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A pervasive anti-statism often blinds us to the democratic victories in the past and thus to possibilities in our future. This article argues that big government can democratize society and uses historical investigation to make the point. The study of history emancipates us from the tyranny of the present. Progressive social change has come about in the United States and elsewhere as "combined" bottom-up, top-down initiatives. I present two such cases of democratization during the New Deal era. The first is about rural sociologists' participatory-action research with local citizens for policy planning. This program, while short-lived, fed into the creation of the field of community development. The other is a land-reform experiment among poor African Americans. In the 1960s these "resettlement communities" became local strongholds of the civil-rights movement, and their descendants carry on the struggle today. I use these two historical instances to show that big states as well as social scientists have been effective agents of democracy, and suggest that they can be again. History then enable us to re-imagine, re-new, and re-form our democratic tradition of rural sociology. (Contains 5 footnotes.)

This paper explores the relevance of extra local market linkages and local-level social capital to sustainable livelihood outcomes in two agrarian communities on Mexico's Baja Peninsula. Contextualized by the specificity of Mexico's transition from state-directed rural development to neoliberally-guided rural development in the 1990s, findings suggest that market linkages can intersect with pre-existing social capital to both create new and destroy preexisting social capital, thus shaping the direction of development and inequality outcomes. The nature of a community's social fabric is often a result of long-standing historical legacies. In the communities presented, the quantity and quality of social capital was intricately connected to their history of state-sponsored or market agriculture; the nature of local institutions, with particular emphasis on the formation and evolution of the "ejido"; and the access to and availability of natural resources, namely land and water, which are both intricately connected to market access options. Moving beyond a simple demonstration that social capital matters, this analysis explores the complex and dynamic interaction between local-level social capital and extralocal market linkages. In doing so, it contributes to the larger debate on how the historical legacy of populist reforms and the social and political institutions created during state populism have nuanced the trajectory of neoliberal development in Mexico. (Contains 9 footnotes and 2 figures.)

This paper addresses two interrelated issues that have assumed major political significance in the handling of the Kurdish question in Turkey. The first is the impact of violence and resulting internal displacement in Eastern and Southeastern Turkey on rural-agrarian change. The second concerns the implications of the structural change and social transformation of the displaced population for their return to rural life. Analysis of national agricultural census data indicates that violence and displacement, in combination with a general process of agrarian change, have given rise to a new agrarian structure in the affected provinces, which leaves no room for the permanent return of most of the displaced population. On the other hand, the displaced population has undergone a social transformation that makes such a return less desirable for them. (Contains 3 tables and 8 footnotes.)

Rural communities have experienced dramatic demographic, social, and economic transformations over the past 30 years. Historically characterized by close links between natural resources and social, cultural, and economic structures, few of today's rural communities remain heavily dependent upon traditional extractive industries like ranching, forestry, and mining. New forms of development linked to natural and cultural amenities, including tourism and recreation, have evolved to sustain the link between community and resources. The Inter-Mountain West region offers an excellent example of this distinction. Many of the region's rural communities have experienced substantial population growth resulting from the in-migration of a new kind of rural resident. Their arrival, in a process some have associated with the emergence of a "New West," has transformed rural places. However, amenity-related social and economic structures have not occurred uniformly across space. This paper uses factor analysis and exploratory spatial data analysis to analyze demographic characteristics related to the "New West" phenomena in Inter-Mountain West communities and the spatial patterns found in the degree of "New West-ness" that each community exhibits. (Contains 2 figures, 4 tables, and 5 footnotes.)

Agroforestry, the practice of raising crops and trees together in ways that are mutually beneficial, provides farmers with an alternative to more conventional farming practices. In this paper, we apply Bourdieu's concepts of "field" and "habitus" in an attempt to better understand the practice of farming and the role that agroforestry may have in farming systems. Analysis is based on qualitative and quantitative interviews of farmers and other key informants in two regions, Fox-Wyaconda Watershed in northeast Missouri and Scott County in southeast Missouri. Within the field of farming, farmers emphasized the importance of economic, family and rental relations. Important habitus considerations include different interpretations of what constitutes farming and what constitutes forestry. Based on Bourdieu's theoretical framework, we offer three alternative paths of social change that may lead to more widespread utilization of agroforestry. (Contains 3 figures, 3 footnotes and 6 tables.)

