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The article presents list of topics included in the previous issues from 1960 to 1990 of the journal "Socioligia Ruralis." The topics discussed are "Conflict of Norms and the Behaviour of Recipients of Social Welfare Assistance in Finland," "Participation in Community Services-a Cases Study of Health Service," "Comparative Analysis of Settlements," "Rural Social Organisation," "Changes in The Structure and Functions of the Rural Community," "Planning in Agricultural Regions," "Problems of Planning in Underdeveloped Areas," "Aspects of the Rural and Urban," "Rural Settlement in Great Britain," "Problems of Planning and the Rural Sociologist," "A Study of New Framers in Israel," "The Organization of Extension Evaluation," "Changing Functions of the Community," "Impact of Changes in Agriculture on Political Life in Asia," "The Role and Function of Rural Sociology in Asia," "The Role and Function of Rural Sociology," "Values in European Agricultural Policies," "The Effectiveness of German Pilot Farms," "The Rural-Urban Variable Reconsidered," "The Rural-Urban Continuum: A Reply to Eugen Lupri."

The article discusses about rural development in different social, economic and political contexts bringing together the analysis of European and Third World situations and tendencies. The article analyses the characteristics and outcomes of contrasting types of rural development policy. The analysis of policy issues requires that people take account policy content, administration means which concerns the organization of implementation and the social, economic, and political consequences of the policy, under different local conditions and as experienced by different social groups. There should be study of the differential responses to change and to programs of development shown by different social groups or classes of a rural population. The emphasis on differential responses is particularly important because it acts as a corrective to centralist views on development that interpret changes in the organization and activities of local populations simply as to externally initiated change and recognizes the heterogeneity of rural communities. A further issue concerns cultural and ideological dimensions. The exploration of these dimensions brings back to the importance of State policies that affect the rural sector.

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This paper advances the literature on the 'good farmer' by considering the role social media may play in the presentation, refinement and reworking of notions of good farming. In exploring these ideas, the paper brings current understandings of the good farmer into conversation with those literatures on online capital exchange and the extensions of Goffman's ideas of identity performance. The paper draws on analysis of 5,000 farming tweets and interviews with 22 farmers who utilize Twitter. The paper considers how social media offers a change to the geographies and temporalities of good farming as it allows connection to a broader, geographically unrestricted, audience, might open up the previously un(der)observed or inaccessible microspaces of the farm, and allow the multifarious and often ephemeral aspects of farming practices to be captured. In moving, conceptually, beyond the idea of identity performance toward one of curation, the paper introduces the idea of didactic text, which serves to contextualize what is seen as good (and bad) farming practice. The paper shows how social media's ability to offer this regular and contextual information allows us to move beyond abstracted and decontextualized symbols of good farming toward recognizing the context‐specific nature of the 'rules of the game,' and how a broader audience beyond the farming community may be beginning to play a role in (re)shaping the symbols and practices of good farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I assess the utility of two targeted qualitative interview questions: descriptions of a 'good farmer' and a 'good day', for eliciting rich textual data. Studies where farmers have been asked to describe or define a good farmer have been utilized across a growing range of international contexts in order to identify farmers' cultural scripts, symbolic capital and social norms. The constitution of a 'good day' is new to rural studies but has been employed academically to assess perceptions of well‐being and job satisfaction. I employ document analysis to analyse the multiple uses of the 'good farmer' question in the rural studies literature and introduce a contrasting empirical application the 'good day' question in a rural case study in the United Kingdom. Findings demonstrate that both interview questions can generate rich textual descriptions of embodied performances. 'Good farmer' definitions may also include a moral judgement, whereas the 'good day' question specifically yields descriptions of affect. Farmers are reluctant to identify 'bad farmers', but asking about a 'bad day' can open up discussion of the vulnerabilities of farming life. Both questions are thus suited to more‐than‐representational research, gaining utility from their congruence between common parlance and academic conceptualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent papers have argued that spatial justice should be pursued through a place‐based approach, which enables local people to assert their own capacity to act and to pursue their own positive visions: an approach fundamental to LEADER. This paper considers the extent to which LEADER constitutes local action addressing spatial justice through a case study in England. Analysis of this case leads to questions about the extent to which apparent localism is constrained by 'government at a distance' and how this can affect the ability of LAGs to pursue spatial justice. It is suggested that LEADER displays a tension between network and hierarchy modes of governance, increasingly under control of hierarchy in this instance despite its origins as networked CLLD. The paper concludes that LEADER has potential to contribute to spatial justice – both distributive and procedural – but that