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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 a letter to the editor about Lee Taylor's position paper on rural sociology.

This article comments on the position papers in the June 1967 issue of Rural Sociology. The author asserts that the papers are a mark of growing maturity of the rural sociology profession. It took years before the state universities and colleges assumed the dominant role of that they have achieved in the development of rural sociology. Contributions of the early sociologists to the applied field are presented to emphasize their historical value.

Rural sociologists are concerned about the present status, the crucial issues, and the future of their group. In 1963, the Committee on the Development of Rural Sociology developed a preliminary list of major issues facing rural sociologists. With the approval of the Council, the members of the committee decided to prepare a set of working papers on some of these major issue areas. These papers would attempt to define more clearly the assumptions, dimensions, and issues, to present different points of view, and to suggest alternative definitions or positions and their probable consequences. Thus, it was hoped that the working papers would provide a structure from which more effective discussion would develop.

To clarify the influence mechanism and action path of social networks on farmland abandonment, taking the hilly and mountainous areas of Ganzhou, China as the study area, this paper first explores the influence of farmers' social networks on abandonment; furthermore, a mediation effect model is introduced to test the inhibiting effect of farmland transfer on abandonment under the scenario of expanding farmers' social networks. The results show that the expansion of farmers' social networks directly aggravates farmland abandonment, but with the development of land transfer market, farmers' social networks help to reduce the transaction cost of farmland transfer, thus promoting land circulation and restraining abandonment. Considering the double‐edged effect of farmers' social networks on abandonment, this paper recommends that policies aimed at curbing abandonment should be channeled through local farmers‐based social networks, and encourage land transfer among farmers' relatives, friends, or neighbors, and so forth to reduce transaction cost in rural society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some aspects of the editorial decision process and its outcomes as they are involved in the production of scientific knowledge. Based on 337 manuscripts reviewed for Rural Sociology from the Spring of 1978 to the Spring of 1981, ten characteristics associated with successful and unsuccessful manuscripts were examined. Five of these constituted a discriminant function model: number of rounds of review, author membership in the Rural Sociological Society, referee agreement regarding recommendations to the editor, referees who are authors, and difference in referee degree dates. The other five variables did not contribute significantly to the model: referee membership in the RSS, gender of the authors, number of authors, referee agreement regarding the contribution of the manuscript, and referee agreement regarding the presentation of the manuscript. The model achieved 85 percent accuracy in classifying the total set of manuscripts, but it was much more successful in classifying the rejected papers (95 percent) than the published papers (63 percent). [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 Antipode 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 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.

Civic engagement involves active participation in political and nonpolitical contexts in one's community. Research consistently demonstrates that sociodemographic factors, neighborhood context, community size, and media use are all important antecedents of robust civic engagement. This paper focuses on the intersection between these latter two factors. My paper draws on multiple streams of research in the rural sociology and communication literature to develop a theoretical framework where rural individuals' use of local media promotes greater civic engagement. Using data from the 2018 Local News Survey, results show that the use of local newspapers and online news websites for local news and information leads to a higher probability of participation in local activities and local groups in one's community. However, results also show that getting local news and information from traditional formats such as local TV stations may no longer be associated with an increased probability of being an active citizen in rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on Southern Policy Papers issued by the Southern Policy Committee in cooperation with the Institute for Research in Social Science, the University of North Carolina, North Carolina. In first paper, "Southern Population and Social Planning," by T.J. Woofter Jr. stresses the implications of the relatively high rates of population increase in the southern states of the U.S., especially among the Whites. These increases have upset the balance of Whites and Afro-Americans in urban employment. Which lead to reduced southern wages as compared with other regions, upset the southern age distribution by drawing off the productive middle-aged and talented groups, tended to create a hotbed discontent and created an unemployed-youth problem. The second report, "Social Security for Southern Farmers," by H. Clarence Nixon depicts unsatisfactory economic and social conditions which confront the southern farmer. The abolition of the tenant-cropper system, revision of tariffs, and utilization of social insurance is advocated.

