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This paper brings together research on rural gentrification with emerging work on lived landscapes that has emphasized the intertwining of the human and more‐than‐human with the performance of activities of everyday living and their affective significance. It draws on research examining rural gentrification in three contrasting landscapes, termed 'the wood', 'the village' and 'the moortop'. These landscapes connect to earlier studies of rural social change and gentrification in England, with 'the wood' and 'the village' being sites research by Ray Pahl and the 'moortop' one of the landscapes identified in Darren Smith and Deborah Phillips' examination of the role of representations of rurality in processes of rural gentrification. The paper draws on research that returned to the locations of this earlier research, and seeks to re‐examine arguments advanced by these studies about the formation of socially differentiated worlds and representations of rurality through a lived‐landscape perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Examines aspects of social change in England villages, conditioned by processes of industrial and occupational transformation. Summary of the findings of various census studies on migration streams, industrial and employment change; Impact of national relocation on the rural localities; Examination of structure and social divisions of labor markets available to rural market.

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research paper discusses the problem of the regions which are being abandoned by agriculture. It deals with conditions in France, and is built on research and studies conducted in various French regions, but the problem, of course, exists in several other countries. Thus two sets of principles and policies oppose each other, "productivist" agriculture, and the "other." This "other" agriculture seems to have been gaining some strength in the past three to five years, as a result of recent events. These changes are the cause of some action against further desertification, as well as in favour of some change in technology, particularly in fertilizers and feeds. But what action there is has appeared to be until now insufficient and inefficient, so that the productivist model continues to gain ground. The line of thought is probably linked with an implicit assumption about technical and social change, that is, the idea that one technological model replaces another. In other words, the greatest part of the literature presents the current dominant model as having replaced a former model.

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article reports research investigating the ways individuals and families in New Zealand have adapted to and created economic and social change through holding multiple jobs since the beginning of a period of restructuring in the 1980s. Our research has been stimulated by the very significant increase in multiple job holding in New Zealand over the whole workforce, and more particularly in rural areas over the last 25 years. We show how a focus on multiple job holding can contribute to interpretations of changing rural economic and social relations associated with work and employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contention of this paper is that organic farming, the movement and ideology, challenges sociological theory of the nature-culture relation (environmental issues, the role of science). The idea is discussed and explored in two ways. Firstly the paper gives a 'diagnosis' of organic farming in terms of modernization. The organic farming movement is a social movement having some success in a period when the power of social movements in general seems low. It is also a movement with a radical view on environmental issues and the man-nature relationship. Recently, several researchers have written about the institutionalization of organic farming, where institutionalization might be understood as a kind of modernization. How can we understand the organic farming movement in terms of modernization? Is the organic farming movement a movement opposing modernity, arguing for pre-modern structures of society? Is it perfectly modern in the classical sense? Or is the existence of the organic farming movement rather a frontier empirical example of the reflexive state of modern society? The Danish organic farming movement serves as an example for the discussion. The 'diagnosis' depends on the theoretical point of departure - which theory of modernity is used. This leads to the second approach, namely the comparison of Ulrich Beck's theory of risk society and Bruno Latour's theory of actor-networks. Both theories are dealing explicitly with the nature-culture relation in late (or 'post' or 'reflexive') modern societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a temporal and spatial analysis of the social structure of rural Poland – currently a home to two‐fifths of the national population. In the first – temporal – dimension, the focus is on changes that have taken place since the post‐communist transformation. The aim of the analysis was to explain the mechanisms of change, that is, identify the processes that brought about those changes. We assumed that transitions in the rural social structure progressed differently than in the rest of society: they were deeper, followed different trajectories and resulted in fundamentally changed proportions between the rural structure's elements. In the other – spatial –dimension, we investigated the territorial diversity of the contemporary social structure. The social structure morphology was analysed on the basis of the proportions between three major social/occupational segments: farmers, workers and the middle class. Their distinction was determined by the trajectories of social structure change starting from the 1990s: depeasantisation, proletarianisation and gentrification. The study has revealed the complexity of the process of change as well as the unique character of the process of deagrarianisation, its depth/intensity being determined by the spatial diversity of types of rural social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author focuses on the status of women farmers in the U.S. agriculture. The author remarks that many scholars working within the resource mobilization paradigm take institutionalization for granted, ignoring grassroots organizations where membership is difficult to define and where structures are elusive. They consequently underestimate the role of, and under-appreciate the practical situations of, less-than-totally-institutionalized organizations in challenging the status quo and producing political and social change. The author states that successful domain building in agricultural and non-agricultural rural areas requires representing the interests of women as well as men, allowing greater access by women to decision-making structures and processes, and providing a public arena or forum in which they may develop their collaborative potential. If women bring a different perspective to the table, and farm family and rural community receive better attention when women are at the table, then rural and agricultural institutions that exclude women ultimately disadvantage themselves.