Extends the debate on rural restructuring by redefining families and households and their study; by considering the contributions of family scholarship to rural sociological issues; by assessing the methodological implications and challenges of integrating a family focus in rural sociology; and by reengaging rural sociology around important policy issues. Contains 80 references. (Author/SV)

Reviews influence of technology on rural peoples' interaction patterns throughout this century. Describes importance of information as an input into production against background of uncertainties as transition to information age occurs. Discusses five features of emerging rural information structure. Identifies four areas of significant social change and policy consequence. (NEC)

This article describes some adaptations made by the small town newspaper in Washington to the social and cultural changes occurring in the rural environment. Among these adjustments are: a stability in numbers has been reached, although at the expense of some loss of per capita circulation strength; a reduction in the number of two-newspaper towns; an increase in the size of the newspaper page; a shift from Saturday to Thursday as the second most important day of publication; a decreased interest in political parties and policies; a concentration on local news, particularly of persons and organizations. These trends suggest certain observations on the process of change and adaptation in social institutions, which by nature are slow to change: (1) adjustment to change is forced upon an institution by the inroads of competing agencies; (2) the stimulus to change comes from without, not from within the institution; and (3) changes in any one of the four elements of any institution, (a) rank and file membership, (b) leadership, (c) physical structure and equipment, and (d) pattern of attitudes lending sanction to the operation of the institution, will evoke changes and adpatations in the structure and functions of the institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information about developments in various universities and colleges in the field of sociology. Two papers of W. A. Anderson of Cornell University on Rural Social Participation and the Family Life Cycle have been published by the Agricultural Experiment Station as Memoirs 314 and 318. They deal with the relationship of stages in the family life cycle to formal and informal family participation. He has also published a study entitled "Social Change and an Urban Fringe Area." Anderson is working with city and town officials in Ithaca, New York on problems of city expansion and fringe-area incorporation. A Study of Some Factors Associated with Family Informal Participation has been issued as Department Bulletin 36. Department Bulletin 39, "Eight Case Illustrations of Low Formal Participation," and Department Bulletin 40, "Eight Case Illustrations of High Formal Participation," are other recent publications. He has also revised the bibliography of the department. The Government of Brazil, in June, conferred upon T. Lynn Smith of the University of Florida, the Order of the Southern Cross. Smith has spent several years in Brazil, on assignment by the U. S. Department of State, as a visiting professor at the University of Brazil, and as advisor on agrarian reform to the Minister of Agriculture and the National Commission on Agrarian Policy.

