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The international educational agenda that drives the educational expansion in the Global South makes universalist assumptions about the role of education in reducing poverty and promoting social mobility. Challenging these assumptions, this paper asks whether educational expansion in such contexts reduces social inequality across generations by offering individuals, from whatever background, educational opportunities and access to higher status livelihoods. By using Weberian and Bourdieusian theoretical frameworks, and drawing upon the perspectives of the families in rural Punjab, the paper contributes to the literature by revealing how local rural power relations in landownership, caste systems, religious identity, and political patronage, and their manifestation in the cultural realm, enact a form of social closure that closes off resources and opportunities for the disadvantaged to pursue social mobility through schooling. These power relations not only place limits on the assumed equalizing role of education in rural Punjab, but they also tend to perpetuate inequality in and through education. The paper argues that a sociological understanding of the role that education plays in the everyday rural life is crucial for designing a nuanced educational agenda capable of engaging with, rather than assuming away social and economic inequality in hierarchal societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northern New Mexico was uniquely vulnerable to the COVID‐19 pandemic and its fallout. Its Hispanic majority, aging population, and decreased access to healthcare put many of the communities in this area of the United States at risk. Taos County was particularly at increased risk of impact from COVID‐19. The county was also more vulnerable to the economic consequences of a pandemic due to reliance on tourism; this meant major impacts for individual households. As unemployment and poverty increased—and pandemic relief program rollouts floundered—the consequences meant precarity for many families. One of the most visible impacts of the pandemic was the inability to access affordable housing. This paper, based on 58 in‐depth interviews and 5 months of participant observation, explores experiences of homelessness and housing insecurity among an already vulnerable population during the pandemic, illustrating the ways in which many people struggled. Importantly, this paper explores differences in patterns of housing insecurity among rural White and rural Hispanic participants during the COVID‐19 pandemic. In addition, this paper advocates the importance of looking at nuanced patterns of dealing with housing precarity in the rural setting as the ways in which different populations cope impact the forms of help that are needed when housing becomes a problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alabama's forest products industry plays a dominant role in the state's rural economy. Examination of how access to employment opportunities is distributed provides insight into how the benefits of this industry are distributed. Based on a combination of available secondary data and semi-structured interviews with management and workers in the pulp and paper sector of Alabama's forest products industry, a clear picture of segmented labor markets emerges in which structural and cultural factors determine access to certain jobs. The evolution of these highly segmented labor markets is traced from deep roots in racial discrimination to contemporary efforts in support of affirmative anion. Increased use of sub-contracting in logging, hauling, and mill work represents the must recent change affecting the structure of labor markets associated with the production of pulp and paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media stories highlighted accounts of migration away from city centers towards more rural destinations during the COVID‐19 pandemic, but systematic research about how the pandemic changed migration in more rural destinations is only starting to emerge. This paper relies on U.S. Postal Service change‐of‐address data to describe whether and how established domestic migration systems changed during the COVID‐19 pandemic, focusing on differences across the rural–urban gradient and by outdoor recreation resources. We find little evidence of massive urban exodus. We do find that out‐migration from rural counties declined post‐pandemic onset and has stayed low in the 3 years since, stemming the tide of net population loss in many rural places. Most rural counties that experienced net population loss prior to the pandemic saw either less net loss or net gains during the pandemic. Rural recreation counties experienced greater gains through both decreased out‐migration and increased in‐migration in the first year of the pandemic; but by year three, differences between rural recreation and non‐recreation counties had balanced. Overall, counties across Rural America saw notable change to pre‐pandemic migration patterns. This shift may benefit rural areas through long‐term population stability and/or growth but might also exacerbate housing and childcare shortages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evictions are commonplace in the United States, and their negative consequences are broad and severe. However, research on evictions to date has focused primarily on urban areas, and thus has not addressed the impact evictions have on rural renters. This paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of evictions in rural communities, where the number of renters has been increasing in recent decades. We use Eviction Lab's national eviction database to study the approximately 220,000 evictions filed in rural counties each year. While the majority of rural evictions affect families with a white head of household (57 percent in 2010), eviction filing rates are four times higher among rural Black renters than among rural white renters. Eviction filing rates are highest in heavily Black counties in the rural southeast. While eviction filings are somewhat lower in rural majority‐Hispanic counties, these communities experience low‐quality informal housing and overcrowding. Eviction rates are also higher in rural counties with higher rent burdens and where more households include children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper aims to explore the role of subsistence farming in Hungary by reviewing the literature, analyzing the primary data from a representative survey conducted in 2018 in Hungary and presenting two case‐studies. According to European and national‐level policy analysis, subsistence farming is a cornerstone of European agriculture, as it is a central element of a positive rural image. The paper is based on earlier