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Natural resource dependence, although commonly invoked in natural resource sociology, has often been ambiguously defined. Communities are frequently described as dependent on natural resource development, but limited attention has been paid to what that means. In the literature, resource dependence is often treated as over‐specialization in, or over‐reliance upon, the natural resource sectors. However, the logic of over‐specialization conceptually grounds dependence in poor economic outcomes. Thus, a one‐dimensional typology of dependence based on a threshold of the share of development in the natural resource sector—as commonly used—does not fully capture the concept and risks tautology. In this paper, I address this ambiguity by formally defining natural resource dependence as over‐specialization in the natural resource sectors. I then present an ideal typology, known as the Natural Resource Community Typology, and a corresponding classification scheme for rural communities in the United States. The typology integrates both extractive and non‐extractive natural resource activity and has two dimensions—the level of development and the level of economic prosperity—and six mutually exclusive categories—extractive specialized, extractive dependent, non‐extractive specialized, non‐extractive dependent, hybrid specialized, and hybrid dependent. I classify counties from 2000 to 2015 and find that while extractive dependence decreased over the study period, non‐extractive dependence increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines three issues that have previously been considered separately; economic restructuring, gender, and participation in the informal economy. Drawing on two complementary data sets of interviews with the residents of a rural county, the paper first suggests that the participation in the informal economy is extensive. The second major finding is that households whose members have held on to "good" work in the formal economy participate in the informal economy in a different way than do households whose members are less fortunate. Third, the paper demonstrates that participation in the informal economy is highly differentiated by gender. Finally the intersections among location in the formal economy, gender, and informal economic activities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is limited recent research on the strategies that rural local governments are employing in the face of changing intergovernmental relationships, especially in relation to local economic development. This paper draws on data from a survey of local governments in the Ohio River Valley Region that includes a mix of localities on the urban-rural continuum, to empirically address three issues. First, we examined the extent to which county governments have undertaken local economic development initiatives as well as other, extra-economic activities designed to improve community well-being. Second, we assessed the extent to which rural county governments vary from urban counties in their activities and available resources. Finally, we employed logistic regression models of factors associated with use of development strategies to determine the relationship between rurality and local development policy activities. The results show that rural counties are less likely than urban counties to undertake various economic development activities, with observed urban-rural differences largely attributable to county socioeconomic disadvantages, such as poverty and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a framework for examining the questions: Does social capital make a difference for well being in communities of place? How might rural sociologists utilize social capital to further well being in communities? The author reviews social capital literature, contrasting rational choice and embeddedness perspectives. Opting for a marriage between embeddedness and conflict theory, he introduces entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) as an alternative to social capital. ESI adds to social capital the notions of equality, inclusion, and agency. Research results are presented which support the embeddedness approach: community-level action (the community field) is not simply an aggregation of individual or organizational actions within the community; social capital and ESI contribute jointly and independently to community action. Examining economic development as a form of collective action, the author concludes the following: a) ESI contributes to economic development, and b) inclusiveness (internal solidarity) is more closely related to community self-development while industrial recruitment is better predicted by strong external ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion theory and political economy are the two most common ways by which rural sociologists have explained the widespread use of agricultural innovations. In this paper, we argue, borrowing from science studies and using the empirical case of soybeans in Brazil, that the use of agricultural innovations is better understood as the result of the construction of networks of people and things. Thirty years ago soybean production in Brazil was insignificant. However, at that time a soybean network began to be formed. Initial actors were, among others, (1) soybean varieties produced in the United States, (2) wheat farmers located in the south of Brazil, and (3) soil in need of nitrogen, an expensive input for the new wheat varieties. State policies were no doubt important in consolidating that network. However, other persons, institutions and things were also necessary, including science and technology, the creation and/or expansion of farmers' organizations such as cooperatives, and the solution to the problem of photoperiod sensitivity in soybeans. We follow the soybean from its introduction in Brazil to its present status as an important crop. The overall context within which the soybean network began is also described. We conclude that the actor network approach is more congruent with the history of soybeans in Brazil than diffusion theory or political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well recognized that the informal economy-unregulated economic activities that generate real or in-kind income-features prominently in the day-to-day lives of many in the developing world. Researchers have begun to explore the informal economy in developed countries but this work has focussed primarily on urban areas to the neglect of rural areas. In this paper the nature and correlates of informal work in nonmetropolitian Pennsylvania are described through an analysis of survey data on 505 families. Results indicate that participation in informal activities is widespread is not more typical of the poor does not contribute greatly to family income on average but those help many families whether difficult economic time is both economically and noneconomically motivated and net of other sociodemographic varaibles is positively related to rurality of residence and formal labor supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can leaders in small towns and surrounding areas actually influence local economic and demographic growth? Competing views but few studies of this issue characterize recent debates about the effects of' "growth machines" in local areas. This paper uses alternative indicators of growth during the 1980s for a sample of local areas in rural Pennsylvania to examine the effects of development efforts, controlling ecological and structural characteristics. The analysis considers local participation in state programs and maintenance of a favorable business climate as well as measures of local growth promotion for business and industry, recreation and tourism, development of forest products, and services development. Hierarchical regressions, taking account of the statistically dominant effects of ecological and structural variables, show that local efforts can influence local growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partly because of the field's efforts to deal first with the kinds of impacts that have been the most obvious and pressing, the traditional focus of social impact assessment has been on the impacts taking place during the most intensive phases of developmental activity. Recently it has become increasingly clear that a number of predictable, significant impacts take place both before and after the periods of most intense activity; these impacts are missed by social impact assessment approaches that are excessively narrow in focus. This paper offers a conceptual frame-work that is relatively simple but that deals with impacts both across time and across potentially affected systems of the human environment, doing so in such a way as to improve the promise of social impact assessment to become more nearly comprehensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]