Drawing on data from six communities in Kansas and Iowa, we explore the factors that are related to community members' current levels of overall support for local ethanol plants. What are residents' opinions about the benefits and drawbacks of local ownership of ethanol plants? How does that awareness lead to overall support of plants? Our…

Geographical indications (GIs) are place-based names that convey the geographical origin, as well as the cultural and historical identity, of agricultural products. GIs are unique, in that they provide a means of ensuring that control over production and sales of a product stays within a local area, but at the same time they make use of extralocal…

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…

Local peoples living in protected areas often have a different understanding about their natural space than do non-local groups that promote and declare such areas "protected." By designing protected areas without local involvement, or understandings of local social differentiation and power, natural resources management schemes will…

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…

Information about 50 small-town governments in rural Vermont was analyzed to determine women's participation in town government. Results included the finding that percentage of offices held by women decreased as town size increased. Data suggested that women became politically active out of necessity and filled offices that reflected their…

Data from 92 towns in northern New York were used to examine the influence of community social-class composition on both de facto and de jure discrimination against such housing. The positive influence of population growth on mobile-home occurrence was found to be conditioned by intercommunity class composition. (JHZ)

Proposes social structural view of poverty rates as a function of local opportunity instead of individual-level focus on who is poor. Defines poverty rates as a function of industrial structure and relative power of labor in a locality. Confirms theoretical model with data from 46 South Carolina counties. (LFL)