theories on subsistence farming, and argues that it is worth analyzing the different factors influencing subsistence farming in order to better understand the motivations of participating in this kind of activity. The paper analyses the role of five different factors on subsistence farming: economic, societal, policy, discursive, and sustainability factors, and argues that, although all five factors are important in order to understand the phenomenon, economic and policy factors are the most important in this type of activity, while sustainability is almost imperceptible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In this paper, we reflect on our collective experiences engaging with Anishinaabe Tribal Nations in the Great Lakes region to support Tribal sovereignty in decision‐making for food, energy, and water (FEW) systems. In these diverse experiences, we find common lessons. The first set of lessons contributes new empirical knowledge regarding the challenges and opportunities that rural Great Lakes Tribal Nations navigate for enacting sovereignty in decision‐making. Our experiences illustrate that while Tribal Nations benefit from a broad and deep commitment to sovereignty and many cultural strengths, they are often challenged by shortages in administrative capacity; technical support; and embeddedness in economic, socio‐cultural, and institutional dynamics that must be further negotiated for Tribes to enact the sovereignty to which they are inherently (and legally) entitled. Productive partnerships struggle when university partners fail to acknowledge these realities. The second set of lessons addresses the potential for, and challenges of, effective engagement processes. We find that engagement with university professionals is often mismatched with the priorities and needs of Tribal Nations. Effective engagement with Tribal Nations requires practical knowledge, applied assistance, and grounded, genuine relationships; these requirements often run counter to the institutional structures and priorities imposed by universities, federal funding agencies, and student recruitment. These findings, associated with both empirical knowledge and lessons on process, highlight shared insights on formidable barriers to effective engagement. Based on our firsthand experience working with rural Tribal Nations on FEW decision‐making, we share these reflections with particular focus on lessons learned for professionals who engage, or hope to engage, with Tribal Nations in rural settings and offer opportunities to transform engagement processes to better support the immediate, practical needs of rural Tribal Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imaginaries of empty, verdant lands have long motivated agricultural frontier expansion. Today, climate change, food insecurity, and economic promise are invigorating new agricultural frontiers across the circumpolar north. In this article, I draw on extensive archival and ethnographic evidence to analyze mid‐twentieth‐century and recent twenty‐first‐century narratives of agricultural development in the Northwest Territories, Canada. I argue that the early frontier imaginary is relatively intact in its present lifecycle. It is not simply climactic forces that are driving an emergent northern agricultural frontier, but rather the more diffuse and structural forces of capitalism, governmental power, settler colonialism, and resistance to those forces. I also show how social, political, and infrastructural limits continue to impede agricultural development in the Northwest Territories and discuss how smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities differently situate agricultural production within their local food systems. This paper contributes to critical debates in frontiers and northern agriculture literature by foregrounding the contested space between the state‐driven and dominant public narratives underpinning frontier imaginaries, and the social, cultural, and material realities that constrain them on a Northwest Territories agricultural frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource extraction relies on human interaction with the underground, often near rural communities. Yet, little research has explored localized, place‐based relationships to the underground and subsequent concerns tied to proposed energy activities. This paper highlights the importance of place in localized risk perceptions of proposed shale exploration in two rural communities in the United Kingdom. Through qualitative case studies we examine how senses of place and place‐based knowledges are shaped by underground landscapes. Further, we explore how these inform local risk perceptions of shale gas exploration. Our findings demonstrate how senses of place and place‐based knowledges in each community are embedded in local rural culture that stretches back multiple generations, and are at least in part rooted in human connections to, and understanding of, the subsurface. Connections between surface and underground aspects of places create concerns about distinctiveness, which heighten residents' perceptions of more generalized shale gas risks. The research findings broaden our understanding of how places encompass both surface and underground landscapes, with significant implications for risk perceptions in energy contexts. These findings raise important questions for incorporating place‐based and plural sets of knowledge in risk management and decision‐making for future underground energy projects that contribute to net‐zero strategies. [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]

This paper draws from a dataset focusing on two rural communities in Colorado (USA). Data collection occurred over two periods: late‐2019 and again during COVID‐19 lockdowns in mid‐2020. The communities differed demographically: one had a growing minoritized population, especially among its youth; the other was overwhelmingly white. The paper troubles the concept of subjective wellbeing (SWB) as it asks about the productive potentials of discomfort, with assistance from such concepts as colorblind ideology, motivated reasoning, and network homophily. While important to think about so‐called positive emotional states in the context of community development, we must also ask questions like, "SWB for who and at whose expense?" How respondents thought about individual‐ and community‐level SWB had much to do with the social networks they were in. I also explore why the community that fared pandemic‐related disruptions, from a SWB standpoint, better than the other performed worse during this same period from an economic (material) standpoint. Sociological factors explain these dynamics, which are leveraged to enhance our understanding of how to conceptualize community development in