this may be frustrated by the imposition of different priorities and controls at local or from higher levels. Further case studies will be required to investigate how widely this potential is realised or frustrated across Europe's varying national and local political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the contributions to the World Congress special issue on 'Agricultural Change: Class, State, Technology, and International Food Regimes in the Late 1980s'. The papers are placed in the context of recent trends in the literature in the sociology and political economy of agriculture. Trends highlighted are the decreased dominance of deductive theories and the increased attention given to commodity systems and rural social structures, to international food and agricultural regimes and international commodity complexes, to the sociology of agricultural science and technological change, to the dynamics of agricultural crisis, and to understanding the relations between production and circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The special edition of the journal "Sociologia Rurails" seeks to redress imbalance by positioning the rural more centrally within recent developments and debates focused on social natures. The seven papers that make this volume were originally were presented in a workshop of the XIX Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology that took place in 2001 in Dijon, France. This special edition commences with two papers that provide broad reviews of the position of animals within recent writings on social nature. In the first of these papers, Hilary Tovey focuses on what she terms the invisibility of animals within sociology. Reviewing recent writings on social nature, she argues that animals have either been ignored altogether or have been subsumed into wild nature, leaving domestic animals, and particularly those linked to agriculture, othered within sociological literatures. For Tovey, domestic animals pose a problem for sociologists of nature, in that they cannot be comfortably positioned within either nature or culture. She shows how such animals play an important role in shaping dominant representations of rurality and particular rural (farming) cultures, and argues that domestic animals need to be taken more seriously by environmental and rural sociologists so that more appropriate theoretical understandings of rural society can be developed.

This paper aims to examine the residential trajectories of immigrants that intersect rural areas in Sweden. It adds to the literature on new immigration destinations (NIDs) and addresses the need to include migration routes intersecting rural areas, immigrants’ secondary migration patterns and temporal dimensions of migration, as well as the multiplicity of migrants in such destinations. We examine whether NIDs have emerged in Sweden and immigrants’ subsequent internal mobility from such areas and its determinants. Employing sequence analysis to full-population register data, we identify typical migration pathways. According to the results, NIDs are an emerging phenomenon in rural and small-sized cities in Sweden. We find limited support for the Swedish discourse that the diverse groups of rural migrants leave soon after arrival; also, those leaving are not doing so for labour market–related reasons, nor are they heading for metropolitan areas. We suggest that NIDs offer an important contribution to understanding migration patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Friedmann and McMichael's work, through their concept of the 'food regime', has been foundational to our thinking about the relation between capitalism, the state, and agriculture. Given the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of their seminal 1989 paper in this journal (Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures, 1870 to the Present) it seems very appropriate to commemorate this event by undertaking a reassessment of that paper. This article undertakes such a reassessment by examining and critiquing: the theoretical assumptions underlying the paper, particularly in relation to capitalism, class, and the state. This directs attention particularly to: the authors' (implicit) definition of capitalism; the relation between capitalism and the modern state; their treatment of 'class' and 'class struggle'; and their periodisation of food regimes and the dynamics underlying them, these being premised on their theoretical assumptions. The second, third, and, fourth sections occupy the bulk of the paper. The second section develops a significantly revised theoretical foundation for thinking about the dynamics underlying food regimes, while the third section deploys this as the basis for a new periodisation of food regimes. This periodisation includes a proposed Fifth, or 'Post‐Neoliberal' Food Regime, and the final section examines this in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on several abstracts published in the journal "Sociologia Ruralis." The paper "Theorising Nature and Society in Sociology: The Invisibility of Animals," by Hilary Tovey argues that animals are central to rural social life and a rural sociology needs to develop theorizations of the rural which incorporate this fact. It looks to environmental sociology, the sociology of the relations between nature and society, for help in this respect, but argues that the debates which have characterized recent sociology of the environment have focused attention on the problems of conceptualizing nature at the expense of attempts to reonceptualise society. The paper "Communities in Nature: The Construction and Understanding of Forest Natures," by Terry Marsden, Paul Milbourne, Lawrence Kitchen and Kevin Bishop outlines three different but interrelated theoretical strands associated with contemporary society-nature debates; namely social constructionism, realism and ecological modernization. By using empirical evidence from a case study of community and forestry interactions in a South Wales ex-mining village, the paper argues for the need to incorporate into these theoretical debates a deeper analysis of community understandings and practices.

