This engaging book sketches an intimate portrait of the life of Wang Fucheng, an illiterate peasant who served for thirty years as Communist party secretary of an impoverished village on the north China plain. Based on conversations over a seven-year period (1987-1994), between Wang Fucheng and Peter Seybolt the book unfolds as a continuous first-person narrative, framed by the author's overview and chapter introductions.Born in 1923, Wang Fucheng rose under the Communists from extreme poverty to a position of power and prestige in his village. His account provides a fascinating illustration of the process of social mobility during the Maoist era, the interaction between central and local leaders, and the way central policies were adapted at the village level. The book's compelling and evocative picture of life in rural China will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers alike.

This book looks at the evolution of rural settlement in Scotland from the Mesolithic period through to the improving movement of the 18th and 19th centuries. The main emphasis is on changes in society and technology, but the book also considers how the development of the physical landscape laid the foundation for such changes. The author strikes a balance between general perspectives (including relevant contextual materials such as the political structures) and local studies, with much emphasis on individual sites. Lack of documentation prior to the 10th century places particular importance on the archaeological evidence, but imaginative interpretation of this evidence has led to a major re-evaluation. Ideas emphasizing continuity of settlement and local adaptation are replacing older 'invasionist' theories emphasizing Celtic war lords and broch-building pirates.

In recent decades, globalization has transformed rural societies and economies across the world. Much has been written by social scientists about the actors and structures underpinning these transformations and the effects on particular social groups, organizations and industries. Yet, to date much less attention has been given to the specific global processes that are fundamental to contemporary rural change. Rural Change and Global Processes provides a systematic analysis of the key global processes transforming rural spaces in the early 21st century - financialization; standardization; consumption, and commodification. Through detailed case studies, the book examines why these processes are important, how they work in practice, and the challenges they raise as well as opportunities created. The book will be of particular relevance to researchers, graduate students, and policy-makers interested in the implications of global processes for rural people and livelihoods.

The authors' model orients this community in the vortex of contemporary forces, pointing up, for example, the need for face-to-face interaction among residents versus the larger society's demand for electronic communication. With increasing conflicts between the culture of rural communities and that of the "outside world" occurring, small towns all over the United States are losing their businesses, their doctors, and their sense of community. Yet the town described in this study is thriving."Against All Odds" identifies pride, determination, and a sense of belonging that must be nurtured--and the local organization that binds all of these factors together--in order to keep a small town alive in the face of powerful disruptive forces. Not since Vidich and Bensman's landmark "Small Town in Mass Society" has such a thoughful examination of a contemporary rural community been available.

This volume, a study of a transhumant cattle-raising community in Spain, is based on the extensive fieldwork at La Nava de San Miguel, a village in the province of Avila in central Spain. It shows the social and economic factors upon which the continued vitality of this mountain village is based: the use of communal summer pastures; the transhumant groups which walk the cattle to the winter pastures over the mountains; and the system of taking turns for many tasks within the village. The book analyzes the dichotomy between the more rigid organization of life within the village and the organization of life outside the village, in the transhumant group which goes to the winter pastures in Extramadura.

Revelatory, lyrical and immersive, this is an extraordinary book that takes you deep into these ordinary women's worlds... Their stories are urgent and forcefully articulated - and this book gives us the chance to hear them. On an island at the eastern edge of India, rural, remote and dense with jungle, is a Muslim village. In an ever-shifting landscape of mangroves and rivers, the women here dwell among contradictions, constrictions and change in a place where one's neighbours are often too close for comfort. Nine Paths follows the lives of nine of these women, and their families, over the course of a year - from one monsoon season to another. There are weddings to celebrate and deaths to mourn, difficult marriages to navigate and tragedies to overcome, as we observe the everyday drudgery and unexpected turmoil, and the dreams of something better. Revelatory, lyrical and immersive, this is an extraordinary book that takes you deep into these ordinary women's worlds. Anthropologist Lexi Stadlen spent sixteen months in this village, talking, listening, and getting to know these women, who were willing to share their complicated, fascinating lives. Their stories are urgent and forcefully articulated - and this book gives us the chance to hear them.