productive ways. In sum, I argue that certain expressions of discomfort have value and are therefore necessary for creating resilient, flourishing, and, ultimately, just communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether consumers in Scotland's remote areas suffer from food prices that are higher than the average national prices (i.e., whether a "remoteness premium" exists). The question has been raised by several organizations in those communities looking at the high prices in local stores. This paper provides a new perspective using actual purchasing prices of a sample of 5,252 households in Scotland for 2017 and 2018. In this way, households' ability to shop for lower prices is considered, unlike in previous studies. An expensiveness index was computed to measure the expensiveness of food at household level and control for differences in quality. It showed that consumers in remote areas pay a small premium (0.3 to 0.4 percent) with respect to average prices, which is statistically significant but economically not relevant. To understand the effect of several factors, AHEI was regressed on a number of explanatory variables including local area characteristics and household demographics and consumers' shopping strategy. The results were used to simulate three hypothetical scenarios related to impact of changes in the population's age, access to discount stores, and social deprivation on food expensiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on the restructuring of the financial industry from local banks to interstate conglomerates has raised questions about the impact on nonmetropolitan economies. In this paper, we develop two competing hypotheses and scrutinize the impact of local bank concentration (percent banks that are locally headquartered) on four measures of economic growth from 1980 to 2010 in metropolitan, micropolitan, and non‐core Commuting Zones (CZs). We employ fixed effects panel regression models for the 1980–2010 time frame. We find that local bank concentration is positively related to business births and establishment dynamics in non‐core and micropolitan CZs. The effects of local banking on measures of income and wages fail to show consistent effects. There are no positive local banking concentration effects on economic growth in metropolitan CZs during this time frame. Implications for theory, research, and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate how rurality is performed in online community groups, attending in particular to outdoor recreation and engagement with local nature. The starting point for our performative approach is that when places are digitally mediated, the technological intermediary is never innocent or neutral. Methodologically, we conducted an online ethnography in 20 rural community groups on Facebook during one full year, collecting every post and associated comment threads relating to outdoor recreation and other forms of engagement with local nature. An iterative, heuristic coding process was employed to engage with and further develop existing performative approaches to the sociological study of rural places. Distinguishing throughout between staged and quotidian performances, our findings detail how the routines, pleasures, and tasks of everyday rural life are performed online. Important distinctions that emerge from this include routines that are given vis‐à‐vis those that are in‐the‐making; pleasures based on impression and expression respectively; and tasks relating to carework and sharework. The paper contributes valuable new insights regarding the performance of rurality in the age of the everyday Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of economic restructuring, many rural communities are struggling to provide adequate fire and emergency services across their communities. Subsequent population loss, the destabilization of local tax‐bases, and an increased demand from work and family have left local fire departments at a loss for personnel and support. In this context, rural Georgia communities look to nearby prisons to provide incarcerated persons to work as local firefighters and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) to stabilize rural emergency services. In this paper, I examine the narrative accounts that officials who employ, manage, or work alongside incarcerated workers who are trained to respond locally as firefighters and EMTs and ask why incarcerated workers are looked to for this type of work in spite of the challenges associated with the program. Officials describe turning to the state prison system as the only viable option to make their communities and fire departments safe. These findings further illuminate the relationship between racial capitalism, carceral infrastructure, and emergency services as rural communities turn to the false promise of prisons and all‐hazard incarcerated firefighters to keep their communities safe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequality in homeownership is a major component of ethno‐racial stratification. Previous studies demonstrate large ethno‐racial differences in access and outcomes throughout the home buying process at both the individual and neighborhood levels. An underlying assumption in these studies is that neighborhood ethno‐racial disparities in lending are similar across neighborhood spatial types. However, mortgage lending disparities are unclear when examining the neighborhood's racial composition across urban, suburban, and rural communities. This paper draws on annual data from the American Housing Survey and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) from 2018 and 2019 to assess loan outcome disparities by neighborhood type and racial composition. I show that applicant disparities in loan outcomes vary when factoring the neighborhood's spatial type and racial composition. Borrowers seeking a mortgage in predominantly minority rural communities are more likely to be denied a mortgage than borrowers applying across all other neighborhood type and racial composition. The trends for urban communities are similar to suburban communities across adverse loan outcomes. When comparing the community's racial composition and neighborhood type, the observed lending pattern provides evidence of constrained mortgage access in rural areas, especially among minority rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we assess the relationship between how women access the land they farm, and their farming identities, roles, and future succession plans. Utilizing a Bourdieusian approach, we conceptualize inheritance of farmland as a long‐term process of symbolic and economic investment. We conducted a cohort analysis of women living or working on farms in Scotland, UK who (a) were or were not raised on farms; and (b) bought