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A clarion call to recognize the importance of rural farming communities and to build a new agriculture policy for our future In a twenty-first-century landscape marked by unprecedented challenges, the relevance of agriculture and farms has never been more apparent. From the unsettling shortages experienced during the pandemic to recent fluctuations in the cost and availability of basic grocery items due to historic droughts and climate impacts, Americans are being reminded daily of the importance of rural communities. And yet, the reality of these farm communities and farm policy is foreign to many Americans. Written from the unique perspective of best-selling author Jerry Apps, a farmer and noted historian, On Farms and Rural Communities: An Agricultural Ethic For the Future is a poignant testament to the enduring importance of this vital part of our nation and a call to shape agricultural policy for the present and future.  Jerry Apps takes a comprehensive look at the historical, present-day, and future significance of rural communities. With insightful analysis of critical issues such as agriculture, land utilization, demographic shifts, and socioeconomic and cultural factors, Apps highlights the urgent need to restore and better appreciate our rural communities. He urges the creation of an agricultural ethic that looks at the land and the people, celebrating all that has made American farming an essential part of our history while positioning it for a brighter future. The book is a must-read for all Americans, proving insight and hope for our agricultural future.

Los modos de elaboración y de circulación de saberes son elementos importantes en el cambio histórico. La historia de las relaciones entre Europa Occidental y otros continentes, en especial América, es ciertamente un entramado de violencia y dominación, pero también de intercambios de personas y bienes materiales, entre ellos plantas cultivadas, o no, minerales y muchos más. Todos estos factores nos remiten a un hecho simple, pero muchas veces olvidado, que todos esos intercambios habrían sido imposibles de no haberse operado al mismo tiempo una intensa circulación en ambos sentidos de saberes y técnicas asociadas a la producción, uso y aprovechamiento de esos bienes. La difusión tecnológica no trata sólo del instrumental material del que se vale el hombre para asaltar a la naturaleza y modificarla, sino también del utillaje mental que a menudo le precede. Este libro es una buena muestra de todo lo anterior. Hasta el siglo XVIII, más que a un tema de estricta superioridad tecnológica, la preponderancia europea en el mundo podría atribuirse mucho más a la acción de sus instituciones (códigos, propiedad privada, burguesía, etc.) que prepararon su expansión por el mundo y quizá sobre todo también, a la manera como a través de la conquista de nuevas tierras y el colonialismo, lograron integrar vastos espacios, mercados y recursos a su propia dinámica económica y social. La irrupción de la Revolución Industrial europea y norteamericana trastoca profundamente, sin embargo, los términos de esta relación. El adelanto tecnológico se convierte en una realidad y la transferencia de saberes, implementos técnicos y maquinarias, se vuelve mucho más unidireccional y masiva. Sin embargo, nos parece genuino preguntarnos no solamente cómo y en qué medida los europeos encontraron una fuente de bienes primero y un más tarde un mercado y una salida para sus productos tecnológicos en la América española. Es importante explorar también qué manera los americanos abrevaron de esa “modernidad” técnica europea, de esos nuevos saberes y prácticas dándoles un sentido distinto y haciéndolos funcionar de maneras muy diferentes respecto de lo que sucedió en Europa y la América del Norte. Este libro es una contribución en ese sentido y es fruto del trabajo realizado en el marco del proyecto del Grupo de Investigación Internacional-AAA (Agricultura, Alimentación, Abastecimiento) que por varios años ha interconectado a instituciones europeas con México.

The Community in Rural America, by Kenneth P. Wilkinson, is a foundational theoretical work that both defines the interactional approach to the study of the community in rural areas and frames its application to encourage and promote rural community development. Recognized for its detailed theoretical construction and logic for understanding human interactions, this book has been widely adopted and used by researchers, extension faculty, and community development practitioners for over thirty years. Presenting Wilkinson's groundbreaking work in its original form, with a new foreword aimed at clarifying several key concepts in interactional theory, this edition of The Community in Rural America will appeal to new students of the community as well as established scholars in the field.

This edited collection aims to examine the global-rural relationship of migration that shapes rural places. It does this by acknowledging that to understand the impact of the international migration-global nexus, it is essential to explore how it is experienced at a local level - in the context of this book, rural regions. Focusing on agribusiness and rural development, as well as the othering of international migrants and the shifting boundaries of belonging in rural spaces, the chapters in this book examine how globalisation, with migration being a constitutive feature, influences different rural contexts in the ‘Global North'and the impact this has on migrant populations. Chapters demonstrate the harsh lived experiences/realities characterised by mental health issues and emotional labour for migrants, occupational health and safety issues in the workplace and experiences of exclusion and racism from ‘host'communities. These chapters taken together identify a rural-migration nexus where the relationship between international migration and localised rural spaces are mutually constitutive.

