The social, cultural, and economic transitions in rural areas across the globe lead us to critique the traditional "top-down" or "bottom-up" distinction as being outdated for contemporary rural policy. In Europe and the United States in particular, high rates of counterurbanization heighten the need for new ways of thinking…

As rural communities undergo substantial demographic and economic changes, understanding the migration intentions and their antecedents of rural elderly persons becomes increasingly important. Using data drawn from a survey of adults from 24 rural Utah communities conducted in 2008, we examine whether rural residents 60 years of age or older plan…

A vast and growing interdisciplinary research effort has focused on the rise of the so-called New West, purportedly the product of regional socioeconomic, political, and ecological upheavals in states like Montana and Colorado. Reviewing the growing research on this problem in sociology, economics, geography, and conservation science, this article…

The remarkable growth of alternative agrifood movements--organics, fair trade, localism, Slow Food, farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture, food security, food safety, food sovereignty, anti-genetically modified organisms, animal welfare, and others--and their attraction to younger academic scholars offer a unique opportunity to explore…

Due to strict protection through the last decades, wolves have returned to many areas from which they have been absent for a long time. This is a conservation success story, but the wolves also cause conflicts wherever they arrive. We have studied the situation in southeastern Norway and in the French Alps, where the conflict patterns are similar.…

Many scholars have commented on the changing significance of farming for understanding the dynamics of social and economic change in contemporary rural America. Quantitative analyses of relationships between farming, local socioeconomic conditions, demographic trends, and policy have often relied on an indicator of "farm-dependent" (FD) counties…

The impact of economic changes on communities is not a new subject for rural sociology. However, a growing literature examines the impact of communal relations on economic action and organization. This paper contributes to this literature with an examination of entrepreneurship in an emergent resource industry ? the northwest Atlantic sea urchin…

The Emory-Obed Watershed in Tennessee, like many other rural areas throughout the United States, is experiencing changes in economic activities and social values associated with natural resources. Informed by the interactional approach to community development, this effort strove to build community capacity so community members could more fully…

A social, cultural, and often religious movement directed at improving community spiritual and material life, the cargo cult is discussed as a principle of community organization effecting positive change. This article reviews the cargo cults of Oceania and applies the concept to a small western town (Wilcox, Arizona). (JC)

Nationally oriented institutions of the developmentalist era are being replaced by globally oriented institutions under the legitimizing cloak of efficiency and financial credibility. Meanwhile, producing communities either seek niches in the global economy or resist global pressures, thereby newly emphasizing the local. Explores the conjunction…

External boom-bust forces may be so great as to overwhelm even well-prepared communities. In two oil-dependent coastal Louisiana parishes, over 90 percent of variation in total employment, 1970-88, was explained by commodity-related variables completely outside local community control. Contains 53 references. (Author/SV)

The introduction of new market institutions in former socialist countries has produced economic and social dislocations in people?s lives. Researchers have focused on the impact of these changes on inequality and poverty, but have not given much attention to changes in community relationships. Panel data from surveys of Russian rural households…

Using data covering the Presidential elections from 1956 through 1968, the study examined the extent to which partisan variability resulted from both short-term and long-term economic events preceding the Presidential election. (NQ)

Rural sociology is intrinsically concerned with spatial dimensions of social life, but this underlying research tradition and its contributions to general sociology are little recognized. Concern with space, uneven development, and social relationships of peripheral settings have provided substantive boundaries and conceptual meaning to rural…