into or inherited agricultural land (directly or through their spouses). Data comprised on‐line survey responses, qualitative interviews and focus groups. Analysis demonstrated that women who were raised on farms and either inherited farms or established new farms, were more likely to identify themselves as farmers, engage in machinery work and identify female successors. Women who accessed farmland through marriage tended to engage in more home‐making tasks, to identify themselves as farmers' wives, and to occupy larger farms. These largest, potentially most viable farms thus continue to be inherited by men. However, when women inherit farms, a step change occurs, where daughters are much more likely to be identified as future successors. Enabling women raised on farms to inherit and/or establish new farms is thus critical to altering patriarchal succession cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the contribution of "The New World of Work" to farming, a career often viewed as unattractive among youth, and, as highlighted by the "young farmer problem" in the literature. This paper draws upon research on the role of "new ways of working" in work engagement and farmer identity among young farmers. A mixed‐method approach is used based on data from two Mediterranean Islands, Crete and Cyprus. Based on the polymedia‐ new theory of digital media, the study focuses both on new media use and new media engagement for work‐related tasks. Our findings highlight that the "The New World of Work" is an important phenomenon for initiating positive change toward cohesive social‐self in a career (subjective perception of a farming career concerning others). However, we identified binary terms used by farmers when explaining conflicts between cohesive self‐concept (expression of a strong sense of self regarding their farming career) and social‐self in a career. The study concludes that the duality between career self‐concepts and social‐self still holds patterns even among young generation farmers, regardless of their integration level to new media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With one‐third of rural areas in the United States living in persistently high poverty, churches are some of the most prolific—and often only—sources of resource‐provision in rural places. This paper qualitatively examines the complex role that churches play as resource providers in rural areas. Further, we examine the ways churches are helpful and/or harmful in meeting the needs of those experiencing vulnerability. We fuse hegemonic Christianity with social exclusion and neoliberalism to argue that rural people may not only experience ostracization and othering, but can also lose access to already‐limited resources in rural areas as a result. Using community‐based action research, ethnography, 47 semi‐structured interviews, and research participant‐driven photography from a town we call Gordon, we find that while churches are important resource‐providers, they perpetuate hegemonic Christianity, hold exclusionary power, and act as critical gatekeepers for resources. This often results in ostracization and jeopardizes resource provision for those most vulnerable. This is a critical finding that demonstrates the complexity of resource provision, church influence, and rurality. We highlight participants' suggestions for ways to expand services in rural places without solely relying on religious organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civic engagement involves active participation in political and nonpolitical contexts in one's community. Research consistently demonstrates that sociodemographic factors, neighborhood context, community size, and media use are all important antecedents of robust civic engagement. This paper focuses on the intersection between these latter two factors. My paper draws on multiple streams of research in the rural sociology and communication literature to develop a theoretical framework where rural individuals' use of local media promotes greater civic engagement. Using data from the 2018 Local News Survey, results show that the use of local newspapers and online news websites for local news and information leads to a higher probability of participation in local activities and local groups in one's community. However, results also show that getting local news and information from traditional formats such as local TV stations may no longer be associated with an increased probability of being an active citizen in rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural shrinking is an ongoing phenomenon in many parts of Europe. Against this backdrop neo‐endogenous rural development has been gaining support as a conceptual and policy approach which stress the combination of local and external actors, resources and forces for enhancing an integrated development of rural areas. Within this governance framework rural social enterprises have been stressed as potential key actors contributing to rural development. This paper explores, through 36 semi‐structured interviews with diverse stakeholders of two Irish community‐based rural social enterprises, the role of these organizations in contributing to a neo‐endogenous development. Our findings show how their mobilization of the social attachment of their members, their collective character and their delivery of tangible results have been key to develop collaborative dynamics with stakeholders from different sectors and situated at various spatial scales. Moreover, these organizations have accommodated global‐exogenous forces buffering their effects through locally‐focused solutions which address the needs of their rural communities, despite their incapacity to address the causes of these global‐exogenous trends. We conclude that rural community‐based social enterprises can play a relevant role in contributing to neo‐endogenous development, however, institutional frameworks that address the diversity of rural areas and that enhance balanced collaborations among different rural development stakeholders are a precondition to unlock their potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key issues in collective action is whether stakeholders are able to realize commons governance through a trust‐based mode or control‐based mode. This paper, examines whether trust and control affect the commons governance for small‐scale irrigation facilities, and the moderating effects of group size on the relationship between trust and control and cooperative performance. The data were collected from 504 households who participated in the collective action for small‐scale irrigation facilities in Shaanxi, Gansu Province, and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of Northwest China. The analysis was performed by Structural Equation