There are few empirical tests of the relationship between local resource production and community social systems. This paper reports the results of research on two communities in northern Idaho: one timber- dependent, the other mining-dependent. Data were collected for 13 indicators of resource production and 15 indicators of social change for periods up to 65 years. Regression analysis was used to test if community social change is associated with the production level of local resource systems. The final models support the hypothesis in both communities. The form, lag condition, and strength of the relationship is complex and may vary with the dependent indicator. The original causal image-the rural community with a social order that directly responds to changes in local resource production-is blurred. Suggestions are made for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial body of research has investigated the influx of people and industry into rural and nonmetropolitan areas of America. Unfortunately, there has been a conspicuous absence in much of that research of theory pertaining to structural linkages impinging upon non-metropolitan social and economic change. In order to integrate present empirical knowledge as well as to provide a general framework for future investigation, some theoretical perspective is necessary. This paper examines several perspectives that view the transformation of rural society and the rural-urban interface in terms of power relations and dominance. While the evidence for a conclusive test of the evidence for a conclusive test of the perspectives is unavailable, a framework for investigating the interface is suggested, especially in terms of rural development projects. This framework incorporates the concept of spin-offs and especially encourages examining the ability of the rural area to convert and to utilize the spin-offs of industrial development. Preliminary empirical and expository evidence suggests that a dependency perspective may provide a more adequate and integrated understanding of the industrial "invasion" of the nonmetropolitan sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a restudy of the 13 New York communities included in the national sample for Brunner's three studies of 140 agricultural villages made in 1924, 1930, and 1936. The paper reports on changes in population 1920&ndash1970, in Dun and Bradstreet business listings 1921&ndash1970, in community boundaries 1936&ndash1974, and in school district boundaries, in 85 community services and facilities and 15 types of voluntary associations 1960&ndash1974, and in industries 1964&ndash1974. The presence of planning and zoning boards in 1974 is noted. All centers were rural by census definition in 1920; 10 still were in 1970. The evidence shows growth and decline, stability and change, depending on the individual community and the time period. Except for a minority of the communities, the evidence suggests that stability and growth prevail over decline. Vitality is generally greater in the noneconomic sectors than in the economic. Differentiation has increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on one aspect of social change—changes in value orientations which reflect relationships between self and society. Two questions are examined: What differences in value orientations exist between younger and older generations of Negroes and whites in a rural area? What are the implications of the differences to social change in the United States? Data were collected in 1962 from younger and older generations of Negroes and of whites living in three rural counties in northern Florida. The younger generations included 411 Negro and white 12th graders and the older generations included their parents. Generational differences in value orientations—in achievement, in anomia, and in family identification—were more pronounced among Negroes than among whites. These generational differences among rural Negroes suggest an orientation to life for young Negroes which enables them to identify easily with movements for change in race relations in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a distinction between ‘opinion leadership’ and traditional leadership in the process of directed change in underdeveloped areas. Using the case study method, an attempt is made to demonstrate that each of the two types of leadership is suited to a specific situation. Using support from Max Weber's argument that the traditional leader is free to confer grace quite arbitrarily, the potentiality of this type of leadership as an instrument for social change is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the functions of education in rural social change and, more specifically, rural-urban sociocultural integration. Based on accumulated evidence and insight from researches in the eastern mountain region of Kentucky, the central thesis is that education functions as a major cultural entree by the Great Society into this relatively isolated, familistically-oriented subculture. Because of its structurally strategic position, the educational institution tends to have more direct integrative communication and linkage with the Great Society than the other basic institutions. This suggests a largely indirect influence of the Great Society on the non educational institutions. The school system brings about changes in general orientations which set the stage for changes in specific orientations both educational and noneducational. With time and under certain conditions these changes in orientation result in changes in the institutional structure of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directed social and cultural change in which a systemic conceptual scheme is utilized in the analysis is the theme of this paper, which describes the first year's operation of a project in supervised agricultural credit in a Peruvian highland community and analyzes it in terms of the dynamic aspects of systemic elements such as goals, norms, sanctions, power, and so forth. The conclusion to the paper summarizes an explanation of the events occurring during the year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses two interrelated issues that have assumed major political significance in the handling of the Kurdish question in Turkey. The first is the impact of violence and resulting internal displacement in Eastern and Southeastern Turkey on rural-agrarian change. The second concerns the implications of the structural change and social transformation of the displaced population for their return to rural life. Analysis of national agricultural census data indicates that violence and displacement, in combination with a general process of agrarian change, have given rise to a new agrarian structure in the affected provinces, which leaves no room for the permanent return of most of the displaced population. On the other hand, the displaced population has undergone a social transformation that makes such a return less desirable for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agroforestry, the practice of raising crops and trees together in ways that are mutually beneficial, provides farmers with an alternative to more conventional farming practices. In this paper, we apply Bourdieu's concepts of “field” and “habitus” in an attempt to better understand the practice of farming and the role that agroforestry may have in farming systems. Analysis is based on qualitative and quantitative interviews of farmers and other key informants in two regions, Fox-Wyaconda Watershed in northeast Missouri and Scott County in southeast Missouri. Within the field of farming, farmers emphasized the importance of economic, family and rental relations. Important habitus considerations include different interpretations of what constitutes farming and what constitutes forestry. Based on Bourdieu's theoretical framework, we offer three alternative paths of social change that may lead to more widespread utilization of agroforestry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, women's contribution to farming has been increasingly recognized by academics, decision makers, and some sectors of the farming community. In contrast, women's activism in agricultural politics is less well accepted or understood. This paper investigates data from a number of farm activist groups operating on a variety of scales in Australia. The paper examines the ways in which farm women develop political agency and then mobilize across a number of "fields of action" to effect both personal and industry-wide change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural change in U.S. agriculture in part has been characterized by shifts in control over agricultural production decisions from the farm-level to off-farm firms. In the past decade, this process has accelerated as increasing concentration in production and processing has led to increased vertical integration and contract production. To retain control, some farmers have formed bargaining units, have created production and marketing networks, and have petitioned subnational state governments for regulation of production contracts. Concurrently, there has been an impressive increase in alternative marketing outlets linked with smaller-scale production based on farm-level control over production decisions. Structural change and producer collective response has a long history in U.S. agriculture. Using Mooney's and Hunt's (1996) recent contribution on recurrent ideologies of agrarian social movements, this paper outlines recent structural changes and collective responses to those changes with reference to the shifting locus of control over agricultural production decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study of African Americans and underdevelopment in the Mississippi Delta. The primary focus is on race-specific factors and their associations with social and economic development in the Delta. Data were obtained from The Southern Growth Policy's Southern County-Level Data Files (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1985) and a content analysis of racial conflicts in Mississippi beginning with the 1950s through the 1980s. The results of the analysis show that racial conflicts and a high concentration of poor African Americans are associated with the lack of new technology industries in Mississippi's core Delta counties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the effects of increased participation in federal farm programs on farm structure in two socioeconomically distinct regions. We examine (1) how farmers use the programs in conjunction with other inputs as a survival strategy and (2) specific outcomes associated with increased program participation. Our analysis is based on surveys of two farming-dependent counties typical of the Cornbelt and the Mississippi Delta. Farmers in both regions used farm programs to expand farm operations. However, there were important regional differences associated with the implementation of this strategy. These regional divergences can be attributed to differences in both past levels of enrollment in farm programs and variations in farm organization, particularly whether the farm relies primarily on household or hired labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses fear of crime in Western communities with rapidly changing populations. Most prior research has reported a relatively low fear of crime in rural communities. However, some recent analyses have indicated unusually high fear in small towns experiencing rapid population growth and economic changes due to energy developments. Heightened fear of crime has been observed even where there has been no apparent increase in criminal victimization experiences. This paper examines four communities at three points in time to assess the causes of shifting fear of crime. Results indicate that measures of contextual change, individual social integration, and criminal victimization influence fear of crime more than do individual compositional variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes attitudes of area residents toward increased mineral extractions and processing in the Northern Great Plains region of the United States. Three attitude dimensions toward energy development are identified: (1) belief in economic opportunities provided by development, (2) expectations of social changes due to mineral development and (3) concern about the environment. The analysis focuses on differences in attitudes between people living in counties that have experienced development and those living in counties not affected by energy development. Residents of six counties located in the Northern Great Plains were surveyed from 1973 to 1976 regarding their attitudes toward energy development in their respective counties. Experience with development in each county varied from no experience to over five years of development activity. Residents in all six counties stated that economic benefits were associated with energy development. However, they were concerned about the negative social changes that accompany such development. Also, a high degree of environmental concern was expressed by residents in all six counties. The attitudes of residents varied by length of experience with energy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To further understanding of migration determinants, I examine the experiences of three groupings in the U.S.: Negro movement from the South during 1860 to 1920; Japanese-American migration from internment camps during World War II; and exodus from Southern Appalachia between 1930 and 1960. Each of these three cases illustrates both the importance of noneconomic variables in determining migration and the worth to noting nonmigration to understand the migration process. I suggest using a framework which examines motivation for and constraints upon migration for individuals as a starting point in developing migration theory. When migration is viewed within a social structure, dependence upon the local community and potential for assimilation elsewhere appear as critical determinants of whether motivation for migration becomes actual movement. Based upon the three cases studied in this paper, as well as many other studies, I encourage future migration research to avoid an overemphasis upon economic factors and to reject the argument that no generalization is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to examine the population shifts and settlement changes in two townships of unlike agricultural potential and accessibility near Springfield, Missouri. Each township is representative of a major physical region of the Ozarks. Buck Prairie Township in Lawrence County lies in the Springfield Plain and represents some of the best agricultural land in an Ozark border region. On the other hand, Linn Township in Christian County lies along the Eureka Springs Escarpment which forms the northern border of the White River Hills, one of the most rugged districts of the Ozarks. Significant changes in the general settlement patterns have occurred, although, because of variable environmental conditions and differences in economic factors, the amount of change has not everywhere been the same. However, observations made during an extensive survey of land use and settlement in the Springfield vicinity indicate that Buck Prairie and Linn townships are representative of larger sections of the Ozarks.

