Neighbours and strangers

This book explores social cohesion in rural settlements in western Europe from 700-1050 asking to what extent settlements or districts constituted units of social organisation. It focuses on the interactions interconnections and networks of people who lived side by side - neighbours. Drawing evidence from most of the current western European countries the book plots and interrogates the very different practices of this wide range of regions in a systematically comparative framework. <i>Neighbours and strangers</i> considers the variety of local responses to the supra-local agents of landlords and rulers and the impact such as it was of those agents on the small-scale residential group. It also assesses the impact on local societies of the values instructions and demands of the wider literate world of Christianity as delivered by local priests.