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Rural sociologists figure prominently in the move towards public sociology. The paper takes up Michael Burawoy's call for public sociology and discusses what rural sociologists have to offer to publics and how we stand to gain as a discipline in working with publics. The paper argues that rural sociologists' ability to adopt a cosmopolitan view while negotiating the complexities of global/local processes provides a useful theoretical stance for doing public sociology. Methodologically, both feminist methods and various approaches to networks can guide us as we do public sociology. Then, the paper provides two examples of recent efforts to do public sociology with a women's community group in Sri Lanka in response to the tsunami and with the Pennsylvania Women's Agricultural Network to illustrate the possibilities and limitations of working with networks. In conclusion, the paper addresses opportunities for doing public sociology, the challenges we face as we go public, and future work that is needed to develop theoretically and methodologically strong public rural sociology.

This article comments on the position papers in the June 1967 issue of Rural Sociology. The author asserts that the papers are a mark of growing maturity of the rural sociology profession. It took years before the state universities and colleges assumed the dominant role of that they have achieved in the development of rural sociology. Contributions of the early sociologists to the applied field are presented to emphasize their historical value.

This paper explores some aspects of the editorial decision process and its outcomes as they are involved in the production of scientific knowledge. Based on 337 manuscripts reviewed for Rural Sociology from the Spring of 1978 to the Spring of 1981, ten characteristics associated with successful and unsuccessful manuscripts were examined. Five of these constituted a discriminant function model: number of rounds of review, author membership in the Rural Sociological Society, referee agreement regarding recommendations to the editor, referees who are authors, and difference in referee degree dates. The other five variables did not contribute significantly to the model: referee membership in the RSS, gender of the authors, number of authors, referee agreement regarding the contribution of the manuscript, and referee agreement regarding the presentation of the manuscript. The model achieved 85 percent accuracy in classifying the total set of manuscripts, but it was much more successful in classifying the rejected papers (95 percent) than the published papers (63 percent). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raises questions about current rural sociology from a critical theory perspective. Provides a brief historical analysis of its theoretical and applied roots. Suggests interweaving of research, practice, and advocacy as way to bring rural sociologists back into policy making. (LFL)

Reviews sociologists' dilemma of seeking to reconcile knowledge requirements of specific social problems and those of scientific theory building and testing. Indicates that rural sociological research has become more sophisticated in method but less concerned with social utility. (LFL)

Examines three reasons why Americans have remained apathetic towards the current farm crisis: consumers have little direct contact with farmers/farm life; relationship between food prices at the supermarket and farm income is hidden; and Americans view "bad" news from the farm sector as a recurring theme in national economic events. (LFL)

The article details four factors preventing social researchers from identifying political alternatives to technological change and thereby influencing public policy in American agriculture, discussing the general failure of rural sociologists to engage in policy research and calling for more policy studies. (SB)

Paper (1) explains the absence of a unifying conceptual framework for study of human ecology in rural areas; (2) proposes outline for such a framework with emphasis on its format, scope, and principal concepts; and (3) demonstrates the utility of the proposed framework for current areas of rural sociological research. (Author/DS)

Addressing recent criticisms of rural sociology (theoretical closure, methodological monism), this article presents a new set of questions for research and illustrates how structural and interpretative concerns may be employed in a comprehensive manner to illuminate an area of substantive interest--the role and nature of the agricultural sciences. (Author/DS)

Rural sociology confronts a continuing crisis of identity because of its failure to develop a sociology of agriculture. Despite an initial focus on agriculture, rural sociology became deflected to the analysis of rurality. Several neo-Populist and neo-Marxist developments in the sociology of agriculture hold promise for a revised rural sociology. (Author/BRR)

Resource dependency and its impact upon community stability has long been of interest to rural sociologists. This paper critically evaluates the literature on timber-dependent communities to assess what is known, assumed, ignored, and avoided about the topic. We argue that timber-dependent communities may represent a somewhat special case of resource dependency and that the study of forest-based communities can contribute to sociological knowledge of rural life. The paper also discusses theoretical and methodological concerns to be addressed and presents an agenda for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological society. This is not a new experience, but some of the changes that are taking place in rural sociology programs and in society indicate that the need for discussion is not yet satisfied. This is also one way of reaching the many members, subscribers, and readers who axe unable to attend the Society meetings, and of including them in the circle of discourse. Accordingly, few persons from various sections of the country and one to represent a view of rural sociology as it exists outside the U. S. to offer some of their views on important issues in the future of rural sociology were invited. They were asked to respond briefly and quickly enough for the papers to be presented in the June issue before the 1969 meeting.

Presents news notes and announcements involving the Rural Sociological Society. Highlights of the 1971 annual meeting of the Rural Sociology Section of Association of Southern Agricultural Workers; Call for papers for the 1971 annual meeting of the society to be held in Denver, Colorado on August 27 to 29, 1971; Programs and projects of the society.

Presents news notes and announcements involving the Rural Sociological Society. Call for papers for the 1969 annual meeting of the society; Tentative session topics; Best dissertations in rural sociology for the years 1967 and 1968.