This book explores the notion of rurality and how it is used and produced in various contexts, including within populist politics which derives their legitimacy from the rural-urban divide.The gap between the ‘common people'and the ‘elites'is widening again as images of rurality are promoted as morally pure, unalienated and opposed to the cultural and economic globalization. This book examines how using certain images and projections of rurality produces ‘rural authenticity', a concept propagated by various groups of people such as regional food producers, filmmakers, policymakers, and lobbyists. It seeks to answer questions such as: What is the rurality that these groups of people refer to? How is it produced? What are the purposes that it serves? Research in this book addresses these questions from the areas of both politics and policies of the ‘authentic rural'. The ‘politics'refers to polarizations including politicians, social movements, and political events which accentuate the rural-urban divide and brings it back to the core of the societal conflict, while the'policies'focus on rural tourism, heritage industry, popular art and other areas where rurality is constantly produced and consumed.With international case studies from leading scholars in the field of rural studies, the book will appeal to geographers, sociologists, politicians, as well as those interested in the re-emergence of the rural-urban divide in politics and media.Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book focuses on the transformation of rural places, peoples, and land endemic to the contemporary manifestations of globalization. Migration, global economic restructuring, and climate change are rapidly transforming rural places across the globe. Yet, global attention characteristically focuses on urban social and economic issues, neglecting the continued roles of rural people and places. Organized around the three core themes of demographic change, rural-urban partnerships and innovations, and landscape change, the case studies included in this volume represent both the Global North and Global South and underscore the complexity and multi-scalar nature of these contemporary challenges in rural development, planning, and sustainability.This book would be valuable supplementary reading for both students and professionals in the fields of rural land management and rural planning.

A collection of previously untranslated writings by Henri Lefebvre on rural sociology, situating his research in relation to wider Marxist workOn the Rural is the first English collection to translate Lefebvre's crucial but lesser-known writings on rural sociology and political economy, presenting a wide-ranging approach to understanding the historical and rural sociology of precapitalist social forms, their endurance today, and conditions of dispossession and uneven development. In On the Rural, Stuart Elden and Adam David Morton present Lefebvre's key works on rural questions, including the first half of his book Du rural à l'urbain and supplementary texts, two of which are largely unknown conference presentations published outside France. On the Rural offers methodological orientations for addressing questions of economy, sociology, and geography by deploying insights from spatial political economy to decipher the rural as a terrain and stake of capitalist transformation. By doing so, it reveals the production of the rural as a key site of capitalist development and as a space of struggle. This volume delivers a careful translation—supplemented with extensive notes and a substantive introduction—to cement Lefebvre's central contribution to the political economy of rural sociology and geography.

In this collection, researchers analyze rural societies, economies, and governance in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia through the lens of rights and citizenship, across such varied domains as education, employment, and health. The provocative concept of a “right to be rural” illuminates not only the challenges faced by rural communities worldwide, but also underappreciated facets of community resilience in the face of these challenges. The book's central question—“is there a right to be rural?”—offers insights into how these communities are created, maintained, and challenged. The authors illustrate that citizenship rights have a spatial character, and that this observation is critical to studying and understanding rural life in the twenty-first century. Scholars and policymakers concerned with the health and well-being of rural communities will be interested in this book. Contributors: Ray Bollman, Clement Chipenda, Innocent Chirisa, Logan Cochrane, Pallavi Das, Laura Domingo-Peñafiel, Laura Farré-Riera, Jens Kaae Fisker, Karen R. Foster, Lesley Frank, Greg Hadley, Stacey Haugen, Jennifer Jarman, Kathleen Kevany, Eshetayehu Kinfu, Al Lauzon, Katie MacLeod, Jeofrey Matai, Ilona Matysiak, Kayla McCarney, Rachel McLay, Egon Noe, Howard Ramos, Katja Rinne-Koski, Sulevi Riukulehto, Sarah Rudrum, Ario Seto, Nuria Simo-Gil, Peggy Smith, Sara Teitelbaum, Annette Aagaard Thuesen, Tom Tom, Ashleigh Weeden, Satenia Zimmermann

Idea tej pracy zrodziła się m.in. w wyniku zainteresowania dyskusją o specyfice badawczej geografii człowieka, zwłaszcza we współczesnych uwarunkowaniach instytucjonalnych, oraz jako potrzeba poszukiwania alternatywy dla panujących powszechnie tendencji dezintegracyjnych w naukach społecznych. W związku z tym, podjęto próbę określenia pola przedmiotowego geografii człowieka, wskazując – jako kluczowe – koncepcje i modele przestrzeni, na które można spojrzeć w kontekście różnych form zamieszkiwania ludzi, ich zmiany w czasie oraz w odniesieniu do przemian cywilizacyjnych. W tym przypadku są to nawarstwiające się w czasie ujęcia teoretyczno-metodologiczne, które można odnieść do trzech zasadniczych typów analizy zjawisk w przestrzeni wyróżnionych przez M. Foucaulta, tj. umiejscowienia, rozciągłości i usytuowania. Poszczególne rozdziały, które odpowiadają trzem przypadkom badan nad osadnictwem wiejskim, prezentują kwestie odnoszące się do wyjaśnienia relacji człowieka z przestrzenią rozumianą jako podłoże jego egzystencji (ziemia). We wszystkich badaniach przeplatają się trzy kluczowe dla geografii człowieka kwestie, tj. problemy określenia stanu i przekształceń krajobrazu kulturowego, tożsamości terytorialnej oraz miejsca człowieka i społeczności lokalnych w przestrzeni. W pracy oceniono możliwości poznawcze przedstawionej problematyki badawczej oraz ich rolę w kształtowaniu podstaw odrębności teoretyczno-metodologicznej geografii człowieka. Wskazano również podstawowe kwestie dotyczące przemian społeczno-kulturowych przestrzeni wiejskiej. Jest to o tyle istotne, że wieś podlega bardzo istotnym przekształceniom, co w tym zakresie wpływa na jej inne cechy osadnicze, zwłaszcza fizjonomiczne i funkcjonalne.

