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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 explores changing relationships between apparel firms and rural labor markets in Wisconsin over the last decade. Mainstream explanations of recent changes in the apparel industry suggest that rural communities will lose tedious or physically demanding, low-skilled apparel manufacturing jobs but will gain more information-intensive and desirable "apparel service" employment. Through case studies of apparel firms located in two Wisconsin communities, the paper argues that current changes in the industry not only affect communities unevenly but, even in regions where apparel service firms have provided significant numbers of new jobs, these jobs are less well paid, more casually structured, and less secure than manufacturing employment has been. The paper argues that current concepts of the economic embeddedness of firms in communities need to be refined to permit consideration of the kinds of leverage and voice that community organizations have in confronting new forms of corporate capital. The two case studies demonstrate that corporate embeddedness and its labor market outcomes are linked to changes in the global market in which firms compete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we return to an issue often discussed in the literature regarding the relationship between highway expansion and population change. Typically it simply is assumed that this relationship is well established and understood. We argue, following a thorough review of the relevant literature, that the notion that highway expansion leads to increased population growth in the vicinity of the improved infrastructure finds only weak and often conflicting support. Using data on all major highway expansions in Wisconsin covering the period from the late-1960s through the 1990s from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT), and census data at the minor civil division (MCD) level covering the period 1970 to 2000, we deploy the analytical tools of geographic information system (GIS) software, and theory from the expanding literature in spatial analysis and modeling, to take a fresh look at this relationship. Our analysis reveals that there is a modest relationship between highway expansion and population growth among MCDs within 10-20 miles of the expanded major highway. The causal structure, however, is complex. Our starting hypothesis argues that population growth precedes highway expansion as frequently as population growth results from highway expansion, but the data show otherwise. The dominant causal influence appears to flow from highway expansion to population growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an empirical test of the dimensionality and predictive value of the alternative-conventional agricultural paradigm (ACAP) scale developed by Beus and Dunlap. While recognizing that this scale may be appropriate and useful in studies of the agricultural intelligentsia (agricultural scientists, farm policy makers, organization leaders, and farm people actively following and participating in policy deliberations), our data suggest several shortcomings of this scale among a more general sample of farm operators. Initially, the scale is not satisfactorily unidimensional; instead, relatively clear-cut environmental and family-farmist dimensions emerged in our analysis of farmer attitudes. Separate environmental and family-farmist subscales performed better than an omnibus (or paradigmatic) scale in predicting farm operator behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the effectiveness of growth management policies in Wisconsin cities, villages, and towns. Unlike most other studies, we consider the impact of growth management policies on agriculture, specifically the preservation of farmland, in addition to population growth. Our analysis examines these relationships separately in towns and in cities/villages because of differences in their institutional structures. We mailed a survey to every city, village, and town in Wisconsin; the surveys were supplemented by data collected from several secondary sources. For both towns and cities/villages, growth management policies are related positively to the rate of population growth. The fiscal structure of localities proved to have a stronger effect on population growth for cities and villages than for towns. Growth management capacity had little effect for either type of municipality. The analysis of farmland preservation suggests that exclusive agriculture zoning is marginally effective in limiting farmland conversion in towns, but ineffective in cities/villages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite many differences among competing theories of agrarian transformation, all tend to presume that aggregate structural changes are essentially a reflection of changes taking places on individual farms over time. This presumption has been reinforced by a reliance on aggregated county-level census data or cross-sectional surveys of individual farm operations, which unfortunately afford few opportunities to test conventional assumptions about the underlying dynamics of the process. Given the large gross flows into and out of the farm sector, this paper examines the question: do aggregate structural changes primarily result from adaptations made on continuing farms, or are they the product of selective entry and exit processes? Data from a panel study of Wisconsin farmers are used to shed light on the micro-dynamics of structural change. The results suggest that continuing farmers often adapt in ways very different from aggregate trends. They also demonstrate how the character of entry and exit patterns is critical to the structural change process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the ownership and control of farmland, presents a conceptual model of landed property, and uses it to examine landlord-tenant relations in Wisconsin. A profile of farmland owners is constructed using survey data from two agricultural counties. Particular attention is paid to who controls farm management decisions on rented land. Results suggest that tenants enjoy much latitude in managing rented land and that relations between landlords and tenants seem satisfactory to both parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]