It is established that, in many countries, farmers recognise displayed tidiness in farming practice as indicative of 'good' farming. This paper asks whether Irish farmers share this recognition, and considers how this may affect uptake of agri‐environmental schemes and the potential for alterations in farming practices associated with such schemes to become 'culturally embedded'. Taking a Bourdieusian approach, this paper examines features which Irish farmers associate with tidy, 'good' farming practices and the resulting capital invested in them. It is found that the Irish participants do recognise displayed tidy practice as cultural capital, but that it is mainly male farmers who afford this capital sufficient value to recognise the display of tidiness as status‐conferring symbolic capital. This recognition results in inter‐farmer criticism and judgement, and in the questioning by many male farmers of the untidy farmer's right to the 'good farmer' identity. This is not the case for female farmers, who generally dislike the culture of judgement and criticism. In light of this culture, it is suggested that tidiness is one reason why agri‐environmental schemes do not become culturally embedded, and that this issue may be exacerbated by the low representation of Irish women in farm ownership and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable Intensification (SI) has been popularised in recent years as an approach seeking to balance the potentially conflicting demands of enhancing agricultural outputs with reducing the negative impacts arising from the current food system. Proponents have argued that SI can benefit from collaboration between farmers, but understanding is limited by a lack of data on current collaborative practices. Questions have also been raised as to whether the SI agenda pays sufficient attention to social sustainability as part of a fully integrated conception of SI. Tackling these issues, this paper reports on mixed methods data collection from seven case areas across the UK, with a particular focus on the experience of upland livestock farmers in north Wales. We evidence: (1) The extent, forms and preferences associated with farmers' collaboration; with findings demonstrating higher levels of collaboration than anticipated and a preference for informal forms of co‐working. (2) The underpinning and mutually reinforcing role of social interconnectedness in the delivery of diverse outcomes from collaboration. (3) How SI is perceived to threaten social sustainability, and thus work against a more integrated model of delivery. The paper concludes by arguing for a genuinely integrative model of SI to secure collaborations going forwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article interprets a relational typology of farm business in Southern England. In a paper published in the previous issue of Sociologia Ruralis the author addressed the theoretical and methodological aspects of constructing a relational typology of farm businesses. In this paper the author builds on these arguments in an attempt to develop a typology that is both theoretically informed, within a political economy framework and responsive enough to empirical variation to be capable of interpreting field survey material. In the earlier paper the author argued for a methodology, which focused upon the causal relations and mechanisms explaining the dynamics of agricultural production, rather than on the contingent forms describing farm businesses. The author emphasized two particular points in the analysis of agricultural production relations. The examination of empirical material represents the second stage. It provides a means of refining and developing the typology through an examination of the contingent conditions within which structural processes operate and are modified over time and space.

An introduction to the journal is presented which includes articles on topics including Europeanisation and internationalisation of rural poverty and exclusion research, and rural poverty.