modeling and hierarchical regression. The findings show that trust and control are contrasting forces that influence the participation degree and the cooperative performance, although their relationship is not of a simple supplementary character but could be moderated by the group size. Both trust‐based and control‐based modes of irrigation management are effective in small groups, whereas only a control‐based mode of management has an effect in big groups. The theoretical contribution of this paper clarifies the mechanisms through which the contrasting forces of group size are exerted on trust and control, directly and indirectly influences the participation degree and the cooperative performance in commons governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the conditions that emerge as regional Australia becomes increasingly immersed in international markets, global and local political shifts, and changing environmental conditions. In the Liverpool Plains region, farmers are deeply reliant on global export markets. Meanwhile, global demand for Australian minerals continues to produce both economic development and environmental degradation. In this context, farmers are drawing on transnational and national social movements to collectively construct their knowledge of risk and "organized irresponsibility" and resist environmental risk by positioning themselves as a part of a cosmopolitan public. While consistently evaluating risks associated with a proposed coal mine, farmers see themselves as having an ethical responsibility as food producers to provide for increasing global populations in a precarious world. These conditions are productive of new risks, identities, as well as new forms of critical, collective practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that citizens' support for environmental policies depends on their economic interest and the community that one lives in, has been debated extensively in the environmental attitudes literature. However, this literature has not differentiated between separate policy dimensions that concern measures that affect specific groups in different ways. This paper differentiates between a nature/agriculture dimension that divides those who prioritize the agrarian interest from those who prioritize the protection of nature and a climate/energy dimension that divides those who prioritize industrial interest from those who prioritize fighting climate change, using a new survey in the Netherlands (N = 11,327). This two‐dimensional model meets three criteria: scalability, validity, and utility. Scalability is shown by factor analysis and Mokken scaling. Validity is shown by regression analyses that show that whether one lives in a rural or an urban community predicts one's position on the nature/agriculture dimension and that one's financial security predicts one's position on the climate/energy dimension. The utility is shown by regression analyses where the two dimensions are used to predict voting behavior. The Green Party voters favor nature and climate protection, the Liberal Party voters have the opposite views, the Christian‐Democrats favor agricultural interests and the Freedom Party favor industrial interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern agricultural farms offer huge potential in creating employment opportunities, which, in turn, are expected to reduce fertility. The Ethiopian government has recently leased out millions of hectares of farmland to investors under highly concessionary terms. However, little is known regarding women's farm employment effect on their fertility. Using survey data, this paper analyzed this link in the context of Saudi Star and Merti Agricultural Development farms. Results showed lower odds of fertility intention among employed women compared to non‐employed women where employment is measured more broadly. This result at a glance appears to be consistent with conventional theory which considers children as resulting from parental choice relative to other essential household goods constrained by resource shortages in the household's utility maximization framework. Where employment is measured rather narrowly (standard way) as in most socioeconomic research, however, the odds of fertility intention is higher. The two results were expected to be reversed since fertility was expected to be lower where employment is measured more narrowly than broadly where a range of employments are included. Additionally, effects associated with the recent establishment of Saudi Star farm compared to the more matured farms in Merti are likely to reduce fertility intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1998, more than 6,000 public schools have closed in rural U.S. counties. Very little research considers how these school closures impact the future growth (or decline) of rural communities. Given rural schools' importance to parents, local labor markets, and civic life, closures could trigger or reinforce population loss. On the other hand, the configuration of schools may simply be a consequence of population loss and not a cause. This paper tests these hypotheses using records from the Common Core of Data (CCD) and U.S. Census. Employing an instrumental variable analysis that exploits exogenous variation in school district boundaries and a difference‐in‐difference design that groups counties by propensity scores, I find that school closures induce population loss in many—but not all—cases. Specifically, counties with the lowest propensities to close schools experience the largest negative effects on population. This finding suggests that policymakers often overlook potentially important unintended consequences of school consolidation in rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature has often used the term "populism" as a sensitizing concept to inquire the increasing relevance of right‐wing political organizations in Western countries, specifically in rural areas and marginalized territories (e.g., deindustrialized districts). The spread of populism appears as a consequence of the multidimensional failure of globalized neoliberal capitalist promises of prosperity. In this frame, the current climate agenda is challenged because it is perceived as a source of socio‐territorial marginalization and depletion. Local oppositions against green facilities in rural areas and right‐populist political forces seem to converge in a common discursive frame. The paper proposes some considerations on the "energy populism" by exploring the phenomenon in France (in Occitanie) and Italy (in Basilicata). The comparison allows us to discuss and problematize the possible links between the reception of renewable policies in rural areas and the attempt of populist movements to become spokesmen for local resistance. The main hypothesis is that the sense of dispossession and non‐involvement perceived by the rural population on renewables finds in the populist rhetoric a coherent and effective discursive framework to represent their issues. However, research suggests that the link between local opposition to renewables and populist organizations is weak and instrumental. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of neo‐populist parties in Western countries is a current issue in social sciences. Over the past two decades, and with increasing emphasis in recent years, a notable body of research has been preoccupied with explaining the complex relationship between populism and places. This paper fits in this literature and is aimed at verifying the role played by territorial inequalities and the urban‐rural divide on voting preferences in Italy. Through a detailed statistical analysis carried out at the municipal scale, we hereby compare recent trends in national (2013, 2018) and European (2019) Elections with socioeconomic and demographic data to shed light on the drivers of political change. In particular, we focus on the two main Italian parties labeled as populist: the Lega and the Movimento 5 Stelle. Analyses show that support for such parties is only partially related to rural areas, territorial inequalities, and place peripherality, highlighting the need for a more comprehensive explanation of the neo‐populist surge. Accordingly, we argue that besides demand‐side factors, other supply‐side ones should be considered, especially in Italy, where electoral behaviors are embedded in diverse local geopolitical histories that still play an important role in orienting voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to identify how rural digitalization influences social innovation in the context of the Global South. Using qualitative research methods, we examine two cases of digitalization in rural areas in Indonesia, which represent differing types of digital technologies and economic activities. Our findings show that the use of digital technologies in livelihood strategies stimulates new social and institutional practices in rural areas. As digital technologies that are adopted differ in both cases, the complexity of adoption and the digital literacy and skills required also vary. Such a complexity generates challenges and hardships for the community, but at the same time, it provides room for expedited learning and urges them to fight the challenges collectively. This nurtures reflexivity between agents and stimulates the legitimation of new practices regarding the adoption of digital technologies and their ability to solve social problems. Cultural values clearly play an essential role in this process. Openness and courage to change facilitate agents to build legitimacy, whereas strong cultural values tend to maintain existing practices in a community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nations in the global South have developed hydropower projects at a rapid pace in recent decades, most notably Brazil and China. These projects have long‐documented impacts on social and ecological systems, yet the implications of hydropower for human well‐being and health are not fully understood. In this paper, we examine eight Brazilian Amazon communities in the Madeira river basin, near the Jirau and Santo Antônio dams (sample size: 536 households). We evaluate how impacts on community resources, social capital, and the experience of resettlement influence self‐rated health in these communities. Results suggest that the dams strained community resources and social capital, which were associated with reductions in self‐rated health. In particular, cognitive social capital (i.e., trust) is lower after the dams' construction. The effect of resettlement and compensation is more nuanced and qualified. This work suggests that hydropower projects have broad deleterious impacts on well‐being and health of human populations in hosting regions and that better directed efforts are required on the part of dam developers to reduce these negative outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural resource development, both extractive (oil, gas, mining, and timber) and non‐extractive (tourism, real estate, outdoor recreation), has been found to negatively impact economic prosperity in rural America. One mechanism recently proposed for why this occurs is high levels of labor market concentration, or oligopsony. Oligopsony occurs when there are few employers within a labor market and can lead to suppressed wages and a power imbalance between employers and workers. In this paper, we test the moderating effect of labor market concentration on the relationship between natural resource development and per capita income and poverty in rural America from 2010 to 2016. By comparing results between extractive and non‐extractive development, as well as manufacturing, we show that labor market concentration attenuates the beneficial relationship observed at low levels of specialization in natural resources—particularly for extractive forms of development. Further, by finding no significant relationship between manufacturing specialization and economic prosperity, nor any moderating effect of labor market concentration in the case of manufacturing, we demonstrate that natural resource development and labor market concentration have a unique relationship with rural American economic prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, performance metrics and digital technologies have gained substantial support to advance on‐farm sustainability. The combined use of metrics and digital technologies represents a potentially important shift in agricultural sustainability governance, which has largely been dominated by the use of standards and certification. Focusing on the U.S. context, this paper examines the operationalization of the emerging metrics and data (M&D) approach to sustainability governance in food and agriculture. Specifically, we analyze the factors undergirding the growing usage of an M&D approach to sustainability, the structure, and practices of such an approach as well as the roles and implications for key actors in agrifood systems. Our analysis indicates that although an M&D approach to an agricultural sustainability transition potentially addresses some of the critiques and limitations associated with the use of standards and certification and has the growing support of a range of stakeholders, it also faces numerous challenges. These include a lack of incentives and insufficient value for growers, concerns over data ownership and access, and barriers to the translation of data into changes in grower management and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American youth from rural backgrounds have made