This paper reports the results of an exploratory survey of higher agricultural education in Latin America and relates these and other findings to "development." Education in general and agricultural education in particular are placed in a cultural context, which in turn is utilized to explain the current situation with regard to education in Latin America. Attention is also given to future trends and the probable increase in social science training throughout Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper some of the implications for social change of a country's educational status as compared with its industrial status are analyzed. Although the data show that literacy is an excellent index of a country's socio-economic development, they show further that countries may be more or less literate than their industrial development would suggest. The countries that are most deviant in this respect were isolated by the use of regression equations calculated on data for all of the world's countries. Analysis of other data for the deviant countries suggests some of the factors affecting educational vis-à-vis industrial progress. Countries which are more advanced educationally than industrially are shown to be making faster economic than social progress, and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent changes in rural locality-group patterns, factors responsible for these changes, and implications of them, as revealed or suggested in recent literature on the subject. The change factors are classified in four groups: technology, population shifts, prosperity, and legislative programs. The neighborhood, as traditionally defined, seems now to be more of an ideal than a reality, and the community apparently is superseding the neighborhood as the basic locality group in many rural areas. There is increasing centralization of institutions in the larger centers and a growing multiplicity of special-interest groups in which rural people participate. Many researchers are suggesting that old classifications and conceptual schemes relating to locality groups need reexamination. Researchers, teachers, and extension workers in rural sociology are presented with a serious challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a restudy of Tepoztlán culture and criticizes the folk-urban hypothesis. Certainly there are phenomena that represent social disorganization; but the term has been used so commonly for social reorganization that perhaps it should be abolished. The study of man has demonstrated few things more clearly than the universality of socio-cultural change. Change need not be confused with the idea of progress, but neither should it always be labeled "disorganization." Both in this paper and in his major work, Sociologist Lewis Writh has presented us with many provocative ideas. Although one cannot concede that he has given final answers on all points, he has made constructive suggestions which represent important contributions to anthropology and, in at least some degree, to sociology. Lewis suggests that Robert Redfield's earlier study of Tepoztlán was directed primarily toward testing the folk concept rather than at producing a reasonably complete ethnography. This seems a legitimate comment; but Lewis's assertion, at least by implication, that his book is an attempt at a complete ethnography approaches correctness only if his work is read in connection with Redfield's. Even so, a complete study of Tepoztlán material culture has yet to be published.

