RURAL LOCALITY GROUPS: CHANGING PATTERNS, CHANGE FACTORS, AND IMPLICATIONS.

This paper examines recent changes in rural locality-group patterns, factors responsible for these changes, and implications of them, as revealed or suggested in recent literature on the subject. The change factors are classified in four groups: technology, population shifts, prosperity, and legislative programs. The neighborhood, as traditionally defined, seems now to be more of an ideal than a reality, and the community apparently is superseding the neighborhood as the basic locality group in many rural areas. There is increasing centralization of institutions in the larger centers and a growing multiplicity of special-interest groups in which rural people participate. Many researchers are suggesting that old classifications and conceptual schemes relating to locality groups need reexamination. Researchers, teachers, and extension workers in rural sociology are presented with a serious challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]