This study examines the literature of a multidisciplinary field, later-life migration, and evaluates the effectiveness of 12 bibliographic databases in indexing that literature. Five journals--three in social gerontology, one in rural sociology, and one in regional science--account for 40% of the papers published in this area. The disciplines that publish the most work on later-life migration are not necessarily those that provide the best index coverage, however. Moreover, four multidisciplinary databases each provide better index coverage than any single-subject index. The relatively low degree of overlap among the 12 databases suggests that scholars working on topics such as later-life migration must continue to rely on a wide range of bibliographic tools, both disciplinary and multidisciplinary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a workshop related to the linkages between theory and practice in rural sociology. The papers in this Workshop concentrate on the conditions affecting the utilization of rural sociological research findings by practitioners. A restriction is that papers deal with applied research and not with pure research, which in the long run can have an important effect on the decisions of practitioners. There are four papers: (1) a paper by the author, which gives a theoretical framework, but no empirical evidence that this framework is correct. Unfortunately, this paper is somewhat out of date, because after it was written, the author obtained an overview of 4000 publications in this field, (2) a paper by author M. Lerner, which gives a case study of 15 years of sociological research for the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency in Israel. Experience taught that it was necessary to change the relations between research workers and practitioners considerably over this time, (3) a paper by author A. Levesque, which describes to years experience of a French private research agency in research on rural development for a number of different government agencies and professional organizations, (4) a paper by author R. Riedler, based on experience in a mountainous district of Austria, where not much empirical sociological research has been done.

Copyright of Review of Policy Research 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 a list of papers related to rural sociology. The list includes "A Typology of Singhalese Villages," by G.H.F. Welikala, "Social Structure and Local Initiative in Rural Thailand," by G. Kalshoven, "Legitimization of Directed Change in Pre-industrial Societies," by Ashghar Fathi, "Rural-Urban Migration and Town-Country Relationship in Israel," by A. Berler and Y. Ginsburg, "A Theoretical Model of Cumulative Disagiarization," by Vogislav Duric, "The Changing Patterns of Settlement and Population Distribution in Latin America," by Olen E. Leonard, "Mexican-American Migrant Farm Laborers and Their Employers in Ohio," by B. Perry Joseph and Eldon E. Snyder, "The Rural-Urban Transition in Brazil," by John V.D. Saunders, "The Impact of Industrialization on Geographic Mobility and Economic Decision-Making of a Rural Society in South Asia: A Case Study From Rourkela/Orissa, India," by K.H. Junghans and "A Research Design for the Understanding of Social Change From a Human Ecosystem Perspective."

American youth from rural backgrounds have made great strides to overcome challenges in college enrollment and completion since the 2000s. Yet little is known about how rural youth are financing these attainment increases—a pressing question in light of high college costs, rising student debt, and spatial inequality in the resources that students have to pay for college. This paper examines disparities in young adults' student debt by geographic background using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort. Regression analyses reveal that college‐goers from rural backgrounds accumulate more debt than those from suburban and urban backgrounds, adjusting for differences in sociodemographic characteristics. Rural college‐goers' higher debt can be partially attributed to differences in socioeconomic backgrounds and rates of inter‐county migration during college, and there is evidence that the additive influences of geographic background and gender contribute to particularly high debt among rural women. The findings suggest that longstanding spatial inequalities contribute to disparities in student debt and raise questions about the experiences of rural youth and communities in a debt‐based society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the pattern of changing functions of the rural community consequent on changes in agriculture. The first half of the paper is devoted to the definition of the problem under investigation, an outline of its precise scope and an indication of its limits. The article is concerned both with those social changes in the rural community that are the product of internally generated developments in agriculture and also those that result from the effect on agriculture of the influence of outside factors. The paper confines its analysis to European conditions and, more particularly, to the more-developed rural regions of Europe. Taking up the findings of the Limerick Rural Survey in Ireland, the article illustrates these consequences by reference to them. The first consequence is shown to consist mainly in a weakening of the rigid class system which formerly kept the farm laborer in subordination. Today, due to their shortage and the possibility of bettering their lot by emigration, the status of the farm laborers is being upgraded, to an extent that is having some unsettling effects on the farmer's family, on whom the burden of agricultural work is falling more heavily.

