On the Rural

On the Rural
Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452967660

A collection of previously untranslated writings by Henri Lefebvre on rural sociology, situating his research in relation to wider Marxist work On the Rural is the first English collection to translate Lefebvre’s crucial but lesser-known writings on rural sociology and political economy, presenting a wide-ranging approach to understanding the historical and rural sociology of precapitalist social forms, their endurance today, and conditions of dispossession and uneven development. In On the Rural, Stuart Elden and Adam David Morton present Lefebvre’s key works on rural questions, including the first half of his book Du rural à l’urbain and supplementary texts, two of which are largely unknown conference presentations published outside France. On the Rural offers methodological orientations for addressing questions of economy, sociology, and geography by deploying insights from spatial political economy to decipher the rural as a terrain and stake of capitalist transformation. By doing so, it reveals the production of the rural as a key site of capitalist development and as a space of struggle. This volume delivers a careful translation—supplemented with extensive notes and a substantive introduction—to cement Lefebvre’s central contribution to the political economy of rural sociology and geography.

The Sociology of Rural Life

The Sociology of Rural Life
Author: Samantha Hillyard
Publisher: Berg
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2007-07-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1845201388

Foot and mouth disease and BSE have both had a devastating impact on rural society. Alongside these devastating developments, the rise of the organic food movement has helped to revitalize an already politicized rural population. From fox-hunting to farming, the vigour with which rural activities and living are defended overturns received notions of a sleepy and complacent countryside. Over the years "rural life" has been defined, redefined and eventually fallen out of fashion as a sociological concept--in contrast to urban studies, which has flourished. This much-needed reappraisal calls for its reinterpretation in light of the profound changes affecting the countryside. First providing an overview of rural sociology, Hillyard goes on to offer contemporary case studies that clearly demonstrate the need for a reinvigorated rural sociology. Tackling a range of contentious issues--from fox-hunting to organic farming--this book offers a new model for rural sociology and reassesses its role in contemporary society.

Opening Windows onto Hidden Lives

Opening Windows onto Hidden Lives
Author: Julie N. Zimmerman
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2015-11-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0271056657

Building on their analysis in Sociology in Government (Penn State, 2003), Julie Zimmerman and Olaf Larson again join forces across the generations to explore the unexpected inclusion of rural and farm women in the research conducted by the USDA’s Division of Farm Population and Rural Life. Existing from 1919 to 1953, the Division was the first, and for a time the only, unit of the federal government devoted to sociological research. The authors explore how these early rural sociologists found the conceptual space to include women in their analyses of farm living, rural community social organization, and the agricultural labor force.

The Cambridge Handbook of Sociology

The Cambridge Handbook of Sociology
Author: Kathleen Odell Korgen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021-03-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781107492554

The Cambridge Handbook of Sociology gives an overview of the field that is both comprehensive and up to date.

Studies in Urbanormativity

Studies in Urbanormativity
Author: Gregory M. Fulkerson
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2013-12-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0739178776

The world has been witnessing a long unfolding process of urbanization that not only has altered the structural basis of society in terms of political economy, but has also symbolically relegated rural people and life to a secondary or deviant status through an ideology of urbanormativity. Both structural and cultural changes rooted in urbanization are connected in complex ways to spatial arrangements that can be described in terms of inequality and uneven development. Through a focus on localities, Studies in Urbanormativity: Rural Community in Urban Society examines the implications of urbanization and its corresponding ideology. Urbanormativity justifies rural domination by holding urban life as the standard against which rural forms are compared and deemed to be irregular, inferior, or deviant. Urban production, as conceptualized in this book, is inherently exploitative of rural resources—natural, social, cultural, and symbolic. As this exploitation advances, a wake of entropic conditions is left behind in the forms of degraded landscapes, broken social institutions, and denigrated communities, cultures and identities. Edited by Gregory M. Fulkerson and Alexander R. Thomas, Studies in Urbanormativity engages a topic on which scholars have been surprisingly silent. Designed for advancing theory and practice, the chapters provide new theoretical tools for understanding the complex relationship between the urban and rural. While primarily intended for scholars and practitioners interested in rural life, rural policy, and community development, the insights of this book will also be of interest to scholars studying various forms of cultural and social domination, as well as identity politics.