Exploring the emerging and vibrant field of critical agrarian studies, this comprehensive Handbook offers interdisciplinary insights from both leading scholars and activists to understand agrarian life, livelihoods, formations and processes of change. It highlights the development of the field, which is characterized by theoretical and methodological pluralism and innovation. The Handbook presents critical analyses of, and examines controversies about, historical and contemporary social structures and processes in agrarian and rural settings from a wide range of perspectives. Chapters explore the origins of critical agrarian studies, the concepts underpinning the diverse theoretical approaches to the field, and the strengths and weaknesses of different methodologies used within the field. Finally, it illuminates debates around the topic and trajectories for future research and development. This will be a vital resource for graduate students, scholars and activists interested in critical agrarian studies. The analytical and empirical insights will also be helpful to students of environmental and development studies as well as agricultural and development economics, human geography and socio-cultural anthropology.

In Zeiten einer global fortschreitenden Urbanisierung der Lebenswelten gewinnen Imaginationen und Projektionen eines guten Lebens auf dem Land eine neue diskursive Attraktivität. Sie verweisen auf eine lange und ambivalente Geschichte zwischen Anforderungen und Überforderungen gesellschaftlichen Wandels sowie den Ansprüchen auf ein gelingendes Leben. Angesichts umfassender Transformationen, Krisen und Katastrophen bieten die kulturellen Produktionen ländlicher Lebensverhältnisse - und damit verbunden die Vorstellungen von Natur, Idylle und Heimat - sowohl idealisierte Sehnsuchtsorte als auch konkretisierte Orientierungspunkte. Land und Ländlichkeit geraten in ein komplexes Spannungsverhältnis, das auch Auskunft gibt über Wahrnehmung und Selbstverständnis im Leben in und zwischen Stadt und Land.

The Philosophy of Parochialism is Radomir Konstantinović's (1928–2011) most celebrated and reviled book. First published in Belgrade as Filosofija palanke in 1969, it attracted keen attention and controversy through its unsparing critique of Serbian and any other nationalism in Yugoslavia and beyond. The book was prophetic, seeming to anticipate not only the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but also the totalitarian turn in politics across the globe in the first decades of the new century. With this translation, English-speaking audiences can at last discover one of the most original writers of eastern European late modernism, and gain an important and original perspective into contemporary politics and culture in the West and beyond. This is a book that seems to age in reverse, as its meanings become deeper and more universal with the passage of time. Konstantinović'sbookresists easy classification, mixing classical, Montaigne-like essay, prose poetry, novel, and literary history. The word “philosophy” in the book's title refers to the solitary activity of reflection and critical thinking, and is also paradoxical: according to the author, a defining characteristic of parochialism is precisely its intolerance toward this kind of self-reflexivity. In Konstantinović's analysis, parochialism is not a simply a characteristic of a geographical region or a cultural, political, and historical formation—these are all just manifestations of the parochial spirit as the spirit of insularity. His book illuminates the current moment, in which insularity undergirds not only ethnic and national divisions, but also dictates the very structure of everyday life, and where individuals can easily find themselves locked in an echo chamber of social media. The Philosophy of Parochialism can help us understand better not only the dead ends of ethnic nationalism and other atavistic ideologies, but also of those cultural forces such as digital technologies that have been built on the promise of overcoming those ideologies.

The fourth edition of the book-Introductory Rural Sociology-has been brought out by the addition of a new chapter on Gandhi?s Theory of Social Change. In it, his prominent ideas have been discussed, increasing students? awareness of Gandhian mode of living and thinking. Other aspects of the text have been kept intact as their revision has been considered neither necessary nor desirable. They have proved themselves over the years to stand valid, relevant and applicable. The concepts and principles explained in the book enhance its comprehension and utility by students and development personnel.

Este libro es un homenaje a todas las gentes que hicieron posible la rica civilización rural. En él, vecinos de una'aldea perdida'del corazón de Galicia, mujeres y hombres de distintas generaciones, nos hablan de sus recuerdos, de sus proyectos y de cómo eran sus vidas. A través de sus voces y relatos no solo se despliegan las tramas que tejen una sociedad como una red en continuo cambio, sino que se recupera también la memoria de una historia social vertebrada fundamentalmente por la moral del trabajo y por la solidaridad. Esta historia, con sus luces y sombras, puede servir como contrapunto para reflexionar sobre la sociedad en la que vivimos y qué futuro queremos construir.