Recent explorations of agri‐environmental governance which draw on the assemblage perspective highlight the relational aspects, the process dimension and the generative elements of certain sustainability endeavours. This article argues that the implications of this approach are little discussed especially what concerns the transformation potential of agri‐environmental programmes. We focus on the notion of reconfiguration as a significant facet of transformation. We align with recent research in transition studies to claim the need for conceptualizing reconfiguration. We draw on empirical research pursued with the Donau Soja organization to refer to a number of unfolding reconfigurations, in respect to the spatial, the technological and the political dimensions. We focus on the political reconfiguration and discuss some of the spillover effects of scientific research projects and proposals, programmatic papers, policy positioning and lobby work which accompany the everyday work and governance of the Donau Soja organization. We argue that greater attention to the unmeasured and unmeasurable effects of the DS assemblage also implies giving greater attention to the long‐term effects of such programmes. Moreover, the numerous changes unleashed by the organization demand research to re‐evaluate what counts as failure and success in agri‐environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THIS AND THE FOLLOWING six papers represent an attempt to bring sociological and geographical insights to the analysis of a single, rural development initiative: the European Union's LEADER programme (an acronym of Liaisons Entre Actions de Développement de l'Economie Rurale). The task given to each author was to reflect on the significance of LEADER in their respective regions or countries. What do the experiences of this single EU intervention - an outcome of the policy of territorializing the Structural Funds - tell us about rural development in each geopolitical and temporal context? The papers offer a range of thematic perspectives on LEADER and endogenous development and thereby contribute to the on-going theorization of the political economy of rural development in the (expanding) EU. The present paper rationalizes this academic project by introducing the background to LEADER and describing its general characteristics before presenting a set of four analytical frameworks which might serve to guide the study of LEADER above the level of locally specific, technical evaluations (see below). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of articles related to sociology published in the October 2003 issue of the journal "Theory and Society." "Micro-Business and Social Inclusion in Rural Households: A Comparative Analysis," by Elizabeth Oughton, Jane Wheelock and Susan Baines; "Ruralities and Gender Divisions of Labour in Eastern England," by Steven Henderson and Keith Hoggart; "The Reinvention of Tirau: Landscape As a Record of Changing Economy and Culture," by Ruth Panelli, Ottilie Stolte and Richard Bedford.

Origin food schemes (OFS) aim to protect and promote a unique product resulting from a specific place and know‐how whose qualities are objectified in the product specifications. This paper explores the standardisation effects of OFS on the diversity of local practices and knowledge by analysing the emergence of the specifications of four origin cheeses recognised as Geographical Indications and Slow Food Presidia (Chefchaouen goat cheese in Morocco, Piacentinu Ennese in Italy, and Béarn mountain cheese and Ossau‐Iraty in France). Results confirm that specifications directly preserve some genetic resources, taste, and know‐how, whilst they also show that traditional production practices are taken into account differently, depending on negotiations among stakeholders during which opposing motives, strategies, and forms of knowledge may emerge. We argue that paradoxically this process results in adapting and reducing existing diversity, including in OFS that are more oriented towards localising practices and promoting a diversity of tastes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article empirically investigates rural, small-scale household farming in post-Soviet southern Ukraine, focusing on a particular group of households that have managed to intensify their production beyond subsistence without help from large farms. Large-farm support for small-scale household agricultural production in the former Soviet Union is generally considered necessary for small-scale household farming, so the absence of this support is noteworthy. The conditions of this intensification are explored and mapped out. Further, this intensification is related to discussions in the peasant study literature on the general viability of intensive smallholder production. While the investigated farms do present some sustainability concerns, this paper concludes that this production is not less viable than large-scale agricultural production. The main future challenge is how upcoming agrarian reforms will affect smallholders, particularly with respect to formalising informal resource use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Rui Graça Feijó and João Arrivacado Nunes on the context of household formation in Portugal during the nineteenth century, and another by Martine Berlan on the feminist approach to rural sociology.