This paper addresses spatial inequality as an emerging specialty area in sociology. Rural sociologists have long attended to spatial inequalities. The authors tend to view their work as uniquely centered on the rural experience, as opposed to occupying the forefront of spatializing stratification theory and of sociology as a whole. First the development of sociological interest in spatial inequality is discussed, providing an overview of factors that have contributed to a spatial trend in the study of stratification. Then, the implications for rural sociology are discussed, describing how rural sociologists contribute to research on spatial inequality, and distinguishes the approach of rural sociology from those of other subfields and disciplines. Finally, some examples of research in this emerging specialty area are highlighted by drawing from papers included in this issue. The authors call for the development of research based on qualitative approaches to provide deeper insights into the processes linking space with stratification, both from the perspective of people who are disadvantaged and from the standpoint of those who enjoy an advantage because of such a connection. They encourage the development of international and cross-national research on spatial inequality to broaden the understanding of the links between space and inequality.

Previous research on adopter categories has found several relationships between time of adoption and various social, economic, and demographic characteristics of the adopters of innovations. This paper extends the focus to include the spatial dimension in the context of two approaches to explaining innovation diffusion. The communications approach emphasizes information flows, whereas the market and infrastructure approach stresses the availability of the innovation to potential adopters. The study produces two major findings: (1) that locational characteristics are an important aspect of both explanations and therefore should be considered along with the traditional set of variables in describing adopter categories; (2) that the conceptual model associated with adopter categories should be broadened to reflect marketing strategy characteristics as well as innovativeness characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an index of various literature on rural sociology.

This article presents the author's reply to comments by Robert C. Bealer and Thomas R. Ford on his article "The Rural-Urban Variable: An Urbanite's Perspective." The author says that Bealer contrasts his position with that of Richard Dewey, as expressed in the latter's paper "The Rural-Urban Continuum: Real But Relatively Unimportant." Dewey's views stem from a consideration of the subject by eighteen authors of textbooks in urban sociology. The author is puzzled by Bealer's insistence upon the logical necessity of a focus on social-psychological variables. Certainly one can spend much effort analyzing the characteristics of communities without taking on the added burden of accounting for individual behavior. The author is content, at least for the moment, to leave such questions as the explanation of those persistent traits that rural-dwellers may carry with them when they move to the city to his colleagues in social psychology. All in all, the author takes Bealer's passionate remarks on the necessity for seeking global generalizations to be merely symptomatic of the present time.

This article presents the research papers published in this issue of the journal "Rural Sociology." The first paper by James H. Copp represents a stage in the maturation of research on farm practice acceptance. It is one of the first attempts to compare the results of studies conducted in different agricultural regions. Using data from Wilkening's study in Wisconsin and from his own study in Kansas, he developed comparable measures of certain personal, social, and economic variables. Another paper by Copp and colleagues deals with the informational aspect of the acceptance of new farm practices. They attempt essentially to specify the function of information sources in the adoption process. By asking a series of questions about the sources of information at various times, from the awareness of a new practice until its adoption, they find that institutionalized sources tend to perform a function separate from that of noninstitutionalized sources. The study by Charles R. Hoffer and Dale Stangland is a worthy attempt to take into account the farmer's value orientations as they affect his adoption of practices.

The tendency for neighborhood patterns of association to localize the exchange of farm information on a person-to-person basis is demonstrated in this paper by the analysis of two types of interpersonal relationships. Conditions which help to explain this relationship are examined and evaluated, and the relationship of neighborhood residence to the evaluation of sources of farm information is considered. Although consideration of the relative influence of neighborhood and clique patterns of association is beyond the scope of this study, the data show that clique members are more likely to live outside neighborhoods than inside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper is that farm tenancy is an attempted adaptation of land and other resources to human needs through definite socially sanctioned institutional channels. Thus far, however, sociological research, in farm tenancy has been incidental for the most part. Hence there is a need for more specific research on tenancy as a purely sociological phenomenon or as a pattern of social adjustment. The principal task of the paper is, therefore, to set up definite general propositions or hypotheses to be tested by research. In all, fifteen propositions are positioned which purport to cover, if not the entire sociology of farm tenancy, at least its major aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not all commodities are things, nor are all things available in society commodities. Then, what are commodities? Using the case of rapeseed and its products in China, this paper examines the role of grades and standards (G&S) in simultaneously determining the life of things as commodities and the position of humans as market participants. In the first section, we summarize our conceptual understandings of commodities. Next, the paper examines tests and trials to which rapeseed in China were subjected by the mid 1990s. We then discuss how G&S represent political processes among commodity chain actors for creating, legitimizing and maintaining the social relations between things and people. Lastly, we discuss our conclusion that the analysis of tests and trials helps us understand the process of commodification as simultaneous transformations of humans and things in a commodity chain while reorganizing linkages among these actors. A commodity is … an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. —Karl Marx (in McLellan 1977:421) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents patterns of racial change in the non- metropolitan South during 1950-1980. Based on population counts from the 1950-1980 decennial censuses, our results reveal considerable racial change in southern nonmetropolitan counties, although the magnitude of change pales in comparison to recent shifts in racial composition in northern central cities and suburbs. Moreover, there is little evidence of widely fluctuating differences between nonmetropolitan counties in changes in racial composition. Finally, racial change in the nonmetropolitan South, unlike that in northern cities, has occurred largely in the context of overall growth rather than population decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]