Development-induced displacements may lead to loss of land, livelihoods, shelter, property, and access to social facilities, natural resources and cultural heritage, if the affected people are not cushioned by appropriate compensation and social support mechanisms, as well as integrated rehabilitation programmes to mitigate negative impact. As a result, communities often resist relocations and in some instances the emerging conflicts between the responsible authorities and the affected communities delay critical development projects. The policies of the Government of Zimbabwe are geared towards rural development, economic growth and foreign investment. This calls for a complementing review and harmonisation of legislation, policies and practices designed to protect the rights and livelihoods of rural communities affected and displaced by development projects. In 2019, the Centre for Conflict Management and Transformation (CCMT) hosted a series of multi-stakeholder policy dialogues on the issue of development-induced displacements in Zimbabwe. In addition, a research symposium was held in collaboration with the Tugwi Mukosi Multidisciplinary Research Institute (TMMRI, Midlands State University) on Zimbabwean displacement experiences and policy options. This book, with contributions from a wide range of researchers and practitioners, presents the results of that process.

In this ethnographic study of the rural idyll, Broadlands explores rurality and the pace of rural life. In sharp contrast to the urban analytical emphasis upon speed, it gives careful thought to stasis, as rural places offer everyday opportunities for very different social situations and behavioural interactions. Based on new and extensive RCUK-funded primary research, Sam Hillyard generates an original, rigorous and thoughtful understanding of everyday rural life in the 21st century. Taking the principles of dramaturgy and rural studies scholarship, Broadlands provides a toolkit to make sense of rural change. It uses ethnography to enhance interactionist dramaturgy via cross-references with new theoretical orientations that emphasise the temporal dynamics of space in a'knowing capitalism'. Where early dramaturgy stressed formal organisations in shaping roles and identity, Broadlands expands these concepts to include informal and transient organisations and associations. Ultimately, the book advances a new model for grasping the complexity of the rural. For researchers and students ofrural and urban sociology, this is an engaging text that reframes our understanding of rurality.

Regional differences matter. Even in an increasingly globalized world, rhetorical attention to regionalism yields very different understandings of geographic areas and the people who inhabit them. Regional identities often become most apparent in the differences (real and perceived) between urban and rural areas. Politicians recognize the perceived differences and develop messages based on that knowledge. Media highlight and exacerbate the differences to drive ratings. Cultural markers (from memorials to restaurants and memoirs and beyond) point to the differences and even help to construct those divisions. The places identified as urban and rural even visually demarcate the differences at times. This volume explores how rhetoric surrounding the urban and rural binary helps shape our understanding of those regions and the people who reside there. Chapters from award-winning rhetorical scholars explain the implications of viewing the regions as distinct and divided, exploring how they influence our understanding of ourselves and others, politics and race, culture, space and place, and more. Attention to urban and rural spaces is necessary because those spaces both act rhetorically and are also created through rhetoric. In a time when thoughtful attention to regional division has become more critical than ever, this book is required reading to help think through and successfully engage the urban/rural divide.

The possibility of nuclear war, the failure of the Green Revolution, the capabilities of genetic engineering, and other actual and potential effects of technological innovations have created demands for a more humane application of technology. Addressing this issue, Technology and Social Change in Rural Areas is a clear assessment of the current state of affairs. The book begins with a discussion of the changing paradigms of technology adoption and diffusion, the dynamics of public resistance, and the question of social responsibility in an age of synthetic biology. In subsequent sections, the contributors assess the revolutionary effect of technology on agriculture worldwide and conclude that radically new public policies are essential; expose the transformations of rural life and communities that result from the localized effects of technology and its use as a weapon in world-system politics; and critically examine the appropriate technology movement. The essays are presented to honor Professor Eugene A. Wilkening for his many pioneering and lasting contributions to the study of technology and rural social change. The book includes an intellectual biography of Professor Wilkening written by his long-time colleague and friend, William H. Sewell.

In der Entstehung der modernen Sozial- und Raumwissenschaften bildete das Dorf einen wesentlichen Gegenstand der Erkenntnisgewinnung und Methodenentwicklung. Das aktuelle gesellschaftliche Interesse an ländlichen und dörflichen Lebenswirklichkeiten wurde hingegen von den Sozialwissenschaften, insbesondere der Soziologie, bislang kaum systematisch aufgegriffen. Diese Lücke will der Sammelband schließen. Die Beiträge thematisieren unter anderem den tiefgreifenden Wandel einst kleinbäuerlicher Dörfer, die Folgen multilokaler Alltagsarrangements, Fragen von Nachbarschaft und sozial-ökologische Konflikte in der Verflechtung des Globalen mit dem Lokalen. Planungswissenschaftliche, geographische und sozial-ökologische Zugänge ergänzen die soziologische Perspektive, um das Dorf als interdisziplinären Forschungsgegenstand der Sozialwissenschaften neu zu konturieren.

Rural areas are a key sector in every nation's economy due to a sizeable majority of the population living therein, as well as their impact on global agriculture and food security. Rural development transcends the availability of infrastructure, technology, and industrialization to also encompass the enviro-cultural and psycho-social needs of its inhabitants. The necessity for greater and deliberate efforts targeting all aspects of development of these rural areas is required to sustain growth. The Handbook of Research on Rural Sociology and Community Mobilization for Sustainable Growth is an essential reference source investigating how global trends, state policies, and grassroots movements affect contemporary rural areas in both developed and developing countries. Featuring research on topics such as gender and rural development, micro-financing, and water resource management, this book is ideally designed for government officials, policy makers, professionals, researchers, and students seeking coverage on the sustainable development of rural areas.

