Bottled water sits at the intersection of debates regarding the social and environmental effects of the commodification of nature and the ways neoliberal globalization alters the provision of public services. Utilizing Polanyi's concept of fictitious commodities and Harvey's work on accumulation by dispossession, this article traces bottled…

Recent efforts to explain the persistence of rural poverty have made frequent use of the concept of poverty traps, understood as self-reinforcing poverty. The dynamic dimension of the poverty trap concept makes it a potentially useful tool for understanding conditions of persistent poverty, especially in circumstances where outside interventions…

Using data from two postfrontier rural settings, Nang Rong, Thailand (N = 2,538), and Chitwan Valley, Nepal (N = 876), this article examines agricultural push factors determining the out-migration of young people age 15 to 19. We focus on different dimensions of migration, including distance and duration. Our study examines a wide array of…

Poverty is a significant problem in rural America. Gaining access to economically marginalized rural populations in order to recruit individuals to participate in a research study, however, is often a challenge. This article compares three different nonprobability sampling techniques that have been used to recruit rural, low-income…

Six studies published in the 1940s have become classics in the analysis of rural community and change: the community stability/instability studies. One of their less recognized features is that their analyses included women. This article revisits these six studies, but from a different vantage point. As a socially constructed enterprise, the…

Recent advances in gas and oil drilling technology have led to dramatic boomtown development in many rural areas that have endured extended periods of economic decline. In Pennsylvania's Marcellus gas fields, the recent development of unconventional shale gas resources has not been without controversy. It has been variously framed as a major…

We explore the role of social capital in explaining patterns of rural larceny and burglary crime rates. We find consistent evidence that higher levels of social capital tend to be associated with lower levels of rural property crime rates. We also find that there is significant spatial heterogeneity in the underlying data-generating process. This…

Rural depopulation is a concern in many countries, and various policy initiatives have been taken to combat such trends. This article examines whether hidden potential for rural population growth can be found in Sweden. If such potential exists, it implies that the development prospects for many rural areas are not as unpromising as they may seem…

The term "community" has a long and contested lineage in social analysis and debate. This lineage, however, is not generally recognized in policy and public debates on community and bushfire in Australia. "Community" is thought to be central to bushfire preparedness in Australia, especially in rural areas, but what…

The Berlin Wall was one of the most visible symbols of two worlds that could not view each other. Thus, the fall of the Berlin Wall--and the fall of Communist regimes all over Eastern Europe, ultimately including the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself--removed the barrier to visibility. These events were revolutions that resulted in the end of…

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…

This article seeks to identify factors associated with the formation and development of nonmetropolitan destinations for older in-migration, thereby explaining why some U.S. counties are more likely than others to be nonmetro retirement destinations. We contend that most nonmetro retirement destinations are established and developed over time…

Despite a major expansion in the number of students in higher education, students from rural areas continue to be underrepresented at selective universities. To reduce the urban-rural imbalance of entry to selective universities, institutions in many countries of the world have implemented admission policies favoring rural students. Previous…

This article highlights the new racial and ethnic diversity in rural America, which may be the most important but least anticipated population shift in recent demographic history. Ethnoracial change is central to virtually every aspect of rural America over the foreseeable future: agro-food systems, community life, labor force change, economic…

Economic restructuring in rural areas in recent decades has been accompanied by rising marital instability. To examine the implications of the increase in divorce for the health of rural women, we examine how marital status predicts adequacy of health insurance coverage and health care access, and whether these factors help to account for the…