The Sociology of Agriculture

The Sociology of Agriculture
Author: Frederick H. Buttel
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1990-02-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Rural Sociological Society, this monograph analyzes the nearly 90 years of rural sociological research on agriculture and provides a comprehensive overview of changing research focuses and theoretical approaches. As the authors note at the outset, there are a good number of continuities between early-20th-century rural sociology and what is now called the sociology of agriculture. There are also, they note, very substantial differences between contemporary sociology of agriculture scholarship and that which preceded it. Their aim throughout is to convey both continuities and discontinuities in theory, method, and approach. Intended primarily as a straightforward exposition of major scholarly themes, the volume is designed to be useful to readers from a variety of theoretical persuasions. The authors do, however, point to areas of weakness in theoretical or methodological approach that should be addressed in future research. The volume is organized around the three major eras of rural sociological conceptualizations of agriculture. The authors begin by examining the founding of U.S. rural sociology shortly after the turn of the century until the early 1950s, demonstrating that during this initial era the study of agriculture was largely construed as one of the many elements necessary for understanding the social fabric of rural community life. In the next section, they explore the social psychological/behaviorist tradition, which held sway from the early 1950s through the early 1970s and which conceptualized farmers as actors responding to stimuli such as new technologies and educational opportunities. The three chapters devoted to recent research in the emerging tradition of the new rural sociology address such topics as the political economy of agriculture, the environment of agriculture, and major theoretical trends in the sociology of agriculture. In their concluding chapter, the authors look toward the future of the sociology of agriculture and identify some potential problems as we move into the 1990s.

Critical Rural Theory

Critical Rural Theory
Author: Alexander R. Thomas
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780739135600

Critical Rural Theory provides an exploratory foundation for anyone interested in examining the hegemonic power of urbanization and its impacts on rural people and places. This book is without parallel in the rural sociological literature for its commitment to uncovering the power of culture in addition to structure and space in maintaining urban power.

The Left Behind

The Left Behind
Author: Robert Wuthnow
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691195153

How a fraying social fabric is fueling the outrage of rural Americans What is fueling rural America’s outrage toward the federal government? Why did rural Americans vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump? And is there a more nuanced explanation for the growing rural-urban divide? Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Robert Wuthnow brings us into America’s small towns, farms, and rural communities to paint a rich portrait of the moral order—the interactions, loyalties, obligations, and identities—underpinning this critical segment of the nation. Wuthnow demonstrates that to truly understand rural Americans’ anger, their culture must be explored more fully, and he shows that rural America’s fury stems less from economic concerns than from the perception that Washington is distant from and yet threatening to the social fabric of small towns. Moving beyond simplistic depictions of America’s heartland, The Left Behind offers a clearer picture of how this important population will influence the nation’s political future.

Dividing Paradise

Dividing Paradise
Author: Jennifer Sherman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520973275

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2022 How rural areas have become uneven proving grounds for the American Dream. Late-stage capitalism is trying to remake rural America in its own image, and the resistance is telling. Small-town economies that have traditionally been based on logging, mining, farming, and ranching now increasingly rely on tourism, second-home ownership, and retirement migration. In Dividing Paradise, Jennifer Sherman tells the story of Paradise Valley, Washington, a rural community where amenity-driven economic growth has resulted in a new social landscape of inequality and privilege, with deep fault lines between old-timers and newcomers. In this complicated cultural reality, "class blindness" allows privileged newcomers to ignore or justify their impact on these towns, papering over the sentiments of anger, loss, and disempowerment of longtime locals. Based on in-depth interviews with individuals on both sides of the divide, this book explores the causes and repercussions of the stark inequity that has become commonplace across the United States. It exposes the mechanisms by which inequality flourishes and by which Americans have come to believe that disparity is acceptable and deserved. Sherman, who is known for her work on rural America, presents here a powerful case study of the ever-growing tensions between those who can and those who cannot achieve their visions of the American dream.