This volume aims to unpack the uneasy relationship between utopia and rural spaces in the context of global pressures. The ethnographies presented here offer a rich array of examples combining rural spaces, utopian representations, and neoliberal practices. In attempting to reconcile the desire to preserve the traditional image of rural landscapes in the context of neoliberal practices that threaten the ideal of a rural utopia, imaginaries appear as powerful devices for understanding the world and motivating action.

Angesichts aktueller gesellschaftlicher Umbrüche hat auch das Landleben wieder Konjunktur. In Medien und politischen Reden, ökonomischen Kalkulationen, demografischen Untersuchungen und infrastrukturellen Planungen werden Bilder ruraler Lebenswelten aufgerufen. Sie greifen auf romantische Vorstellungen zurück, entwerfen aber auch düstere Untergangsszenarien. Nicht zuletzt haben zeitgenössische Literaturen, Filme und alltagsbezogene Forschungen - abseits gängiger Polarisierungen - das Landleben wieder für sich entdeckt. Die Beiträge des Bandes zeigen: Leben auf dem Land wird so zur Projektionsfläche, aber auch zu einem Erkundungsraum und Verhandlungsort gesellschaftlicher Entwicklungen und darauf bezogener Diskurse.

For the past fifty years, America has been extraordinarily busy building prisons. Since 1970 we have tripled the total number of facilities, adding more than 1,200 new prisons to the landscape. This building boom has taken place across the country but is largely concentrated in rural southern towns. In 2007, John M. Eason moved his family to Forrest City, Arkansas, in search of answers to key questions about this trend: Why is America building so many prisons? Why now? And why in rural areas? Eason quickly learned that rural demand for prisons is complicated. Towns like Forrest City choose to build prisons not simply in hopes of landing jobs or economic wellbeing, but also to protect and improve their reputations. For some rural leaders, fostering a prison in their town is a means of achieving order in a rapidly changing world. Taking us into the decision-making meetings and tracking the impact of prisons on economic development, poverty, and race, Eason demonstrates how groups of elite whites and black leaders share power. Situating prisons within dynamic shifts that rural economies are undergoing and showing how racially diverse communities lobby for prison construction, Big House on the Prairie is a remarkable glimpse into the ways a prison economy takes shape and operates.

Das Buch vermittelt wichtige Kenntnisse für das Veranstaltungsmanagement im ländlichen Raum. Durch die geringe Bevölkerungsdichte und das besondere kulturelle Angebot im ländlichen Raum stehen Veranstaltungshallen außerhalb der großen städtischen Ballungszentren vor besonderen Herausforderungen. Im Rahmen der Case Study werden deshalb dort für Veranstaltungshallen maßgeschneiderte Geschäftsmodelle entwickelt. Mithilfe dieser Modelle können Veranstaltungshallen im ländlichen Raum wirtschaftlich erfolgreich betrieben werden. Bei der Entwicklung von Geschäftsmodellen regionaler Kulturbetriebe sind die Erarbeitung einer Marketingstrategie und die Förderung des Kulturtourismus von elementarer Bedeutung. Zusätzlich spielt auch die Auseinandersetzung mit politischen Gremien und Interessensvertretungen vor Ort eine wichtige Rolle. Im Mittelpunkt aller Überlegungen steht jedoch die Platzierung von kulturellen Highlights fernab der kulturellen Leuchtturmprojekte in Großstädten und Metropolen. Am Beispiel einer Veranstaltungshalle im ländlichen Raum wird eine Standortanalyse durchgeführt. Außerdem werden Entwicklungspotenziale aufgezeigt und ein Marketingkonzept wird erarbeitet. Mit Hilfe der vorgestellten Werkzeuge lassen sich auch für andere Kulturorganisation im ländlichen Raum Lösungen entwickeln.Die Leuphana Case Studies sind ein Projekt, das in Zusammenarbeit mit kleinen und mittelständischen Unternehmen erstellt und entwickelt worden ist. Sie sind ein Lehrbuch, mit dessen Hilfe Unternehmen, die vor ähnlichen Herausforderungen stehen, selbige bewältigen können. Dafür ist keine Hilfe von Dritten notwendig. Auf Grundlage der einzelnen Case Studies werden den Bearbeiterinnen und Bearbeitern elementare Werkzeuge aus der wissenschaftlichen Theorie erklärt. Diese können sie anwenden, um mit den Insiderkenntnissen des eigenen Unternehmens Prozesse zu optimieren, Ziele entwickeln und erreichen oder schwierige Herausforderungen zu bewältigen.

In recent decades, globalization has transformed rural societies and economies across the world. Much has been written by social scientists about the actors and structures underpinning these transformations and the effects on particular social groups, organizations and industries. Yet, to date much less attention has been given to the specific global processes that are fundamental to contemporary rural change. Rural Change and Global Processes provides a systematic analysis of the key global processes transforming rural spaces in the early 21st century – financialization; standardization; consumption, and commodification. Through detailed case studies, the book examines why these processes are important, how they work in practice, and the challenges they raise as well as opportunities created. The book will be of particular relevance to researchers, graduate students, and policy-makers interested in the implications of global processes for rural people and livelihoods.

