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Lifestyles signify who people are and who people want to be. They contain one's value orientation toward the world. The speeding urbanization over the globe has made the urban lifestyle mainstream, and so does it in China. The overwhelming range of options in cities represents a consumerist society, but meanwhile, there is an emergent underground alternative, especially from the younger generations who are pursuing a "more meaningful life." This paper does an ethnographic study on young Chinese urbanites' engagement in a village as an essential example of this trend. It argues that young people's choice for rural life is a reaction and a resistance to the social forces of consumerism and urbanization. By reflecting on the reimagination of modernity and life politics in the changing process, the research implies that accompanied by opportunities for social change, young people's promotion of rural lifestyles could be linked to the government's development agenda, and this might potentially cause new forms of inequalities in rural development. By drawing on practical experience, the paper brings narratives about young Chinese urbanites' life choices in rural places into the discussion of modernity and life politics, hopefully exemplifying a broader sociological contribution around the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social science and popular media have described political polarization as a threat to democracy and effective policy. Scholars connect right/left political divides to macro‐level social divisions, such as those between rural and urban residents, environmentalists and farmers, and pro‐versus anti‐government sentiments. While previous scholars have complicated these dichotomies, political polarization scholarship often seeks out evidence of polarization without considering these complications. In addition, we know little about how polarization is affecting community responses to social problems. This paper explores the rhetoric of political and social polarization as it appears in community responses to a particular social problem, the decline of small and mid‐sized dairy farms in southern Wisconsin. During interviews, farmers, municipal leaders, and community members indeed used polarizing rhetoric and identified polarization as a problem in their communities. We argue, though, that the connections between commonly bifurcated identities, including a common attachment to the land and relationships across the rural–urban continuum, are equally important. We conclude by encouraging policy responses meant to address the fallout of the loss of mid‐sized dairy farms to draw on these connections to avoid inadvertently reinforcing political divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the social bases of environmentalism in the United States has generally found that urban residents are more concerned about the environment than rural residents. Recent research suggests this may no longer be the case, particularly in specific settings or under certain conditions. This paper examines the issue by reviewing recent survey research on rural and urban environmentalism. Tests for significant differences between urban and rural inhabitants of the Southern Appalachion Ecoregion on cognitive and behavioral dimensions of environmentalism are also conducted using data obtained from 1,239 telephone interview. Findings are consistent with previous research showing that younger people, those with higher levels of environmentalism and political liberals generally express higher levels of environmentalism. However, no significant rural-urban differences were found on several indicators of environmentalism. A range of conditions that are rapidly changing the character and composition of the region may help to explain Why the findings do not conform to the general pattern of rural-urban differences. Overall, it appears that environmentalism has broadened its appeal in rural areas, especially in communities located near national and state parks, wildlife refuges, and other outdoor recitation sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]