African cities are becoming increasingly suburban, yet we know little about suburban spaces, how they are historically produced and by whom. This paper argues that African suburbs can be usefully understood as postcolonial suburbs. The postcolonial suburb de-centres the Anglo-American suburban model and pays attention to the historical co-constitution of suburban space across colony and metropole. It draws attention to the colonial and post-colonial policies on land and housing that make suburban development possible, but also attends to the everyday ways in which suburban spaces are built through the efforts of self-builders and their house-building projects. Using the case of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the paper shows how these low-density residential spaces towards the edge of the city are being shaped by the new middle classes with their appetite for large houses and private cars. But these are not copies of suburban forms from elsewhere. Architecturally they are dominated by bungalows and villas, but these buildings are self-built rather than part of large planned housing schemes. Socially the suburbs are dominated by the middle classes, but these middle classes are oriented towards the countryside rather than towards the city. Drawing on interviews with suburban residents in Dar es Salaam, I show how self-build housing projects straddle the suburban and the rural in terms of economic investments, land security and social relations. The paper concludes by arguing that the colonial and postcolonial making of the suburbs produces landscapes of ruralisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information related to upcoming events on rural sociology. The Program Committee for the Rural Sociological Society announces a call for papers for the annual meeting to be held in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, from August 25-27, 1972. Submission of papers is required by April 1, 1972. Abstract and text should be sent to Rabel J. Burdge, Program Chairman, Department of Sociology. University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506. A series of workshops is planned on topics of current interests to encourage more active participation in the program. This years program will reduce the number of formal presentations. Papers will be made available for distribution prior to the meeting. Graduate students are asked to submit papers to any session. Sessions organized by graduate students will review papers from all sources. The other information is that J.L. Charlton has directed a study now published by the University of Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station. The co-author, Joseph F. Singer, also used the data for a Ph.D. disseration in economics, Charlton is currently directing a study of factors affecting the use of medical services in three subregions of Arkansas.

The article presents discussion by various sociologists during the fourth working session of the First World Congress for Rural Sociology held in Dijon, France. Sociologist Antonio M. Arce from Costa Rica briefly commented on Pakistani sociologist A.M. Khan's paper entitled "Impact of changes in agriculture on political life in Asia". These comments refer to three different aspects of the paper and are expected to stimulate discussions from the audience. The paper tries to analyse the dynamic relationship between agricultural development efforts and political ferment in Asia and how this interdependence relates to the residues of Western colonialism and the emergence of Russian and Chinese communism. Another sociologist R. Bičanič from Yugoslavia discussed about the interference of politics in sociology. He also discussed the point dealing with the revival of rural sociology in socialist countries, particularly Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The rural exodus linked with accelerated industrialization has become so intense that agriculture is threatened with a depleted labour force, and this leads to a policy of income parity with industrial workers for agricultural producers also which may have wider political implications.

This paper analyzes and uses the National Solidarity Program (NSP) Afghanistan as a case study to question the idea of social capital building for poverty reduction. Specifically, it explores how development policy has been decoupled from its intended objectives as it hit the existing friction in the ground. The data draws from poor household experience in three different provinces of Afghanistan to assess how poor household is integrated into NSP and how existing social structure and relational dynamics shape the NSP outcomes. The finding reveals that household is experiencing a cluster of interlink disadvantages that make it impossible for them to draw on social capital to reduce their poverty. However, NSP failed to eliminate the asymmetrical relations which created poverty in rural society; instead, it boosted Neopatrimonialism culture. [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 article focuses on the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological society. This is not a new experience, but some of the changes that are taking place in rural sociology programs and in society indicate that the need for discussion is not yet satisfied. This is also one way of reaching the many members, subscribers, and readers who axe unable to attend the Society meetings, and of including them in the circle of discourse. Accordingly, few persons from various sections of the country and one to represent a view of rural sociology as it exists outside the U. S. to offer some of their views on important issues in the future of rural sociology were invited. They were asked to respond briefly and quickly enough for the papers to be presented in the June issue before the 1969 meeting.

Presents news notes and announcements involving the Rural Sociological Society. Highlights of the 1971 annual meeting of the Rural Sociology Section of Association of Southern Agricultural Workers; Call for papers for the 1971 annual meeting of the society to be held in Denver, Colorado on August 27 to 29, 1971; Programs and projects of the society.

Presents news notes and announcements involving the Rural Sociological Society. Call for papers for the 1969 annual meeting of the society; Tentative session topics; Best dissertations in rural sociology for the years 1967 and 1968.