In this age of large cities, mass culture, and ever more massive events, people must struggle against an overwhelming crowd of their own creations to maintain human integrity. In this manual for human survival, Arthur E. Morgan offers a solution: peaceful existence in the small, primary community where, more easily than anywhere else, people can find a way to live well. Ultimately striving to show that the small community is the lifeblood of civilization, this volume examines the political organization, membership, economics, health, and ethics characteristics of small communities.Like Rousseau before him, Morgan observes that we have less control over our affairs than in the past. In increasing our control of the natural environment, human beings have built a social environment so out of scale that it becomes nearly impossible for people to maintain balance. The struggle now is less with the natural order than with the social order, and preserving human integrity against the plethora of our own creations is the core problem.The need to rediscover elementary forms of human existence has been accelerated by the efficiencies of centralized control and mass persuasion. In the face of this, small communities or intimate groups become the primary pattern in which human beings must live if the good life is to be a realistic goal. The timely nature of this volume has grown as the electronic displaces the mechanical as a moral rival to human community.

This book explores how rural gender relations are changing in a globalising world that fundamentally impacts on the structure of agricultural life in rural areas and urban-rural relations. It analyses the development of rural gender relations in specific places around the world and looks into the effects of the increasing connectivity and mobility of people across places. The themes covered are: gender and mobility, gender and agriculture, Gender and rural politics, rurality and Gender identity and women and international development. Each theme has an overview of the state of the art in that specific thematic area and integrates the case-studies that follow.

Reimagining Rural: Urbanormative Portrayals of Rural Life examines the ways in which rural people and places are being portrayed by popular television, reality television, film, literature, and news media in the United States. It is also an examination of the social processes that reinforce urbanormative standards that normalize urban life and render rural life as something unusual, exotic, or deviant. This includes exploring the role of the media as agenda setting agent, informing people what and how to think about rural life. Further it includes scrutinizing the institution of formal education that promotes a homogenous urban-oriented curriculum, while in the process, marginalizing the unique characteristics of local rural communities. These contributions are some of the only studies of their kind, investigating popular cultural representations of rural life, while providing powerful evidence and unique challenges for an urban society to rethink and reimagine rural life, while confronting the many stereotypes and myths that exist.

Rural societies around the world are changing in fundamental ways, both at their own initiative and in response to external forces. The Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies examines the organisation and transformation of rural society in more developed regions of the world, taking an interdisciplinary and problem-focused approach. Written by leading social scientists from many countries, it addresses emerging issues and challenges in innovative and provocative ways to inform future policy. This volume is organised around eight emerging social, economic and environmental challenges: Demographic change. Economic transformations. Food systems and land. Environment and resources. Changing configurations of gender and rural society. Social and economic equality. Social dynamics and institutional capacity. Power and governance. Cross-cutting these challenges are the growing interdependence of rural and urban; the rise in inequality within and between places; the impact of fiscal crisis on rural societies; neoliberalism, power and agency; and rural areas as potential sites of resistance. The Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies is required reading for anyone concerned with the future of rural areas.

Reinventing Rural is a collection of original research papers that examine the ways in which rural people and places are changing in the context of an urbanizing world. This includes exploring the role of the environment, the economy, and related issues such as tourism. While traditionally relying on primary sector work in agriculture, mining, natural resources, and the like, rural areas are finding new ways to sustain themselves. This involves a new emphasis on environmental protection, as one important strategy has been to capitalize on natural amenities to attract residents and tourists. Beyond improvements to the economy are general improvements to the quality-of-life in rural communities. Consistent with this, the volume focuses on the two cornerstones of education and health, considering current challenges and offering ideas for reinventing rural quality-of-life.

The Village and Its Discontents: Meaning and Criticism in Late Modernity is a hopeful collection of essays about villages in Southeast Asia and across the world. The'village'is an idea, a construct, and a way of organising society. Villages constitute the basic unit of analyses in the arts, humanities and the social sciences, and these issues are presented through the collection of essays featured in this book. The contributors hope to generate interest in studying villages, to understand the meanings that attach themselves to the concept of the village, and to gain greater insights into multidisciplinary knowledge and analyses in today's highly developed global society.

This book, originally published in 1987, provides an integrative, analytical aproach to rural areas in advanced economies. Causation and the consequences of societal change have been emphasised, in a framework which draws out processes which oeprate at different geographical scales (and with varying intensities across space).

Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016Rural queer experience is often hidden or ignored, and presumed to be alienating, lacking, and incomplete without connections to a gay culture that exists in an urban elsewhere. Queering the Countryside offers the first comprehensive look at queer desires found in rural America from a genuinely multi-disciplinary perspective. This collection of original essays confronts the assumption that queer desires depend upon urban life for meaning.By considering rural queer life, the contributors challenge readers to explore queer experiences in ways that give greater context and texture to modern practices of identity formation. The book's focus on understudied rural spaces throws into relief the overemphasis of urban locations and structures in the current political and theoretical work on queer sexualities and genders. Queering the Countryside highlights the need to rethink notions of “the closet” and “coming out” and the characterizations of non-urban sexualities and genders as “isolated” and in need of “outreach.” Contributors focus on a range of topics—some obvious, some delightfully unexpected—from the legacy of Matthew Shepard, to how heterosexuality is reproduced at the 4-H Club, to a look at sexual encounters at a truck stop, to a queer reading of TheWizard of Oz.A journey into an unexplored slice of life in rural America, Queering the Countryside offers a unique perspective on queer experience in the modern United States and Canada.

