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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.)

This section presents abstracts of several articles about rural sociology. The article, From Stilton to Vimto: Using Food History to Re-Think Typical Products in Rural Development, by Angela Tregear, traces the evolution of food-territory links in great Britain, taking account of critical social, economic and political forces. This leads to a classification of typical products grounded in British conventions, whose contributions to rural development are contrasted with those of classic Mediterranean products, with some challenging results. In the article Forging Linkages in the Commodity Chain: The Case of the Chilean Salmon Farming Industry, 1987-2001, the authors use the global community chain perspective to analyze the impact of food distribution and retail sectors on the Chilean salmon farming industry. The impact of the farmed salmon global commodity chain on class and gender relations at the point of production is also discussed. Drawing upon a case study data and holistic conceptual approach to the family farm, the paper Contingency Revealed: New Zealand Farmers' Experiences of Agricultural Restructuring argues that farm-level experiences of agricultural restructuring during the rural downturn were contingent upon a much greater array of factors.

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 argues that to understand the use of evidence in policy, we need to examine how meanings and practices in the civil service shape what is accepted as knowledge, and how differences between the beliefs and values of the academy and the polity can impede the flow and transfer of knowledge. It considers the importance of social context and shared meanings in legitimating knowledge. Who counts as legitimate knowledge providers has expanded and here the role of stakeholder groups and experiential knowledge is of particular interest. How hierarchy, anonymity, and generalist knowledge within the civil service mediate the use of evidence in policy is examined. The difference in values and ideology of the civil service and the academy has implications for how academic research is interpreted and used to formulate policy and for its position in knowledge power struggles. There are particular issues about the social science nature of evidence to inform rural policy being mediated in a government department more used to dealing with natural science knowledge. This article is based on participant observation carried out in a UK Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]