Reporting on a study of internet portals in rural Scotland, the paper examines the discrepancy between the much theorised use of the internet to afford external market reach to small rural firms, and the consistent and prevailing evidence that the rural economy is sustained by locally-oriented trade. The study combines data from portal operators…

Dominating strands within the research literature on second homes explain social conflicts between rural hosting and visiting second home populations by describing their differing perspectives on rural development. Such presentations suggest that locals are likely to welcome new developments in order to enhance the economic viability of their…

Farmers have traditionally been perceived as having a deep attachment to land and place that contrasts with the mobility of modern society. In this paper, we use this work as a starting point for analysing new forms of attachments among a cohort of Australian farmers who are highly mobile in their business activities. In response, we devise a new…

Research on rural youth in Russia shows that keeping qualified and ambitious young people in the rural economy will require creating conditions for young people to exercise initiative in the rural economy and diminishing the gap in quality of life between rural and urban environments. Only in this way can the pessimism of rural youth be overcome.

Discussions of forest certification have tended to characterize certification systems as a prime example of the hollowing out of the state and a shift from government to governance. The continued contention that certification is a product of a retreating state has implications for how we understand democratic participation and fails to pay…

Farming is still primarily a family concern in Australia. Having a farm successor in place is important as it is associated with the likelihood of the current farmer adapting to external conditions and hence may have long-term implications for the structure and profitability of agriculture. We used current and historical surveys across a number of…

Older blacks migrated to nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) communities in the 1990s to a degree not true of the past. Some of the nonmetro counties that attracted them are well-known retirement areas also favored by other retirees, mostly whites. Two-thirds of black retirement counties, however, are areas in the Old South that are not attracting other…

This paper provides a critical interpretation of food security politics in the UK. It applies the notion of food security collective action frames to assess how specific action frames are maintained and contested. The interdependency between scale and framing in food security discourse is also scrutinised. It does this through an examination of…

The rates of urban growth globally continue to rise, especially in small and intermediary cities and peri-urban areas of the developing world. Communities in these settings share characteristics with rural areas, in terms of continued connections with agriculture, yet with an increasing reliance of non-agricultural employment which poses…

The college-going rates of rural students lag behind those of more urban students, a gap likely due, in part, to rural students' lower educational aspirations. These lower aspirations appear to be tied to the dilemma that higher education presents for many rural students: whether to remain in their rural home, working in traditional trades and…

Special education is relatively new in Tanzania. The Irente Rainbow School (IRS) in Lushoto, Tanzania, where this ethnographic case study was conducted, is the first school for children with developmental disabilities in the area. Their curriculum stresses skills important in family life and the rural economy of Lushoto. The purpose of the study…

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…

The British colonial policy of education in the Southern Cameroons was guided by the philosophy of adapting education to the mentality, aptitude and occupations of the local population. This policy was gradually abandoned in the 1950s when it was realized that it was serving the colonial exploitative agenda of keeping natives to a permanently…

The spectre of a food security crisis has raised important questions about future directions for agriculture and given fresh impetus to a long-standing debate about the potential contribution of agricultural biotechnology to food security. This paper considers the discursive foundations for promotion of agricultural biotechnology, arguing that…

Indigenous peoples and other rural or remote populations often bear the social and environmental cost of extractive industries while obtaining little of the wealth they generate. Recent developments including national and international recognition of Indigenous rights, and the growth of "corporate social responsibility" initiatives among…