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 paper considers the role of culture in rural health, suggesting that the concept and its impacts are insufficiently understood and studied. It reviews some of the ways that culture has been considered in (rural) health, and states that culture is either used ambiguously and broadly - for example, suggesting that there is a rural culture, or narrowly - indeed perhaps interchangeably with ethnicity, for example Aboriginal culture as a unity. The paper notes that, although culture is a dynamic social concept, it has been adopted into a biomedical research paradigm as though it is fixed. Culture is often treated as though it is something that can be addressed simplistically, for example, through cultural sensitivity education. Authors suggest that culture is an unaddressed 'elephant in the room' in rural health, and that exploring cultural differences and beliefs and facing up to cultural differences are vital in understanding and addressing rural health and health system challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social science studies of mining communities suggest that the well-being of these company towns varies a great deal. Yet the literature has not thoroughly explained the sources of that variation, especially its potential relationship to the resource itself. In order to clarify our understanding of socioeconomic well-being, this paper likens the experience of being mining dependent to riding a roller coaster. While many mining areas experience volatile economic conditions, key characteristics and responses of the communities, companies, and resource alter the ride. To illustrate this concept, the paper examines employment trends in two metalmining regions of the Midwest and finds that employment was more volatile in one area than the other. The reasons for the differences between the communities are explored. The paper concludes that paying greater attention to the context in which mining occurs and to the resource itself may help clarify the impacts of mining on local communities. [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]

In this paper I examine military masculinities as a form of rural masculinity. I argue that one model of military masculinity, the warrior hero, acts as a dominant military construction of masculinity. I examine how the countryside as a location, and rurality as a social construction, impinge upon the construction of the ideal type of the warrior hero. The paper draws on recruitment literature, Ministry of Defence publicity materials, popular accounts of soldiering, and Army videos to trace out the practices and representations that construct the dominant discourse of the warrior hero. The paper is grounded conceptually in theories of gender identity and rurality as social constructions. I conclude by questioning the political consequences, both for rural life and for the armed forces, of this hegemonic model of masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents various research papers listed in the September 1991 issue of the journal Rural Sociology. Some of the papers listed are "Exceptional Growth and the Return of Population Concentration in Washington," by Annabel K. Cook, "Metropolitan America: Beyond the Transition," by William H. Frey, "U.S. Metropolitan Growth in the 1980s: Do the Old Explanations Hold for New Patterns?" by William H. Frey and Alden Speare, "Population Profile of the United States, 1989," by Campbell Gibson, "The Health Demographic Profile System's Inventory of Small Area Social Indicators," by Harold F. Goldsmith, David J. Jackson, Susan Doenhofer and Wayne Johnson, "Decennial Population Counts for Iowa and Other States: 1890-1990," by Willis Goudy, "Iowa's Incorporated Places in 1990: Initial Census Counts on Population," by Willis Goudy and Sandra Charvat Burke, "People and Housing: The Effects of Demographic Factors on Residential Housing Requirements in North Dakota," by Rita R. Hamm, "North Dakota Life Tables 1960, 1970 and 1980," by Rita R. Hamm and Azam Syed.

Local social systems are connected to larger systems, including the world-system, in a variety of complex ways: thus it is often difficult to identify the local stratification system or community of reference. Yet, system specification is crucial in stratification studies, because the phenomena studied are often best understood in terms of relative position within the local system. To support this emphasis on local community of reference this paper reviews Cancian's upper middle rank conservatism thesis and Frey et al.'s (1979) finding of lower middle rank conservatism in adoption or agricultural innovations in Pakistan, and presents a reanalysis of the Frey et al. data. The reanalysis shows that the finding changes when specification of the local system changes. Thus, the system specification problem faced by empirical researchers concerned with rural stratification systems is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an index of various literature on rural sociology.