The paper focuses on major research areas and needs in the field of social stratification, with special reference to rural society. Problem areas treated are (1) criteria of stratification and their interrelationships, (2) procedures employed in an operational definition of social strata, (3) the social unit in which a given system of stratification is operative, (4) cultural and group expressions of stratification, (5) vertical social mobility, and (6) stratification and social change. Major methodological problems concern (1) discovering rationales for selecting and relating criteria of stratification, (2) perfecting socio-economic scales and prestige rating procedures, and (3) bridging the gap between the community and mass society approaches. Considerable interest has been shown in describing the cultural aspects of stratification as seen in patterns or styles of life, but much more attention is needed on group expressions of class interests, the channels and personality correlates of vertical social mobility, and social forces which produce change in systems of stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a series of rural sociological research problems which appear feasible, show promise of fruitful results, and comprise major social adjustments needed and for under way in the "Wheat Belt." The suggested research is in "large blocks" which will require scaling and sizing to conform to situations immediately at hand. A superficial description of the "Wheat Belt" is given for purposes of orientation. The regional emphasis is likely to give an erroneous impression unless it is rigidly defined in actual research because the "Wheat Belt" is neither a region nor a belt in any strict sense. As conceived here, rural sociological research may be designed within several related comprehensive areas: Rural Social Organization, Population, Levels of Living, Social Interaction, and Cultural Change, each of which is capable of almost infinite subdivision and extension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes cultural changes which have occurred since pioneer days in a rural, east Wisconsin German ethnic island. The social process is considered in terms of cultural history, geography, mobility, and enmeshment of the area in the dominant American culture. To determine the nature and degree of changes in ethnic values and attitudes, attention is focused on farming methods, family functions, and cultural conflict. The area has succeeded in making easy adjustments to the American situation and has remained a stable society largely for the following reasons: a traditional pattern of a diversified agriculture, coupled with a willingness to experiment and to conserve soil fertility, a climate and soil suited to this type of farming, acceptance of dairying to assure a cash income, a unique local outlet for excess farm produce, familism, settlement in a large compact group, and contact with an urban culture quite similar to its own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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What is it in American rural culture that we wish to conserve? In postulating as worthy of conservation (1) survival values and (2) values inherent in familism and territorial localism, we- must attempt to reconcile the dynamics of social change with the values which are considered worthy of preservation. This paper is an appraisal of the significance of the maze of local and national programs which have a bearing on the general problem. My hypothesis is that the primary group derivatives such as democracy, self-reliance, individuality, etc., have historically derived form the primary group and that weakening the primary group will tend to weaken these qualities. Conversely, action to strengthen the primary group will tend to conserve these qualities. Confronted by the fact of social change, we find ourselves attempting to adjust to a moving point, rather than to a fixed star. Since as human beings we cannot be oblivious to the future and are irrepressible planners, the sociologist, at least, should try to see to it that the primary group has a place in the plan for the "World of Tomorrow." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to the March 1, 1960, issue of the journal "Rural Sociology."