The article presents abstracts of various manuscripts published in the January 1991 issue of the journal "Sociologia Ruralis." The article "Norwegian Policies for Rural Development," deals with political strategies aimed at regional development in Norway. It is possible to identify different policies based upon different political ideas or lines of arguments. The question is, to what extent the different regional policies are adequate to support regional development. The article starts by pointing out some important social and economic changes in rural regions during the last twenty years to identify the important factors associated with rural maintenance and development. Another article "Pluriactivity, Structural Change and Farm Household Vulnerability in Western Europe," presents findings from the five-year research programme "Rural Change in Europe: Programme on Farm Structures and Pluriactivity." From the Baseline Survey of over 6000 farms in 24 study areas, results are presented examining the extent, nature and importance of pluriactivity, farm household income diversification and income vulnerability A typology of household income sources and farm business size is developed. The findings are examined according to contextual characteristics and related to patterns of farm adaptation. Pluriactivity is found to be of major significance to Western European farm households in terms of both labor involvement and income.

Gerontological research has extensively focused on the experiences of people ageing within changing social contexts. However, accounts from the context of the European post‐socialist transformation are missing. In addition, there is a lack of theoretical understanding concerning how older people experience ageing as part of the dynamic process of rural change. In this article, we present the perspectives of older Czech rural residents on living and ageing in the changing countryside. Based on 20 qualitative interviews with older adults, we show how they interpret contemporary changes in three major areas: politics and economy, infrastructure and technology, and local population and community life. Embedded in a constructionist approach, we aim to understand how their interpretations of current changes are related to their views on the past, to their self‐positioning within current and past changes and their sense of local and social belonging. We introduce the concept of biographical contextualisation, which grasps the temporal horizon of meaning‐making with regard to contemporary changes in rural life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of various articles and research papers that appeared in the April 1990 issue of the journal Sociologia Ruralis. An article authored by F.J.A. Bouman states that in the small-scale rural economies of the Third World people have always resorted to informal forms of saving, borrowing and lending to insure themselves against risk and uncertainty. Contrary to formal sector finance, these informal circuits are able to respond quickly to the challenge of new directions in the economy. Another paper by L. Llambi reinterprets 20th century agrarian transitions in Latin America based on a comprehensive synthesis of empirical material. Instead of a Eurocentric feudal-to-capitalist reading of Latin America's agrarian history, a transition within capitalism approach is proposed, while taking into account the region's still existing Amerindian pre-capitalist societies and their recent restructuring. The first part of the paper deals with the main epistemological issues underpinning the agrarian transition as an object oil inquiry.

