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Abstract The paper outlines three different but interrelated theoretical strands associated with contemporary society-nature debates; namely social constructionism, realism and ecological modernisation. 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 argues that variable aspects of nature are a critical element in understanding social community change, just as the latter is important in shaping the value and worth attributed to natural relations. The analysis begins to identify some of the conceptual and empirical gaps which exist in the theoretical interstices between the three approaches; suggesting a need to focus more effectively on aspects of community construction and practice, evolving governance and local embeddedness. These factors become important conceptual bridges in the larger social science quest to relate human materialities much more effectively to natural materialities (and vice versa). [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.)

Usually, vulnerability is equated to weakness and resistance to strength. Drawing on a feminist critique of this conceptualisation, this article aims to discuss how vulnerability to forest fires and local action are mutually and contradictorily related. I analyse the ways in which people in two rural communities surrounded by tree monocultures in Sweden and Spain think, feel and act after being exposed to acute forest fires in 2018 and 2017, respectively. Attentively listening to the experiences of vulnerability during and after the fire in the two cases helps to explain vulnerability to forest fires as an emotional, care‐related process that opens up contradictory and transformative interconnections between peoples, nature and the state. Also, looking at the two cases together, this article shows how vulnerability to fire is mediated through unequal expectations across Europe's North–South divide. By re‐signifying the implications of vulnerability, disasters such as those analysed here can be seen as facilitators of radical transformations towards new rural futures in Europe's forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural change in the agricultural economy may result in the abandonment of agricultural buildings, creating rural brownfield sites. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, post‐agricultural brownfields have become very common in Central and Eastern Europe. Our aim is to uncover and understand the reuse preferences for 16 reuse options, among 1275 survey respondents (local residents) from 272 rural communities with post‐agricultural brownfields in the Czech Republic. The influence of respondent status, the socioeconomic characteristics of those communities and environmental characteristics of communities were tested using redundancy analysis and variation partitioning. Three types of reuse were identified as most preferred among respondents: agricultural reuse, industrial reuse and reuse for housing, services and leisure time activities. We found strong and significant ties between the pattern of preferences for potential reuse options and demographic, community socioeconomic and environmental context variables. It can therefore be concluded that preferences for rural renewal tend to be constructed comprehensively and encompass social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability. In order to implement a vision that promotes sustainable rural development, we need to recognise that the preferences of rural residents are fundamentally shaped by the local environment and are therefore highly dependent on the place‐based circumstances. [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.)

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.)

Farming occupations are, in the Global North, generally solitary, and a growing body of research identifies this as one of the factors that underpins low levels of wellbeing and poor mental health amongst farmers. The primary public health response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic focused on reducing transmission of the virus by limiting interactions of people. This article seeks to assess the impact of these restrictions on farmer's experience of isolation and how it shaped their wellbeing. Applying a broad socio‐ecological framework, we analyse change, continuity and shifts in social and economic relations and their spatial reconfiguration during the COVID‐19 pandemic as recounted in semi‐structured, qualitative interviews. We found that while COVID‐19 has disrupted socio‐spatial relations, including key sites of socialisation for farmers and rural communities, occupational isolation was viewed as a positive feature of farming as was working in nature. Familial and informal networks of support were important throughout the pandemic, while novel engagements with communication technologies facilitated both change and continuity of social and economic interaction. Whilst these findings are broadly positive, the reconfiguration of, particularly, economic relations is viewed as accelerating the turn towards service delivery using technology and, consequently, further reducing opportunities for social interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a generalized study of household size and kinship composition of a domestic group in a community. The size and kinship composition of any domestic group is the result of many diverse influences. Several factors like sex ratios, fertility, age of marriage and first child, and life expectancy affect the size and composition of a household. A large household is less likely to have insufficient labor at critical times of the year for meeting unexpectedly large labor requirements. A large household may also enable older people to have lighter work loads and provide them greater security. It has been argued that the larger the amount of household land, the more labor inputs can be applied without reducing the returns to labor below returns in alternative work. The larger households have more possibility of kinship extension. Work animals may also be a crucial constraint for household size. Urban industrial growth also affects rural households by altering the opportunities facing their members and the goals they seek.

This section presents several abstracts of articles on rural sociology. Reading the Space of the Farmers' Market: A Case Study from the United Kingdom, by Lewis Holloway and Moya Kneafsey examines the emergence of Farmers' Markets in Great Britain. Resource, Arcadia, Lifeworld. Nature Concepts in Environmental Sociology, by C.S.A. (Kris) van Koppen offers a tentative framework for bridging the gap between constructionism and the other nature approaches. Rural Community Life and the Importance of Reciprocal Survival Strategies, by Henk Meert stresses that not every deprived rural household should be regarded as excluded from society. Globalization, Localization and Sustainable Livelihood, by Leo de Haan concludes that research on sustainable livelihood will increasingly have to become multi-dimensional, multi-local and reciprocal. Finally, the article Can Rural Voices Effect Rural Choices? Contesting Deregulation in New Zealand's Apple Industry, by Megan K. L. McKenna evaluates the relative success of local contestation of the terms of neoliberalism and globalization.