Rural sociologists in North America and Western Europe have shown increasing interest in the issues of rural environmental quality, the structure of agriculture, and rural underdevelopment during the past decade. This paper seeks to demonstrate the profound connections among these phenomena, particularly in terms of how ongoing changes in agricultural structure have had major impacts on both the rural environment and the socioeconomic fabric of rural communities. It is argued that while many of these changes are rooted in the dynamics of the Western capitalist societies, state policy has also been crucial in shaping change in rural society. A case is thereby made that a more holistic or integrative perspective -- essentially a political economy -- is necessary to understand the origins of these rural social and economic problems and conceptualize strategies through which they can be solved. Selected examples of the application of such a perspective are developed in the final portion of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regional diversity of communal persistence in nineteenth-century Spain has been well documented by historiographers. Although the explanation of this divergence has been attributed to the social and environmental context, together with the prevailing market incentives, that characterized the different rural societies of this period, there has been no clear assessment of the role played by each of these factors. Through a comparative study of the historical data at the provincial level, this paper analyses the relative contribution of these elements to that divergence. The results diminish the significance of market signals and show how the social and environmental conditions interacted to limit, or promote, the dismantling of the common lands. Apart from the greater need to resort to the commons when it was necessary to increase agricultural production in dry regions, this paper highlights the role of unequal levels of access to land in promoting enclosure. The Spanish case illustrates the limitations of the theories that predict the inevitable drift towards individual property rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the autobiography of the sociologist Jan Szczepanski on the tribulations of a Polish sociologist. He started to study philosophy and sociology in 1932 at the University of Poznan, Poland, under Florian Znaniecki. He received the M.A. degree on the basis of a paper on the semantics of Husserl, and the Ph.D. degree on the basis of a dissertation entitled "The Idea of the Milieu in Rural Sociology," written under the direction of Professor Znaniecki in 1939. Both these works, prepared for printing in 1939, were lost during the war and have never been published, only several articles appearing at that time. He brought with him from his home an interest in rural sociology. His father possessed a small farm in the mountain locality of Ustron in Silesia. Work on this farm was therefore his first experience of any social importance. Sociology in Poland was quickly reconstructed. During the first post-war years the author wrote two textbooks, "Development of the Methods of Sociology" and "History of Social Thought in the Nineteenth Century." However, after the turn towards Stalinism, the publication of the manuscripts proved impossible. Instead he published many papers, and wrote in the weeklies, taking part directly in political discussions and polemics.

This article presents the author's reply to comments by Robert C. Bealer and Thomas R. Ford on his article "The Rural-Urban Variable: An Urbanite's Perspective." The author says that Bealer contrasts his position with that of Richard Dewey, as expressed in the latter's paper "The Rural-Urban Continuum: Real But Relatively Unimportant." Dewey's views stem from a consideration of the subject by eighteen authors of textbooks in urban sociology. The author is puzzled by Bealer's insistence upon the logical necessity of a focus on social-psychological variables. Certainly one can spend much effort analyzing the characteristics of communities without taking on the added burden of accounting for individual behavior. The author is content, at least for the moment, to leave such questions as the explanation of those persistent traits that rural-dwellers may carry with them when they move to the city to his colleagues in social psychology. All in all, the author takes Bealer's passionate remarks on the necessity for seeking global generalizations to be merely symptomatic of the present time.

This article presents the research papers published in this issue of the journal "Rural Sociology." The first paper by James H. Copp represents a stage in the maturation of research on farm practice acceptance. It is one of the first attempts to compare the results of studies conducted in different agricultural regions. Using data from Wilkening's study in Wisconsin and from his own study in Kansas, he developed comparable measures of certain personal, social, and economic variables. Another paper by Copp and colleagues deals with the informational aspect of the acceptance of new farm practices. They attempt essentially to specify the function of information sources in the adoption process. By asking a series of questions about the sources of information at various times, from the awareness of a new practice until its adoption, they find that institutionalized sources tend to perform a function separate from that of noninstitutionalized sources. The study by Charles R. Hoffer and Dale Stangland is a worthy attempt to take into account the farmer's value orientations as they affect his adoption of practices.

This paper examines the relationship between formal and informal participation of individuals in three Pennsylvania rural communities. Data concerning the range and intensity of informal activities were used to test the hypothesis that a positive relationship exists between formal and informal participation of individuals in rural society. In general, this hypothesis was substantiated by the evidence on eighteen selected types of informal activities. However, more research is needed, not only on the roles played within various informal groups but also on participation in other areas of informal activities than those reported in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information about developments in various universities and colleges in the field of sociology. Two papers of W. A. Anderson of Cornell University on Rural Social Participation and the Family Life Cycle have been published by the Agricultural Experiment Station as Memoirs 314 and 318. They deal with the relationship of stages in the family life cycle to formal and informal family participation. He has also published a study entitled "Social Change and an Urban Fringe Area." Anderson is working with city and town officials in Ithaca, New York on problems of city expansion and fringe-area incorporation. A Study of Some Factors Associated with Family Informal Participation has been issued as Department Bulletin 36. Department Bulletin 39, "Eight Case Illustrations of Low Formal Participation," and Department Bulletin 40, "Eight Case Illustrations of High Formal Participation," are other recent publications. He has also revised the bibliography of the department. The Government of Brazil, in June, conferred upon T. Lynn Smith of the University of Florida, the Order of the Southern Cross. Smith has spent several years in Brazil, on assignment by the U. S. Department of State, as a visiting professor at the University of Brazil, and as advisor on agrarian reform to the Minister of Agriculture and the National Commission on Agrarian Policy.