This article explores the local governance of poverty alleviation in a marginalised Hungarian rural community, with over 50 per cent Roma inhabitants, most of whom were either unemployed or participated in public work projects. Kisbalog is among those marginalised rural communities which are characterised by increasing social polarisation and ethnic cleavages as a result of selective outmigration and a municipal leadership which negotiates access to public work along racialised notions of deservingness. Hungary follows the EU concept of public private partnerships for local governance. This article unravels the room for manoeuvre for NGOs working for poverty alleviation in the context of the racialised narratives of a paternalistic local welfare state. Utilising Young's notions of social justice it explores the complicit nature of recognitional, associative and distributional justice in order to understand the interplay in partnerships between public and private agencies. From among three types of strategies, coercive, isolated and deliberative, the last one has the potential to bring about transformative changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural development in Europe is a long-standing issue that has been supported through EU policies in various ways. The effects of rural development have been uneven, and differences between well-to-do and marginal rural areas have been increasing both across and within countries. This process is reinforced by the current financial crisis. Recently, social innovation has been introduced as the new panacea for realising development and growth while, at the same time, warranting social inclusion and counteracting social inequality. A central question of this article is whether social innovation may help to effectively fight rural marginalisation, why that could be the case and what conditions then must be met. Three examples of rural social innovation are used to distil specific features of social innovation and compare them with other concepts and approaches to rural development. Rural social innovation is distinctive in its dependence on civic self-reliance and self-organisation due to austerity measures and state withdrawal, and its cross-sectoral and translocal collaborations. This article concludes that it is time to go beyond earlier ideas of exogenous versus (neo-)endogenous development and introduces the idea of nexogenous development with socio-political reconnection as an engine of revitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social change is often narrated as a sequential process from traditional society to industrial or urban society. In this kind of a narrative, the countryside and agricultural livelihoods are often interpreted as undeveloped and as a contrast to the urban. Furthermore, rural development has often happened unnoticed. This article intends to discuss the sociological knowledge produced by studies that highlight the own experiences and knowledge of rural actors, farmers. The aim is to understand and interpret the narrated identities of farmers, and their agency in the changing circumstances of farming. Farmers act and face societal changes individually, while utilising cultural patterns of action that emerge from their own background. If they perceive the general circumstances and societal structures as constant and unchangeable, then their ability to react to external changes can be limited. In the success stories farmers defined their life through agency. This strengthened their possibilities of expressing different identities and redefining them in a flexible way in a changing environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on research conducted in Northern Ireland, this article examines two aspects of rural development practice. Firstly, it examines the emphasis given to social and civic development alongside economic development. Secondly, the idea that partnerships represent increased democracy and civic participation is explored. The theoretical framework is informed by the social capital debate, with particular reference to the work of Robert Putnam. It is argued that the social capital debate clarifies the importance of economic goals vis-à-vis social and civic goals. It is further argued that the social capital debate gives renewed impetus to a romantic naïve view of rural communities, where civic harmony and inclusion triumphs and there is little room for power struggles, exclusionary tactics by privileged groups, or ideological conflicts. This research corroborates that the rural development process is mired by difficulties because of unrealistic expectations, inadequate specification of goals, and a lack of central government responsibility for the process. It is suggested that the problems posed by area-based development do not represent questions for local partnerships to address, but rather ones that must be taken up by national governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on two specific gender related changes that are linked to agricultural and rural restructuring, at least partly motivated by the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The first relates to the increase in part–time farming and women’s increasing off–farm work, linked to falling farm incomes and reduced subsidies. The second relates to women’s participation in rural development policy and practice. Both part–time farming and rural development initiatives can be seen as potentially enhancing gender equality. It could be suggested that off–farm income provides women with financial independence, and places them in a position where they expect and receive more equitable sharing of household decision making power. Rural development initiatives are understood as offering a new form of governance that is more inclusive, more representative, and more transparent. They are seen as providing scope to include women in political structures in a way that has not previously been achieved. However, it is argued in this article that ideological and cultural barriers exist, such that agricultural and rural restructuring unfolds in a gendered fashion, which support the status quo. This is not to suggest that gender or cultural ideologies are static. This is clear in the competing ideologies of equality legislation in Northern Ireland and traditional cultural practice. Despite this struggle, the current face of agricultural and rural restructuring is not one that significantly advances gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the emergence of welfare State rationality in Finnish agricultural policy. Before World War II and during the following two decades, Finnish society was in many ways dominated by agriculture. This is certainly true to the extent that the proportion of the farming population is a valid indicator. Rurality was also deeply rooted in Finnish culture. Furthermore, agricultural issues were in the centre of domestic policy considerations. However, a major shift-concerning both agricultural and social policy in political life-took place in the late 1950s and 1960s. This article focuses on the co-existence of these two policy domains, that is, on the social aspects in Finnish agricultural policy. Before the shift after the World War II, an extensive resettlement scheme and an agrarian reform had been carried out. This was seen as a necessary solution for the problems of the landless rural population, which had not been addressed since the 1930s. Resettlement was also necessary for solving the urgent problems caused by the Karelian immigrants and the war losses of both farm properties and agricultural land to the Soviet Union.