During modernity metropolitan ruralities have been regarded as land reserves for urban expansion. However, there is a growing insight that there are limits to the urban expansion into rural areas. Signs of a new position are the awakened interest in the nature, the authentic and the simple way of living among an urban, academically educated middle class, an actual instance of which is the interest in local food but which also is manifested in rural gentrification. However, a more hardcore turn to nature is also discernible in the renewed interest for green lungs and for eco-services more broadly. In the future, local post-fossil energy may be a main concern regarding rural eco-services utilised by urban areas. We can here imagine flows and exchanges that may demand heavy societal regulation and thus be one of the main objects of future democracy. However, despite these developments urban (and rural) policy and planning is still tightly connected to the modern expansion of the urban into the rural. There are signs of new developments and paradigm shifts but these have to be strengthened to lay the ground for rural-urban resilience.

The ways we understand processes of agrarian change are pressing issues for policy makers and development practitioners. Interpreting changes in two agrarian societies in India and Indonesia, the author reveals how transformations to self are critical factors shaping change, as well as under-recognized consequences of development initiatives.

The message of Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development is clear: livelihoods approaches are an essential lens on questions of rural development, but these need to be situated in a better understanding of political economy. The book looks at the role of social institutions and the politics of policy, as well as issues of identity, gender and generation. The relationships between sustainability and livelihoods are examined, and the book situates livelihoods analysis within a wider political economy of environmental and agrarian change. Four dimensions of a new politics of livelihoods are suggested: a politics of interests, individuals, knowledge and ecology. Together, these suggest new ways of conceptualizing rural and agrarian issues, with profound implications for both thinking and action.

A textbook in Rural Sociology can follow many approaches. It may describe or analyse rural people and rural society in a particular country or culture; it may focus on one aspect of rural life and study analytically; it may deal with the rural situation in terms of specific social problems; or it may study rural society from some other point of view. This book is introductory and foundational in its approach. Its purpose is to introduce students who have been hitherto exposed almost exclusively to the natural and biological sciences, to the social sciences and specifically to Rural Sociology. It is addressed particularly to under-graduates and graduates of agriculture and related fields in India and similar developing countries of the world who intend to work directly or indirectly with rural people for their development and consequently seek to gain insight and understanding of their behaviour. Such understanding is not possible without comprehension of what goes to make up the structure of rural life and its operation and of the development of a framework which serves to analyse rural life. As an introductory textbook in Rural Sociology, this writing attempts to present students with basic concepts and principles of Rural Sociology that serve as a foundation for understanding the behaviour of rural people. These concepts and principles represent a connected set of facts and axioms in reference to which the student may organise and orient his thinking, define situations and communicate his thoughts and attitudes in respect of rural people. In doing, so he would develop a frame of reference for Rural Sociology. Such understanding and development of a frame of reference is a pre-requisite for deeper study of various aspects of rural behaviour and rural society as a whole. The author has therefore confined this introductory book to these so as to provide this essential foundation. Having done this the author had intended to devote a section of this writing to practical application of the concepts and principles presented, to programmes of promoted change for rural development, but this must perforce of circumstance be left for a later volume. The focus of presentation of the subject so as to make for comprehension and appreciation of its practical utility is of particular significance and importance to agricultural education in a developing country predominantly agricultural such as India which is involved in plans and programmes of rural development. In India, as agricultural education was stepped up with a view to accelerating development in agricultural production and other areas of rural development, it soon became evident that technical knowledge and communicating skills had to be coupled with adequate knowledge and understanding of rural people themselves if an effective strategy to promote desirable change was to be planned and implemented among them. The study of Rural Sociology hence has become a required formal course of study for all college students of agriculture and related fields.

Feminist concern with difference has rarely extended to rurality even if it is now widely recognized that experiences of inequality depend on intersections of several identities in each individual life. This lack of concern may reflect the urban background of the majority of feminist academics or at least their urban positionality once in the academy. It may equivalently be that feminists have been influenced by stereotypes of rural women as traditional and reactionary, and thus seen them as unlikely exponents of gender equality, and an unfruitful focus for scholarly energies. Perhaps the problem is a broader one, that is, reflective of the much documented, but still apparent unwillingness of many feminists to recognize and address difference in any of its manifestations. Regardless, even with the recent interest in intersectionality which has necessarily renewed and reenergized debates in feminism about diversity and inclusion, the question of how women are differently positioned because of their non-metropolitan location has remained largely overlooked.