Although Rural Sociology has published a number of papers written by social scientists from outside the United States, it appears that many such social scientists have not known that it was appropriate for them to submit papers for consideration by the Journal's Board of Editors. Just as membership in the Rural Sociological Society is open to any person in any country who is employed in the field of rural sociology or who is interested in promoting the development of rural sociology through research, teaching, or extension work, so it is the intent of Rural Sociology to be an international medium of communication in the field of rural sociology. The Board of Editors takes this opportunity to invite the submission of papers to the Managing Editor by rural sociology workers outside the United States. The Board of Editors takes this opportunity to invite the submission of papers to the Managing Editor by rural sociology workers outside the United States. The Annual Meetings of the Rural Sociological Society was called to order at 11:00 a.m. by Howard W. Beers, president. Minutes of the September 2-3, 1951, meetings are published in the December, 1951, issue of the Rural Sociology accepted as printed.

Rural sociologists, for a long time now, have doubted whether their discipline really existed. In the developed countries, the agricultural population has shrunk, so that nowadays it may account for as little as 4 percent of the total gainfully employed population; it has also gradually become more difficult, and even impossible, to put one's finger on the differences between rural and urban. These changes have affected rural sociologists in various ways. Some have left the field altogether. Others have turned their attention to new problems that occur in the countryside, problems that are mostly related to the uses made of open space and natural resources. They have specialized in the sociology of recreation, the sociology of environmental problems, or in regional planning. According to the author, the discipline has not only lost the wholeness it may once have had, but also that the specializations themselves are often marked by the lack of a holistic outlook. It is as if rural sociologists have lost sight of the fact that, whatever phenomenon they study, it is embedded in a context as wide as a total society, and even wider.

The article presents several papers on rural sociology. The paper "Technology and Social Change: The Case of Miracle Rice," by Gelia T. Castillo, presents the many changes directly or indirectly associated with the introduction in the Philippines of IR8-28S-3, more popularly known as miracle rice. No other single piece of agricultural technology seems to have generated as many ramifications in the country as this particular rice seed. The paper "A General Systems Approach to the Analysis of Social Structure and Change," by J.D. Flynn. Techniques were derived from general systems theory to indicate a measure of the variety of sub-systems, and several measures of unity derived from a matrix of subsystem interactions. Changes in the measures over time reveal some causes of structural change and are used to predict implications of planned change. The techniques were used to analyze data from a village in the Canadian Arctic. The data were not very reliable, but the development of variety and changes in unity were both noted.

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 presents information on the First World Congress for Rural Sociology, which took place in August 1964 at Dijon. The number of papers, submitted to this Congress, was far greater than that received for the Third Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology in 1962 at St. Wolfgang. Therefore it is impossible to publish, the complete written material. Full texts are included of main papers and papers of prepared discussants only. Of the regional papers the summaries are given. The discussions are reported in the languages used by the participants during the meetings. Some of the regional papers will appear in full text in later issues of this Journal, others will be submitted to other journals in the field. Of the regional papers the summaries are given. The discussions are reported in the languages used by the participants during the meetings.

Switzerland is known to offer substantial support to its national agriculture. However and despite the political importance of agriculture, very few social science research programmes on farming and agriculture exist. Indeed, Switzerland has never had an institutionalized and established 'rural sociology'. In a national context where the viability of agriculture depends largely on public money, discussions and criticism of the agricultural policy take different shapes, mainly addressing environmental and economic effectiveness. This paper reviews what work the social sciences have produced on agriculture and farming populations in Switzerland, with the aim of understanding better what should be done now, in a context of deep changes within the political and economic frames of agriculture. These concerns are not limited to Switzerland and have strong echoes in other national contexts. They are related to the understanding of farmers' role in production and consumption networks, in a context of multifunctionality and neoliberalism. In conclusion, it will be argued that because of some of its characteristics, Switzerland may prove to be an interesting case study for some of the debates in the wider rural social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]