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The principal aim of this article is to demythologize current notions on planned intervention. It has been assumed that this is indispensable for the development of a critical analysis of policy and intervention practices. It has been argued that it is important to challenge the time-space definitions, normative assumptions and praxeology implied in orthodox intervention models; and the article exposes the limitations of certain theoretical conceptions that underpin them, giving particular attention to the theorization of commoditization, institutional incorporation and the interrelations of state and civil society. As an alternative, an actor-oriented analysis has been proposed that views intervention as a "multiple reality" made up of differing cultural perceptions and social interests, and constituted by the ongoing social and political struggles that take place between the social actors involved. One needs to distinguish between theoretical models aimed at understanding processes of social change and development and policy models which attempt to set out the ways in which development can be promoted. One unresolved issue in this line of reasoning is the question of state autonomy. In order to resolve this, one needs to define more precisely the sets of social forces impinging upon state powerholders and institutions and to determine the means and extent of political control exercised by powerful interest groups, including the dominant national and foreign classes. A conclusion has been drawn that the logic of capital approach to state intervention does not differentiate sufficiently between what one might call the imperatives and the actualities of capitalist development as they work out in differing social contexts.

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents response of the authors to the comments made by sociologist G. Horzetzk to their book "Rural and Agricultural Sociology: An Introduction Into the Sociology of Rural Areas and of Agriculture." Horzetzky blamed the authors of lacking concept in the book. According to the authors, the book is meant for those who just want to inform themselves about this specialized field of sociology, a field mostly neglected by German universities. Moreover, the book should be useful for all those who keep professional interests in rural people and in agriculture. According to the author, the focus of their book is on Sociology of Agriculture. Being the sociology of a particular profession and economic sector it belongs to the wider field of Sociology of Economics. Referring to Horzetzky, the authors say that, to blame the authors for the faults and weaknesses discovered by reviewers and to leave it at that would be possible. But there is something more to it than that. Even the most critical of reviewers could not help but admit that a book cannot be better than the state of affairs within the appropriate science.

At present the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or East Germany is the world's most prosperous socialist state. Its achievements in the sphere of material production have been based on central planning and control by the Socialist Unity Party or Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland (SED), which dominates the state apparatus. Theoretically, there is much to be learned about the tensions and contradictions of bureaucratically directed social change from the experience of the GDR. The structure of vertical integration is only possible with the introduction of industrial methods of production, extensive co-operative relations, and complex planning and management techniques. The functional model of society, in more or less sophisticated form, is attractive to those who have established political control in that it plays down internal conflict and presents an image of component parts working together in the pursuit of common goals. Although they apply a conflict model to other systems, both the SED leaders and academics in the GDR describe their own society in terms of gradual evolution and specialization of activities, which are integrated in a non-antagonistic way.

This article focuses on rural industrialization and social change in Western Ireland. The post-war era has witnessed the progressive extension of urban influence into more isolated rural areas, as a concomitant of the widespread adoption of regional development policies. The social impact of this gradual absorption of the rural community into the larger urban structure is examined in this study. Ireland's location on the western edge of the European continent, outside the ambit of the larger conurbations, has for long helped to preserve a distinctly rural way of life. The omission of the rural-urban dimension from anthropological studies in Ireland in the past is understandable, because urban ties were often strongest with overseas capitals, which attracted succeeding generations of emigrants. Local rural-urban interaction was confined for the most part to the exchange of farm produce for manufactured goods. Occupationally each area remained distinct, with a distinctive social structure, which in rural areas was marked by a high degree of cohesiveness based on blood relationship, and by co-operation in the performance of farm tasks.

The article focuses on the importance of rural sociology in Europe and North America. The author asserted that the discussion of rural psychology in terms of its discipline, conceptual problems and future undertakings must start by touching on fundamental issues of every scholarly discipline. It is required to establish intellectual specificity regarding historical background, social development and scholarly conceptual ideas. Academic references, studies and strategies can be used in the specificity of discipline.

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)