The problem of family farming is approached from different angles in three empirical studies on the Great Britain, Norway, and a village in the south of France. The three studies all describes the survival and revival of the family farm in a period of capitalist and industrial development. In the first paper Michael Winter examines the Milk Marketing Board in the Great Britain as a particular aspect of policy management by the state. Using Panitch' theory of corporatism, Winter shows that the MMB is a state-induced collaboration between different classes of agricultural producers, acting as a powerful agent in the implementation of state policy. The third paper by koel Puijk has a different perspective. It starts with a review of some French theories of agricultural development and capitalism. Puijk criticizes these theories for not taking into account the internal dynamics of the agricultural production unit. The failure or success to adapt to changing circumstances depends on the familial situation, personal factors and desired standards of living. Puijk develops a framework based on Chayanov's consumer/producer ratio and uses this to analyse the survival strategies of winegrowers. In his paper Puijk touches upon an important point, which is neglected in the sociology of agriculture. The reproduction of family farmers has often been seen in purely economic, technical and physical terms.

This paper explores the concept of prosumption in the world of food. Prosumption is a combination of production and consumption: food prosumers are people who actively produce food for self‐consumption. Besides reflecting on sociological conceptualisations of prosumption, this exploratory study uses an online survey (N = 835) and semi‐structured interviews (N = 12) to examine prosumption empirically. Respondents, living in Almere, the Netherlands, have mostly personal and pragmatic reasons, such as the enjoyment of gardening and the pleasure of producing food, to engage in some form of prosumption. Respondents are hardly motivated by profound concerns about sustainability or a wish to create a 'radical' alternative food system. We argue, therefore, that a more pragmatic approach to the concept of prosumption in the field of food is more appropriate than sociological interpretations linking prosumption to such grand themes as power, capitalism and activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how, and the extent to which, village plans and municipal rural and health policies have been coordinated in three Danish rural case locations. We applied a qualitative design through a document analysis of plans and policies as well as interviews in villages ‐ with municipal administrations. Theoretically, the article builds on the coordination and bridging that have been undertaken between community‐led planning and statutory planning. First, the study shows that although communities are expected to influence the successful implementation of health interventions, there is still a way to go before health and rural development planning are integrated in Danish municipalities despite innovative actions towards integration at the village level. Second, issues such as what we term 'tame planning', fear of municipal domination, difficulties in approaching village diversity, and silo‐based strategy‐making are identified as critical barriers to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progressive agrarian populism and food sovereignty have recently been discussed as having the potential to erode the right‐wing populist agitation that is currently widespread in rural areas. However, these ideas are unpopular in post‐socialist Eastern Europe. This paper studies the Romanian 'new peasant' movement 'Eco Ruralis' – a member organisation of La Vía Campesina. It argues that there is a critical mismatch between the progressive objectives of Eco Ruralis and the main worries of villagers in Romania. It also demonstrates the ways in which communist legacies influence societal attitudes towards capitalism and socialism, making the adoption of La Vía Campesina's anti‐capitalist and pro‐socialist ideologies problematic. Finally, it shows that the concept of 'food sovereignty' can be misleading, as this concept is alien to the Romanian countryside. Instead, we reveal that other sustainable practices, such as seed sovereignty, are more culturally appropriate and may play an important role in eroding right‐wing sentiments in the countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their attempts to associate the nationalistic ideology with speculative promises to emancipate the people from malevolent 'outsiders', right‐wing populists often engage with rural and agricultural topics. Meanwhile, green parties, commonly associated with the progressive ideas of environmentally friendly agriculture, occasionally employ the binary logic of agrarian populism. This paper has three objectives. First, to identify the discursive features of rural (right‐wing and agrarian) populism. Second, to examine how these discursive differences unfold in agricultural, party politics. Third, to examine the implications of overlapping ideas of populist and green parties for emancipatory rural politics. The study is predominantly based on the analysis of political discourses in Hungary: Jobbik (right‐wing populist) and LMP (green party), while the agricultural discourse of Fidesz, the ruling right‐wing populist party will serve as the background to the analysis. Particular attention is given to the aesthetic, symbolic, and material dimensions of land in discourse, including environmentally friendly farming and the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly recognized that social exclusion is a dynamic process, but it operates within well-established political, social and economic structures. A breadth of empirical data is used to explore various dimensions of social exclusion and inclusion, including Australian, Canadian and European data. While all the articles explore different aspects of social exclusion, common themes emerge. All authors note the multi-dimensional nature of social exclusion. The importance of social networks in providing information and advice to the integration of young people is also identified. Common to all articles though is the firm belief that national governments should be centrally involved in tackling social exclusion. As currently formulated, the extent of government commitment to rural development programmes is questionable. These programmes tend to be short-term with insecure and limited funding. At any rate, the capacity of local partnerships to address issues of social exclusion is restricted. The responsibility for economic, social and civic inclusion of citizens rests primarily with national governments.