This study examines how six national newspapers balanced supporting agriculture (a morally good occupation) with supporting environmentalism (nature as a moral value), in an area in which agricultural and environmental interests conflict—farm use of pesticides. The study showed that, contrary to expectations, newspapers supported social change (were largely critical of pesticide use and sympathetic to organic agriculture). Farmers were portrayed positively as quiet social movement participants, and newspapers suggested that government and universities were blocking infrastructural change that should be supported. The study contradicts earlier theories of the press and social movements that suggest that newspapers contain, rather than promote, social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have increasingly turned to secondary data sources to study social and economic change. As our experience in this area increases, so should our methodological rigor. Three common methodological sins-model mis-specification, inattention to regional influences, and fuzzy operationalizations-are illustrated through a critique of Barnes and Blevins' (1992) study of farm structure and economic well-being in nonmetropolitan areas. This paper argues, and demonstrates empirically, that many of Barnes and Blevins' conclusions are suspect because they did not include ethnic and regional variables in their regression studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents names of several books received by the 1972 issue of the journal "Rural Sociology." Names of the books include "The Human Arena: An Introduction to the Social Sciences," edited by Gilbert Abcarian and Monte Palmer, "The Netsilik Eskimo," by Asen Balikci, "Institutions in Agricultural Development," edited by Melvin G. Blase, "Cities Under Siege: An Anatomy of the Ghetto Riots, 1964-1968," edited by David Boesel and Peter H. Rossi, "Juvenile Delinquency," by Robert G. Caldwell and James A. Black, "The American Population Debate," edited by Daniel Callahan, "Reading in Evaluation Research," edited by Francis G. Caro, "The Cultural Context of Learning and Thinking: An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology," by Michael Cole, John Gay, Joseph A. Glick and Donald W. Sharp, "Resources for Social Change: Race in the United States," by James S. Coleman, "Radical Sociology," edited by J. David Colfax and Jack L. Roach, "Kinship and Class: A Midwestern Study," by Bernard Farber, and "Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order," by Erving Goffman.