great strides to overcome challenges in college enrollment and completion since the 2000s. Yet little is known about how rural youth are financing these attainment increases—a pressing question in light of high college costs, rising student debt, and spatial inequality in the resources that students have to pay for college. This paper examines disparities in young adults' student debt by geographic background using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort. Regression analyses reveal that college‐goers from rural backgrounds accumulate more debt than those from suburban and urban backgrounds, adjusting for differences in sociodemographic characteristics. Rural college‐goers' higher debt can be partially attributed to differences in socioeconomic backgrounds and rates of inter‐county migration during college, and there is evidence that the additive influences of geographic background and gender contribute to particularly high debt among rural women. The findings suggest that longstanding spatial inequalities contribute to disparities in student debt and raise questions about the experiences of rural youth and communities in a debt‐based society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the public conversation surrounding two failed technology businesses in rural Vermont communities, documenting a particular techno‐development discourse. Engaging with the literatures of rural development and science and technology studies (STS), the paper frames this discourse as a mechanism of power exercised by private capital. It analyzes how perspectives shared in news and social media functioned to attribute financial, technological, and moral authority to developers while dividing communities and scapegoating the state. Our work highlights the need for scholars to be conscious of techno‐development discourses that prioritize capital interests over community interests. Rather than using hegemonic conceptualizations of technology, we advocate for development that advances more flexible, local understandings of technology. And rather than centering high‐tech development as a vehicle for extending prosperity across space, we propose that greater attention be paid to extending high wages across industrial sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversification in agriculture could ensure the survival of farming by broadening the income base of farms and encouraging agricultural sustainability. The diversification of on‐farm activities may depend on socioeconomic and environmental characteristics. Although multifunctionality is a hotly debated topic, few papers have focused on the farm characteristics that influence diversification and none have focused on the influence of the spatial pattern. This paper examines the relationship between farm characteristics and the adoption of a specific type of diversification. An econometric model is presented that uses a spatial autoregressive lag model at the municipal scale. The results demonstrate that the activation of each diversification dimension is influenced by both internal and external factors, encompassing farmers' characteristics, the farm structure, and territorial features, including regional and spatial patterns. Deepening is mainly influenced by the farmer's age, education, and the presence of small and labor‐intensive farms. The key factors for broadening diversification are the presence of small farms and farms with mixed production (breeding and crop cultivation). Regrounding is most affected by the labor‐intensive farms in the area and the farms with mixed production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current polarizing political climate, what constitutes just has become increasingly questioned and debated in the public arena. Tyrants seem everywhere to shape people's understanding of who belongs in communities and nation‐states and, therefore, who should be given a voice and what should be valued. This paper unpacks the mechanisms of tyranny and the pursuit of justice in the global agri‐food system. The first section discusses justice and tyranny as sociological concepts and practice, followed by the second section that examins two types of tyrannies in the globalized agri‐food system: neoliberal capitalism and community. I argue that neoliberal capitalism and community are the logics for organizing social relations and the sites of enacting tyrannies and justice. Third, I argue that in the tension between capitalism and community in achieving justice, rural becomes critical both theoretically and empirically for understanding the current transformations and the future challenges for transforming agri‐food systems. Finally, the paper concludes with possible contributions of rural sociological imaginations to shaping the discourse of justice and explore the process of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes the case that justice scholarship cannot adequately account for the rural grievances that helped launch Trump to the presidency. This relative blind spot in the literature offers an opportunity for rural sociologists and rural studies scholars more generally to elevate their relevance in the academy and beyond. From late‐2012 to late‐2017, I traversed the state of Colorado interviewing and participating alongside non metro residents from its 24 "rural" and 23 "frontier" counties—the latter designation refers to those counties with a population density of six or fewer persons per square mile (the state has 64 counties in total). The argument is informed by 129 face‐to‐face interviews with residents from across these 47 counties. An additional 144 participant observation‐related conversations help further inform the argument. After explaining why rural grievances driving much of today's populism remains a problem for justice scholarship, I document injustices experienced among those interviewed, categorizing them along the three axes of distribution, recognition, and representation. I then offer tentative suggestions for building recognition and empathy between metro and non metro Coloradans. The paper concludes discussing its limitations and the next steps for future scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and social movements have long studied how cooperative values of solidarity and democracy can spill over to the rest of the society. However, such studies have failed to develop a sociospatial theory of solidarity. Focusing on two types of agricultural cooperatives in Cuba, this paper draws on recent geography literature on solidarity to explore the sociospatial dimensions of cooperative solidarity. We find that cooperatives represent a crucial nexus between grassroots, lived community‐based solidarity practices and top‐down, multiscalar, organized solidarities and act as transformers