This paper presents a methodology for undertaking research with a 'difficult to reach population' – hobby farmers. In an investigation designed to assess agrarian transition processes in a peri‐urban locale, data was sought on every agricultural holding in a Scottish parish (municipality). This 'parish study' methodology combined participant mapping and qualitative interviewing with photo elicitation. Participant mapping was found to be useful for identifying farmers who are not normally included in rural social research, leading to a high response rate and a respondent pool for photo elicitation. The method also enabled the analysis of agrarian identity and land use. However, the parish study method is not suited to studies of dispersed groups and is more resource intensive than standard qualitative interview‐based studies. A number of ethical and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) issues also arise around identifying participants, mapping, photos and incentivising participation in the research. The utility of the parish study method is demonstrated through two key findings of the research: the problematic definition of 'hobby farmers' in the study site and the trajectories towards de facto land abandonment in a peri‐urban locale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a socioecological analysis of the plight of the honeybee. Departing from natural sciences explanations of the chronic health issues observed in managed honeybees the proposed socioecological analysis focuses on some of the social dimensions of the problems. Specifically, the article first looks at how the cultural disdain for insects is combined with toxic agricultural practices to make bees' lives challenging. Then it focuses on large‐scale commercial beekeepers and links the fate of managed honeybees to their commodification. Forced to adapt to increasing environmental and economic pressures, beekeepers have developed new management practices intended to keep bees alive and produce as many as possible in order to stay in business and fulfil pollination demand. Their new concern for best management practices fails to foster global changes in agriculture, subsequently compromising their own fate with that of their bees. Honeybees and beekeepers are both affected by the current agricultural model designed for profitability rather than health. The paper builds on in‐depth semi‐structured interviews of 45 large‐scale commercial beekeepers and scientists and participant observation, beekeeping magazines and materials available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years we have witnessed the development of numerous alternative strategies (AS) within the UK agro-food system intent on overcoming, or at least circumventing, some of the problems associated with the globalisation of food production and consumption. Within these AS, there is an intention to reconnect food to the social, cultural and environmental context of its production, leading to considerable interest in their potential to engender sustained change within the food system. However, it is apparent that AS are likely to face various pressures on their underlying integrity and alterity, and their possible re-incorporation within mainstream processes. There is a need, therefore, to interrogate the durability of AS, which this paper does through its critical examination of farmers' markets (FMs). Drawing upon a number of FM cases studies, it examines the engagement of producers and consumers, both with each other, but also with the exchange context of FMs. The resultant data are assessed within the conceptual domains of embeddedness and regard as a means of better understanding the nature of FMs as an AS. The paper concludes by outlining the implications of this research for our comprehension of AS more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the coping behaviour of micro-businesses during the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak of 2001 in the UK revealed the importance of households to micro-businesses. However it was not just family members who helped businesses to cope with the crisis. Non-family members of households also took part in activities to help businesses survive declines in turnover. Whilst business families have received considerable attention in research that examines how small firms are socially embedded and the consequences of this for business growth and decision making, this paper explores business households and how these enabled small firms to cope with the FMD outbreak. The paper develops the concept of the business household, explaining it from three (connected) perspectives: work, consumption and people. It is influenced by an institutional approach to the household, which relates the organisation of tasks inside the household to political and economic processes outside it, and is based on qualitative and quantitative data collected from both farming and non-farming businesses in the north of England in 2001/2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory approaches to research and development have had relatively little academic or practitioner critique, resulting in a mythologising of the power of participatory methodologies to accomplish problem solving, emancipation or empowerment. Participation is also presented as evidence of social inclusion and is fostered as a strategy to counteract social exclusion. The purpose of this article therefore is to challenge and critique a range of definitions and perspectives of participation in terms of theory and practice. The paper focuses on two issues arising from the participatory literature and our own research experiences with communication technology projects based in rural and remote Queensland, Australia. We propose that non-participation and peripheral participation are valid and legitimate choices exercised by community members that can be seen to be as individually empowering as participation. We also support the view of participation as both the means and the ends of development, a position that reflects the reality