The article presents a research on farm and nonfarm families differences in religious beliefs and practices. Generally, it is believed that farm families hold more traditional religious beliefs and are more active in church and home religious activities than nonfarm families. Social changes have been occurring in rural American society, which may invalidate these propositions. Yet, since religious beliefs and practices are rooted in value systems, which are not subject to major changes in a short time span, it is probable that the traditionally assumed farm-nonfarm differences in religious beliefs and practices still exist. No current research is available, however, to test these hypotheses. Some limited data are offered to test the hypothesis that Protestant farm parents and farm-reared college students adhere to more conservative religious beliefs and engage more actively in religious practices than nonfarm parents and their college students. Data were obtained from 38 farm girls and 30 farm boys and from 73 nonfarm girls and 24 nonfarm boys who were students at Iowa State University.

City families were found to be significantly better adjusted than farm families as measured by an adolescent-parent adjustment scale on a sample of 1,456 city, small town, fringe, village, open country nonfarm, and farm adolescents. In general, adjustment declined with increased rurality, but town families were found to be an exception, ranking below village and fringe. Socioeconomic level was found to explain a portion of the rural-urban differences, but residence remains a significant variable with socioeconomic factors held constant. Hypotheses are advanced that the poor adjustment of the farm adolescent is associated with rapid rural social change within the space of a generation, increased contact with urban adolescents who enjoy more obvious privileges, and a feeling that society as a whole considers them under-privileged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the reasons offered by New York dairy farmers for hiring undocumented immigrant workers in their milking parlors, and connects those discourses to broader economic and cultural change in U.S. agrarian society. Based on interviews with 25 dairy farmers on 22 farms, this article examines farmers' assessments of the Amish, white non‐Amish, Puerto Rican, and undocumented Latino labor pool. The analysis shows that farmers consider undocumented immigrants the most "reliable" workforce, and that their reliability stems from their deportability and from their separation from their families, which drives them to work long hours. I argue that farmer discourses about immigrant "reliability" must be understood in the context of economic pressure to adopt a more commercial orientation to dairying, and of modern agrarian values that prize urban middle‐class lifestyles. Ultimately, worker "reliability" is a euphemism for the transnational separation of workers from their families, and one that is operationalized by farmers to justify the pursuit of economic success and more leisure time off the farm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents program details for the 1950 annual meeting of the Rural Sociological Society. Among papers to be presented include topics such as the status of rural sociology in land-grant colleges, rural sociological research in the United States, rural sociology teaching, with emphasis on the nature and objectives of the introductory course, sociology of rural health, rural social change, the current sociological extension methods, research in social participation, and the research in community organization.