The British countryside is a national institution; most people aspire to live there, many people use it for leisure and recreation and we can all watch rural life played out on our television screen, read about it in novels or consume its imagery in art and cinematography. The aim of this book is to explore the way that these aspirations and perceptions influence the way that the term'rural'is interpreted across different academic disciplines. Definitions of rural are not exact, leaving room for these interpretations to have a significant impact on the meanings conveyed in different areas of research and across different economic, social and spatial contexts.In this book contributors present research across a range of subjects allowing critical reflections upon their personal and disciplinary interpretations of'rural'. This resulting volume is a collection of diverse chapters that gives an emergent sense of how the notion of'rural'changes and blurs as the disciplinary lens is adjusted. In drawing together these strands, it becomes clear that human relations with rural space morph materiality into highly complex representations wherein both disadvantage and social exclusion persist within a rurality that is also commodified, consumed and cherished.

The world has been witnessing a long unfolding process of urbanization that not only has altered the structural basis of society in terms of political economy, but has also symbolically relegated rural people and life to a secondary or deviant status through an ideology of urbanormativity. Both structural and cultural changes rooted in urbanization are connected in complex ways to spatial arrangements that can be described in terms of inequality and uneven development. Through a focus on localities, Studies in Urbanormativity: Rural Community in Urban Society examines the implications of urbanization and its corresponding ideology. Urbanormativity justifies rural domination by holding urban life as the standard against which rural forms are compared and deemed to be irregular, inferior, or deviant. Urban production, as conceptualized in this book, is inherently exploitative of rural resources—natural, social, cultural, and symbolic. As this exploitation advances, a wake of entropic conditions is left behind in the forms of degraded landscapes, broken social institutions, and denigrated communities, cultures and identities. Edited by Gregory M. Fulkerson and Alexander R. Thomas, Studies in Urbanormativity engages a topic on which scholars have been surprisingly silent. Designed for advancing theory and practice, the chapters provide new theoretical tools for understanding the complex relationship between the urban and rural. While primarily intended for scholars and practitioners interested in rural life, rural policy, and community development, the insights of this book will also be of interest to scholars studying various forms of cultural and social domination, as well as identity politics.

L'agriculture se voit aujourd'hui sommée de produire plus et d'être compétitive sur les marchés mondiaux, tout en intégrant les enjeux de protection de la santé publique et de l'environnement.Les grandes cultures – systèmes agricoles intensifs spécialisés dans la production de grains – ont longtemps constitué un laboratoire pour l'industrialisation de l'agriculture. Pourtant, durant les deux dernières décennies, elles ont surtout servi de point d'appui critique à l'élaboration de modèles de production « alternatifs » situés aux marges du modèle de développement industriel qu'elles incarnent. Depuis quelques années, elles représentent à nouveau la promesse d'une agriculture à même de répondre aux nouveaux défis globaux tels que la sécurité alimentaire.Cet ouvrage étudie, dans une perspective sociologique, les mutations contemporaines des grandes cultures dans un contexte de globalisation des marchés et des pratiques agricoles. Qui sont les agriculteurs engagés dans le développement des grandes cultures, quels types de structures agricoles développent-ils, comment travaillent-ils? Quelles sont les innovations qui animent cette agriculture dite « conventionnelle »? S'agit-il de verrous technologiques qui enferment l'agriculture dans une trajectoire de standardisation et de massification, ou bien donnent-elles lieu à une pluralisation et une singularisation des modèles productifs? Comment ces modèles sont-ils élaborés et comment circulent-ils à l'échelle mondiale? Sur quels types de systèmes agroalimentaires débouchent-ils? S'appuyant sur des études de cas menées en France, en Europe et sur le continent américain, cet ouvrage contribue à éclairer les recompositions des modèles de grandes cultures face aux nouveaux défis contemporains.

This international edited collection contributes to knowledge about the geographies of sexualities experienced and imagined in rural spaces. The book draws attention to the heterogeneity of rural contexts and the diversity of meanings about sexualities within and across these spaces. The collection examines four key themes. First, ‘Intimacies and Institutions'focuses on how intimate relationships are governed by societal, discursive and institutional structures, and regulated by social, political and legal frames of citizenship and belonging. The chapters present historical and contemporary case studies of the constitution and management of intimate sexual lives and relationships in rural and non-metropolitan spaces. Second, ‘Communities'explores how sexual identities are socially-constructed and relationally-performed in rural communities, scrutinizing the complex interplay of belonging and alienation, inclusion and exclusion, for sexual subjects and communities within rural spaces. Analyzing films, literature and interviews, the chapters examine sexuality and community, and “queer” notions of rural family and community. Third, ‘Mobilities'examines movement/migration at different scales. Cross-national data provides insights into similarities and differences in rural migration and homemaking for lesbians, gay men and same-sex families. The chapters consider how movement, coming out and memories of time and place inflect home, identity and belonging for rural lesbians and gay men.Fourth, ‘Production and Consumption'investigates the commodification of rural sexualities. The chapters interrogate the management of animal bodies and sexualities in industrial agriculture for consumer pleasure and commercial ends; how heterosexuality and sexual relations are transacted in mining communities; and the global commodification of rural masculine sexualities.This book is timely. It provides important new insights about ruralities and sexualities, filling a gap in theoretical and empirical understandings about how sexualities in diverse rural spaces are given meaning. This collection begins the processes of furthering discussion and knowledge about the inherently dynamic and constantly changing nature of the rural and the multiple, varied and complex sexual subjectivities lived through corporeal experiences and virtual and imagined lives.