of participatory practice as fluid and variable over time. The paper concludes that both theoreticians and practitioners need to recognise and challenge the assumptions that underpin many participatory development projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between rurality and heterosexuality. It argues that in discussing the spatialisation of sexual identity in rural areas, previous research has concentrated either on homosexuality or masculinity in isolation. As is common in research generally, little attention has been given to the construction and performance of heterosexuality. Using two case study examples, one from the UK and one from New Zealand, the paper examines the centrality of conventional notions of heterosexuality to rural (and particularly farming) relationships. It suggests that ideas about the suitability of partners and spouses conform to highly traditional notions of heterosexuality. This particularly evident in the context of farming masculinities and the relationship between 'natural' masculinity and acceptable femininity. Ideas about the farmer's wife are shown to incorporate highly conventional assumptions not only about gender role but also feminine sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The recent ‘Liberty and Livelihood’ March in London highlights how the issue of hunting with dogs, which directly involves only a small minority of people in the British countryside and, opinion polls indicate, is opposed by the majority of the British population, can still dominate national political and media agendas. A key tactic of the March organisers, the Countryside Alliance, was to present hunting as an embedded part of rural life, emphasising important connections between natural discourses of rurality, hunting and broader rural social issues.It is these claimed embedded natures of hunting in rural areas that form the focus of this paper. Drawing on recent research in four case-study hunting areas in the English and Welsh countryside, the paper positions hunting within a broader rural socio-cultural context. It explores community understandings of and interactions with hunting, and considers the broader sociocultural role of hunting in these rural spaces. The case-studies indicate that while hunting may be described as a socially and culturally embedded practice in these areas, its place within the rural community is bound up with a great deal of social and spatial complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Within society, farm animal welfare is moving up the policy and moral agenda as many of the industrial processes associated with animal farming are now being called into question. In the academy, there is growing intellectual interest in the relationship of humanity to animality and the porosity or otherwise of the biologically and socially constructed boundaries between them. This paper uses the farm animal welfare debate to explore changes in society animal relations by looking in turn at the farm, at farm animals and at the notion of farm animal welfare itself. The paper explores the paradox that for as long as society eats and kills animals for food, we are necessarily bound up in a persistent modernist and essentialist conceptualisation of animals and nature. However, alternative approaches are investigated as part of what might be described as a more postmodern approach to animalian difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealand farmers were affected in significant ways by agricultural restructuring during the mid 1980s. Government, farmers' union, academic and media discourses all describe the ensuing years as a period of financial hardship for farm families. Based on aggregate statistics, the majority of these discourses reflect and ‘naturalise’ the government's neo-liberal stance, thus conveying an implicit assumption that farmers' experiences were determined by the economic efficiency of the farm enterprise. Drawing upon case study data and a holistic conceptual approach to the family farm, this paper contests such narratives, arguing that farm-level experiences of agricultural restructuring during (and after) the rural downturn were contingent upon a much greater array of factors. These included: the characteristics of the farm enterprise, household and property; actors' individual attributes; and the local context's biophysical, economic and cultural fabrics. The paper concludes by arguing that a full appreciation of the contingency of farm-level experiences requires an adequate recognition of the nexus of relations between the family farm, individual actor, and local context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article present abstracts of several research papers and articles that appeared in the October 2002 issue of the journal Sociologia Ruralis. An article authored by Stewart Lockie related to food production-consumption networks, states that the distanciation of production-consumption relationships in space and time, and the historically productivist bias of social theory, have contributed to the development of sociology of food production and consumption as largely unrelated academic discourses. Production-based agro-food studies have tended to treat consumption as either a domain of social practice distinct from, but determined by, production, or as a source of demands that producers must compete among themselves to meet. Both perspectives fail to deal either with the complexity of food consumption practices or their relationships with practices of food provision. Another article by Julie Gutham states that agro-food researchers have yet to systematically theorize how the social life of food intersects with a political economy of food production. Yet without such understanding, activists are unlikely to affect the politics of production in intended ways. It is crucial to understand how the meanings that animate the politics of consumption are translated and distributed as surplus value and rent, and, for that matter, how surplus value and rent value are translated into meanings.