This book initiates a fresh discussion of affordability in rural housing set in the context of the rapidly shifting balance between rural and urban populations. It conceptualises affordability in rural housing along a spectrum that is interlaced with cultural and social values integral to rural livelihoods at both personal and community level. Developed around four intersecting themes: explaining houses and housing in rural settings; exploring affordability in the context of aspirations and vulnerability; rural development agendas involving housing and communities; and construction for resilience in rural communities, the book provides an overview of some of the little understood and sometimes counter-intuitive best practices on rural affordability and affordable housing that have emerged in developing economies over the last thirty years. Drawing on practice-based evidence this book presents innovative ideas for harnessing rural potential, and empowering rural communities with added affordability and progressive development in the context of housing and improved living standards. For a student aspiring to work in rural areas in developing countries it is an introduction to and map of some key solutions around the critical area of affordable housing For the rural development professional, it provides a map of a territory they rarely see because they are absorbed in a particular rural area or project For the academic looking to expand their activities into rural areas, especially in rural housing, it provides a handy introduction to a body of knowledge serving 47% of the world's population, and how this differs from urban practice For the policy makers, it provides a map for understanding the dynamics around rural affordability, growth potential and community aspirations helping them to devise appropriate intervention programs on rural housing and development

Traditionally, Non-Indian societies in Brazilian Amazonia - 'caboclo' - are treated by anthropologists as relics of the haphazard development of Amazonia - leftovers of the colonial enterprise and have therefore received little serious attention. This volume attempts to redress this imbalance by looking closely at the encompassing nature of peasant society in Brazilian Amazonia. The first part of the book is concerned with the concept of caboclo as it emerges in anthropological and Amazonianist disclosure. The second examines a historical 'caboclo' society (in Santarem, Para) from a broadly ethnographic viewpoint. Three different modes of peasant livelihood and their relation to the impact of the Transamazon Highway are then fully discussed, followed by a detailed examination of the 'sustainable- development' thesis using research from another part of Amazonia - the Guama River. Overall, this volume aims to examine the reasons for the relative 'invisibility' of caboclo society and to place it in a historical perspective.

As the first book in the Restructuring Rural Areas series, "Constructing the countryside" presents a new methodological approach to the analysis of rural change. The authors seek to link wider developments in the global political economy to the behaviour of local actors and, in so doing, they place research into rural studies much more firmly than hitherto in the mainstream of social science enquiry. The outcome is a book that promotes a truly interdisciplinary approach through which the constant "reconstruction" of the countryside can be properly understood. This holistic perspective, sustained by an historical analysis of rural change, has been made possible by the extensive research experience of the authors. The book is a product of the work done at the London Countryside Research Centre, which was set up in 1989 by the Economic and Social Research Council. The Centre's research has focused upon the social and political forces for change in rural areas and how these relate to rapid alterations in national economic circumstances and to public policies affecting the countryside (for example, the Common Agricultural Policy of the EC ). On the one hand, the book provides a set of i

This book provides a comprehensive overview of mental health in rural America, with the goal of fostering urgently needed research and honest conversations about providing accessible, culturally competent mental health care to rural populations. Grounding the work is an explanation of the history and structure of rural mental health care, the culture of rural living among diverse groups, and the crucial "A's" and "S": accountability, accessibility, acceptability, affordability, and stigma. The book then examines poverty, disaster mental health, ethics in rural mental health, and school counseling. It ends with practical information and treatments for two of the most common problems, suicide and substance abuse, and a brief exploration of collaborative possibilities in rural mental health care.

Rural societies around the world are changing in fundamental ways, both at their own initiative and in response to external forces. The Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies examines the organisation and transformation of rural society in more developed regions of the world, taking an interdisciplinary and problem-focused approach. Written by leading social scientists from many countries, it addresses emerging issues and challenges in innovative and provocative ways to inform future policy. This volume is organised around eight emerging social, economic and environmental challenges: Demographic change. Economic transformations. Food systems and land. Environment and resources. Changing configurations of gender and rural society. Social and economic equality. Social dynamics and institutional capacity. Power and governance. Cross-cutting these challenges are the growing interdependence of rural and urban; the rise in inequality within and between places; the impact of fiscal crisis on rural societies; neoliberalism, power and agency; and rural areas as potential sites of resistance. The Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies is required reading for anyone concerned with the future of rural areas.

49% of the world's population lives in small towns, villages and farms, yet until recent years criminological scholarship has focused almost exclusively on urban crimes. The Routledge International Handbook of Rural Criminology is the first major publication to bring together this growing body of scholarship under a single cover. For many years rural criminology has remained marginalized and often excluded from the mainstream, with precedence given to urban criminology: this volume intends to address that imbalance. Pioneering in scope, this book brings together leading international scholars from fourteen different countries to offer an authoritative synthesis of theoretical and empirical literature. This handbook is divided in to seven parts, each addressing a different aspect of rural criminology: Rurality and crime Criminological dimensions of food and agriculture Violence and rurality Drug use, production and trafficking in the rural context Intersections between rural and green criminology Policing, justice and rurality Teaching rural criminology Edited by a world renowned scholar of rural criminology, this book explores rural crime issues in over thirty-five countries including Japan, Sweden, Brazil, Australia, Tanzania, the US, and the UK. This is the first Handbook dedicated to rural criminology and is an essential resource for criminologists, sociologists and social geographers engaged with rural studies and crime.