between mechanical and organic solidarity. Cooperatives may lose their capacity for catalyzing solidarity if market pressure disturbs the sociospatial entanglement of grassroots and top‐down efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in 1980, and due to a number of significant court decisions, legislative initiatives and international economic agreements, there has been an increase in the importance and use of intellectual property mechanisms, such as patents, in protecting biological materials, including seeds and engineered crop traits. The trend originated in the U.S. but has since diffused to OECD and non‐OECD nations. A parallel but related set of policies designed to promote the patenting of university and federally funded research discoveries has also become evident in the U.S. and globally. In this paper, we discuss the trend toward more restrictive IP protections in agriculture through national‐level policies and international economic agreements especially for new plant varieties. We then present the case of plant science research in Taiwan, including interviews with 15 plant scientists, to illustrate how transnational trends can impact and interact with national level policies and practices. And, how research scientists can play critical roles in furthering or retarding the progression of the proprietary research model in plant science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revise the concept of neolocalism by showing how companies that sex up rural places update and add novel nuances to neolocalist marketing. As the positive aspects drawn from tradition, stories and history are at the center of neolocalism, we aim to highlight how the usually negatively perceived images of the rural may be turned into something positive, trendy, desirable, and eventually sexy in the marketing of rural areas and businesses. The data of this study consists of nine company interviews and four consumer focus groups (n = 17). Our findings show how three features—namely, the hybridization of rural and urban, generational experience of millennials, and minimalist visualization—combined construct ideas for new image creation for rural areas. The concept of sexing up places ushers in new possibilities for rural actors and regions by reducing the distinction between rural and urban via visual imagery that is a particularly good match for the generational experience of the millennials. In this way, the study offers a novel way to tackle the challenges faced by rural areas, such as depopulation and image loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural resource dependence, although commonly invoked in natural resource sociology, has often been ambiguously defined. Communities are frequently described as dependent on natural resource development, but limited attention has been paid to what that means. In the literature, resource dependence is often treated as over‐specialization in, or over‐reliance upon, the natural resource sectors. However, the logic of over‐specialization conceptually grounds dependence in poor economic outcomes. Thus, a one‐dimensional typology of dependence based on a threshold of the share of development in the natural resource sector—as commonly used—does not fully capture the concept and risks tautology. In this paper, I address this ambiguity by formally defining natural resource dependence as over‐specialization in the natural resource sectors. I then present an ideal typology, known as the Natural Resource Community Typology, and a corresponding classification scheme for rural communities in the United States. The typology integrates both extractive and non‐extractive natural resource activity and has two dimensions—the level of development and the level of economic prosperity—and six mutually exclusive categories—extractive specialized, extractive dependent, non‐extractive specialized, non‐extractive dependent, hybrid specialized, and hybrid dependent. I classify counties from 2000 to 2015 and find that while extractive dependence decreased over the study period, non‐extractive dependence increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil and natural gas activity has grown dramatically over the last decade around the United States because, in part, of increased use of unconventional technologies like hydraulic fracturing. Social scientists have examined the broad array of impacts of this growth to communities disproportionately impacted by activity. This paper contributes to that work by using survey and qualitative interviews to examine the experiences of Coloradans with harm created by oil and gas activity when they live adjacent to production or extraction sites. Using a green criminological and critical criminological framing, our findings illuminate that Coloradans in these samples experienced persistent and patterned harm from oil and gas activity to which they lived proximate. Additionally—paralleling criminological literature on street crime—our findings indicate that official state records on harm prevalence is likely inaccurate and that, instead, a "dark figure" of harm exists. This results because of underreporting of harm by those who experience it which occurs in part, at least for those in our sample, because of a lack of trust or sense of fairness in the regulatory process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural immigrants, including return migrants, introduce new beliefs, ideas, cultures, and behavioral styles, which can serve as new blood to rural areas. The aim of the present paper is to attach an additional meaning to this metaphoric expression, demonstrating that return migrants are more prosocial than others in rural regions, thereby enhancing rural social capital in the short and long run. A questionnaire survey was conducted, and data from a total of 250 participants were collected from a rural village in Vietnam, including 107 return migrants. Their prosociality was measured using the "giving" part of the 2‐Way social support scale and the social generativity scale. Consistent with the literature, the possession of migration experiences was significantly associated with both of these two scale scores. Taken together with a supplementary qualitative survey on the motivation for return migrants' decision to migrate, the results show that migration experience makes returnees more prosocial, rather than prosocial villagers selectively out‐migrating. The present study contributes to the deepening debate about whether sending people to more developed regions is beneficial for less developed regions. It concluded that the sending side can benefit from return migrants' prosocial behavior and thus the strengthening of social capital in rural areas. The practical implications are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]