This paper explores cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities among farming families in a French community. In particular, it shows how, with the development of agricultural technology, the tractor has become a symbol of male power and spatial domination over women. Drawing on life–history interviews and ethnographic observations, it is argued that farmers have appropriated agricultural technology and used it to construct and reaffirm their masculine identities. As a result of this appropriation,women’s work in agricultural production has become limited to carrying out menial tasks which are seen as secondary to farming.Focusing on narratives revolving around men, women and tractors, the paper shows that the tractor,as a symbol of male domination,is directly opposed to images of femininity. However, it is argued that the tractor can also become the expression of struggle and contention over masculine power and patriarchal gender relations on the farm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homelessness remains a neglected component of rural studies in Britain and Europe. Research has tended to skirt around the subject, focusing either on groups in need located within rural housing markets or on those people experiencing rural poverty living within conventional properties. In this paper we want to connect homelessness with rurality by drawing on key findings from recently completed research on rural homelessness in England. We want to make connections between homelessness and rurality in two main ways. Firstly, given the limited knowledge base on rural homelessness, we set out the overall extent and profile of homelessness in rural England based on an analysis of unpublished official statistics. We also highlight how homelessness in rural England is bound up with a great deal of spatial unevenness and suggest that it is through localized investigation that important connections between homelessness and rurality can be best understood. In the second part of the paper, we draw on findings from local research conducted in two rural districts in Gloucestershire to provide a range of evidence that points to the significance of the local spaces of rural homelessness. In particular, this work demonstrates the ways in which local structures of housing provision and socio-cultural and political processes in these districts impact on the nature and experiences of rural homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of crime has emerged as a rich and diverse area of human geography. However, the majority of research has been conducted in an urban environment and rural places have been neglected by comparison. Emphasizing the British countryside, this paper draws upon current thinking in rural geography to suggest a research agenda to fill this gap. Initial attention is given to advances in environmental criminology and how these may be applied to rural areas. Following a critique of this approach, emphasis is given to the fear of crime in rural areas and how this is influenced by constructions of rurality and criminality. Questions are raised about the nature of criminal threat in the countryside, the extent to which it is culturally constructed and whether it is leading to the exclusion of particular groups from rural space. In the final sections of the paper, the changing geographies of rural policing are reviewed in light of these issues. Attention is given to recent policing initiatives in the countryside and the implications these have for the governance of rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is set within the context of a growing interest in the gendered nature of rurality and of rural life, and in particular in the context of an emerging literature on rural masculinities. It focuses on rural men and in particular on the phenomenon of rising male rural suicide rates. The paper reviews existing research in order to ascertain the validity of popular claims of high and rising suicide rates among young men in rural Ireland, and explores possible explanations for this phenomenon. It draws on medical and psychological literature but sets this material in a wider geographical context, focusing on processes of contemporary rural restructuring and the oft-cited masculinity crisis. The paper concludes that in order to understand the processes behind rising male suicide rates, we need to understand the struggles for power and identity that are going on in places, and the movements of people in and out of places. Therefore geography and gender studies can contribute to a greater understanding of the phenomenon, suggesting that this is an area that merits further interdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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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.)

Presents an introduction to the January 1991 issue of the periodical "Sociologia Ruralis."