The term community has proved to be remarkably resilient in rural policy‐making, where it is used across a range of policy discourses. Policy narratives seldom acknowledge the multiple meanings associated with the term community; they therefore fail to make a distinction between community as it is experienced in everyday settings, and more formal community organising. However, policies and governance seeking to mobilise communities often rely on formal community organisations to represent the 'community' in multi‐level governance partnerships. Following research with two rural communities in Scotland this article explores different experiences of community, and sense of community in place. We then look at what these understandings and experiences of community mean for the creation and maintenance of formal, community‐led organisations, their inclusion in policies of community empowerment and resilience, and rural governance more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on four illustrative case studies from the Netherlands, this article discusses learning experiences gained from rural broadband initiatives. As an example of 'the big society' (or ' participatiesamenleving' in Dutch), initiatives try to step in where the market and the government fail. The main struggle seems to be negotiating between market and government interests, while simultaneously safeguarding local interests. Many challenges and frustrations arise from counter-tactics on the part of national market players, and governmentality-inspired actions of regional and local authorities. Local capacity - such as social, intellectual, and financial capital - proves to be crucial in negotiating external influences, but it is easily overburdened. Case studies show that volunteer burnout is a risk that potentially has a high impact. Despite neoliberal agendas and community-led development schemes that promote citizen initiatives, it remains challenging for communities to reclaim control over their digital futures. Members of the initiatives have to learn and professionalise in order to stand their ground in a competitive and complex broadband market, but this learning element seems to be only a by-product of the process towards achieving the tangible result for rural development, that is, high-speed broadband access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a conceptual framework for the analysis of community that is designed to explain the complexity, diversity and changes that account for comparative community differentiation in the modern world. The concept is deconstructed into a number of constituent dimensions and dynamic processes, revealing the interrelationships between interest, normativity and identity. Contradictory processes associated with solidarity and exclusion are shown to push and pull at each other through the different dimensions. These processes are manifested in people's everyday lives, often simultaneously. This complexity is a source of both the vulnerability and the strength of communities. The article concludes with a number of diagnostic tools for deconstructing community and a three-pronged approach for community revitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Controversies over the return of large carnivores (e.g. wolves) are often interpreted as clashes between rural traditionalism and urban modernity. Rural communities, however, have never been culturally monolithic, and modernization increases their diversity. However, the popular image is one of rural communities united against vermin and urban romantics. An important reason for this is probably the successful construction of the anti-carnivore front as a last line of defence against destructive forces threatening rural life. Drawing on examples from a study in Østerdalen, Norway, the struggle against wolf protection is discussed as an instance of symbolic construction of community. Images of a threatened community are vital to the self-understanding of the wolf adversaries, but cleavages run through the alliance. Three principal groups may be identified: sheep farmers, landowners who lease hunting, and people with strong ties to traditional land use practices (primarily hunting) and a rural working-class culture. These groups have not always been allies, and conflicts of interest run through the ‘resistance front’. The task here is to identify the social forces that now bring them together, and to explain why the carnivore issue is well suited as a significant component in their symbolic construction of community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses certain political aspects of constructing local land regional identity, more closely, to grasp the ways these processes are related to different fields of power in society in Sweden. In the context of the present analysis, state political measures are regarded as means to transform the preconditions for local activities, relations, and interactions. Local life is thus conceived as series of encounters placed in a dimension of space-time. Place will be comprehended as an expression of the way social relations have been shaped at certain points in space and time. The politics of welfare can thus be conceptualized as establishing new social relations, which can be realized within already existing circumstances. To be more concrete, the hamlets the author visited during his fieldwork may be regarded, from the researcher's point of view, as expressions of social relations developed through time and extended in space. Natural and material resources-from houses and roads to state subsidies-are realized only when they are inserted into social relations. The village is thus seen as the concrete expression of the organization of relations between people living there, and also their common and individual relations with the world outside of the village. This, of course, makes it impossible to view any village as an isolated unity.

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.

Examines structural and situational factors that affect decision making continued operation of community managed fish ponds. Difference between group farming and farmers cooperatives organized for marketing farm products; Exploration of coordination mechanism used in cooperatively managed farm enterprises; Requirement of group participation in adoption of decisions.

The article focuses on differences of rural and urban communities. The urbanization of rural communities has been viewed by sociologists and geographers alike within a rural-urban dichotomy. Traditionally it has been argued that there was a clear dichotomy between ways of life in an urban area as opposed to those of a rural area. Such differences in values, mores and behavior are explicable in terms of the influence of the particular environment. Social anthropologists have attempted to show that rural communities have a distinctively social life of their own. Such communities display closely-knit family and kinship networks a clear differentiation in the roles of husband and wife and a uniform value system. A number of studies within inner cities have revealed the existence of social characteristics akin to those usually associated with remote rural areas. The case study presents a typology of rural communities in north Herefordshire, England. Eleven indices of an economic, social and demographic character were chosen for classification.

The article presents a study in sociology and authors' efforts to derive a suitable method for sociological study of community. The author says sociologists have often debated the integrity of the community as a unit of sociological study. Communities differ in the degrees to which they comprise the social worlds of their members. The author says that prolonged observation of a locality by the social anthropologist, trained to observe the processes of cultures, should enable him to conclude that the community either is or is not a reality. For drawing conclusions the author has selected Whalsay, an island community in Shetland, Scotland. The author says that even when forms of social organization and behavior in one social context appear phenomenally similar to those in another, they do not always mean the same thing to the people in those two situations. The author emphasizes that it is grossly misleading to treat a piece of structure or some behavioral phenomenon as understandable in its own isolated terms without knowing the nature of the cultural influence by which it is dominated.

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 presents information on the trends in agriculture in Latin America. In this article change is looked at as the process whereby different kinds of local social systems or communities adapt themselves to novel elements of endogenous or exogenous origin. The three community types are those which accompany plantations and traditional "haciendas" and are frequently coterminous with them, and communities of smallholder neighborhoods grouped around trade and service centers. The extraordinary growth of the cities and the stagnation of the country is causing demand for food products and industrial staples which is not being met effectively by the agricultural sector. In the rural sector, under the impact of the expansion of the modern industrial urban core of the nation, there is a breakdown of structures, a turning away from traditional values, a failure of social control, and the incompatible grafting of new elements on the archaic fabric. The deepest problem of rural change is the transformation of the "estate-like" relation patron-laborer and all that it implies.