Contemporary challenges in rural and environmental politics hinge on understanding what success and failure mean. One avenue of studying success and failure of political and social change efforts is to study social movements and intentional communities often equated with how many years such efforts persisted. The Catholic Worker movement's combination of a vision of radical social change, religion, nonviolence, hospitality, activism, and agrarianism involve publications, urban houses, and farms that constitute a movement and a network of autonomous intentional communities. The Catholic Worker movement's communal farms began in 1933 and at various points those efforts were deemed failures. Thus, the story of the Catholic Worker farms is one of impermanence and struggle for a desired ideal. However, what we are missing in condemning the farms to failure is the utter success since the 1970s of a strong agrarian and environmental strain of the Catholic Worker movement based on farm activity, activism, and cooperative economics. This study reconceptualizes failure in the language of process and context. The Catholic Worker farms case study refigures failure such that we can articulate a politics of possibility related to the dramatic challenges not only of society but also of the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vast and growing interdisciplinary research effort has focused on the rise of the so-called New West, purportedly the product of regional socioeconomic, political, and ecological upheavals in states like Montana and Colorado. Reviewing the growing research on this problem in sociology, economics, geography, and conservation science, this article identifies four central questions at the core of this diverse scholarship. Our review demonstrates that none of these central questions has generated consensus conclusions and that there is untapped potential for more structurally robust analyses of the drivers and outcomes of rapid change in the region. Indeed, supporting other analyses that have called the consistency of the region into question, our survey suggests the ways in which this region is not unique, but largely reflective of larger scale socioecological forces playing out in similar ways around the postindustrial world. We conclude, therefore, with a series of crucial questions, which may be unanswerable by assuming the ''New West'' as a coherent geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pervasive anti-statism often blinds us to the democratic victories in the past and thus to possibilities in our future. This article argues that big government can democratize society and uses historical investigation to make the point. The study of history emancipates us from the tyranny of the present. Progressive social change has come about in the United States and elsewhere as combined bottom-up, top-down initiatives. I present two such cases of democratization during the New Deal era. The first is about rural sociologists' participatory-action research with local citizens for policy planning. This program, while short-lived, fed into the creation of the field of community development. The other is a land-reform experiment among poor African Americans. In the 1960s these "resettlement communities" became local strongholds of the civil-rights movement, and their descendants carry on the struggle today. I use these two historical instances to show that big states as well as social scientists have been effective agents of democracy, and suggest that they can be again. History then enable us to re-imagine, re-new, and re-form our democratic tradition of rural sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article links macro social change to emotional health through continuity and change in farming. Family income, when combined with occupation and education, establishes important dimensions of socioeconomic status. Also, the social causation hypothesis in the stress-distress tradition argues that certain positions in the social structure entail more stressful life events than others. Families in transition from one occupation to another, and those with lower socioeconomic status, are expected to have fewer defenses and to be more susceptible to uncontrollable stressful events. The relationship of wives' employment to the slope of per capita family income is significant, but the intercept is not. This may mean that wives' employment 1% not used to improve the families' overall economic well-being but to reduce or compensate for other losses in incomes (i.e., to prevent declines in the slope). A presumed causal relationship is even more dramatic, however, when the level of one variable is linked to subsequent change in an! other. When an effect is strong, it propels people on a trajectory of change: as, for example, when high levels of stressful events generate states of depression that persist for years.

The concept of the folk society has been frequently invoked as an analytical device by social scientists in describing the Old Order Amish. The Amish use of buggies, kerosene lamps. and one room schools is presumably prima fade evidence of the folk-like character of Amish society. Such an evaluation is consistent with a Conception of modernity based on technological sophistication. Modernity, however, may be dc fined alternatively as the perception of choice between different paths of social development. A society is modern to the extent that it self-consciously attempts to control and direct its own evolution. The quality of modernity is independent of technological sophistication. since technology may be self-consciously eschewed as well as embraced. Amish self-consciousness is evidenced by the selective manner in which agricultural and organizational innovations are adopted. By self-consciously manipulating their path of social development the Amish actually exemplify the antithesis of passive, folk-like behavior. They thus arguably become a model for other modern societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the proportion of females who are employed has been increasing, female workers remain concentrated in a small number of occupations. Previous studies suggest social-psychological reasons for this. We hypothesize that characteristics of the local community also are related to sexual segregation in occupations. To test this, we use secondary data from 71 relatively independent communities. Measures of availability, economic necessity, class structure, and heterogeneity in the community are related to an index of occupational segregation by sex changes little from 1960 and 1970, the most efficient explanatory variables change from economic-necessity items to class-structure measures. But further analysis reveals that variables from each set combine to provide the best explanation of occupational segregation in small communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary energy situation raises new problems for rural development which require fresh thinking and perhaps some reorientation by sociologists. Five major frameworks for the sociological analysis of energy - rural development interactions in developing countries are critically evaluated. The frameworks are appraised in terms of their conceptualization of energy and its social significance, and the sociological variables emphasized. It is argued that despite the relative unfamiliarity of energy to many sociologists, an uncritical acceptance of the models. concepts, and assumptions of technological perspectives on energy is unwarranted. Energy reductionism. in particular, is a technological imperative that can have a very significant impact on the characteristics of sociological analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]