economic features of the village pub, being a business as well as a social venue that forms part of the identity of their communities. Primary data is drawn from a study of village pubs in Lincolnshire, a rural county in the East of England, to explore how different people relate to village pubs. Embeddedness theory, which explains that economic actions are heavily influenced by social factors, is then used to explore how the social values attached to the village pub might be better captured to add to their economic viability.