During modernity metropolitan ruralities have been regarded as land reserves for urban expansion. However, there is a growing insight that there are limits to the urban expansion into rural areas. Signs of a new position are the awakened interest in the nature, the authentic and the simple way of living among an urban, academically educated middle class, an actual instance of which is the interest in local food but which also is manifested in rural gentrification. However, a more hardcore turn to nature is also discernible in the renewed interest for green lungs and for eco-services more broadly. In the future, local post-fossil energy may be a main concern regarding rural eco-services utilised by urban areas. We can here imagine flows and exchanges that may demand heavy societal regulation and thus be one of the main objects of future democracy. However, despite these developments urban (and rural) policy and planning is still tightly connected to the modern expansion of the urban into the rural. There are signs of new developments and paradigm shifts but these have to be strengthened to lay the ground for rural-urban resilience.

Many rural areas in the United States find themselves struggling to build local assets and create wealth, and, when this wealth is created, they often struggle to hold on it. Previous approaches to community and economic development have been inadequate in attempting to reverse these trends. Shifting to a new way of enabling economic development requires supporting innovative community leaders as they explore new ways of approaching the task at hand. It also requires thinking anew about the role of rural areas, based on valuing multiple forms of wealth - natural, social, and human. There is a real need for an approach that can help stem the potential loss of existing wealth, and attract new investment that will allow rural areas to become valued partners in regional economies. This book provides an important insight into rural wealth creation as a sustainable economic development strategy. At the same time, a number of compelling issues are raised that merit future research effort and discussion. This book was originally published as a special issue of Community Development.

In this book Geert Mak returns to the small Frisian village of his childhood, Jorwert (pop. 330 and falling). It's a typical European village where the shops are closing down, the few children left will escape to a less arduous life in the city and it's becoming increasingly isolated. Jowert has more in common with an English village than with Amsterdam, and it's moving story of neighbours and their efforts to preserve their long established way of life is relevant to the changing face of the countryside everywhere in Europe.

National immigration debates have thrust both opponents of immigration and immigrant rights supporters into the news. But what happens once the rallies end and the banners come down? What is daily life like for Latinos who have been presented nationally as "terrorists, drug smugglers, alien gangs, and violent criminals"? Latino Heartland offers an ethnography of the Latino and non-Latino residents of a small Indiana town, showing how national debate pitted neighbor against neighbor-and the strategies some used to combat such animosity. It conveys the lived impact of divisive political rhetoric on immigration and how race, gender, class, and ethnicity inform community belonging in the twenty-first century. Latino Heartland illuminates how community membership was determined yet simultaneously re-made by those struggling to widen the scope of who was imagined as a legitimate resident citizen of this Midwestern space. The volume draws on interviews with Latinos-both new immigrants and long-standing U.S. citizens-and whites, as well as African Americans, to provide a sense of the racial dynamics in play as immigrants asserted their right to belong to the community. Latino Hoosiers asserted a right to redefine what belonging meant within their homes, at their spaces of worship, and in the public eye. Through daily acts of ethnic belonging, Spanish-speaking residents navigated their own sense of community that did not require that they abandon their difference just to be accepted. In Latino Heartland, Sujey Vega addresses the politics of immigration, showing us how increasingly diverse towns can work toward embracing their complexity.

Rural people and communities continue to play important social, economic, and environmental roles at a time when societies are rapidly urbanizing. This unrivaled critical introduction, now in a comprehensively updated second edition, examines the causes and consequences of major social and economic transformations affecting rural populations in recent decades, explores policies developed to ameliorate problems or enhance opportunities, and highlights the resilience of rural people and communities. In an engaging, reader-friendly style, the book explores both socio-demographic and political economic aspects of rural transformation through an accessible and up-to-date blend of theory and empirical analysis, with each chapter's discussion grounded in real-life case-study materials. The new edition has been completely revised throughout, with new data and literature, and carefully updated to address emerging issues of direct relevance to rural people and places, including a whole new chapter on rural politics. Rural People and Communities in the 21st Century will continue to be the standard reading of choice for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in rural sociology, community sociology, rural and/or population geography, community development, and population studies.

This book broadens the scope of the subject of rural education and enlivens the ways in which the subject may be studied. Through textual and visual analysis of a range of sources - including young adult novels, the farming simulation game 'Hay Day' and reality television programs - the contributors investigate how the lives of young people in rural spaces are mediated by a range of social locations including class, ethnicity and sexuality. Additionally, through rich and detailed ethnographic work, the book explores the complicated and multifaceted meanings of rural places and examines how these meanings shape experiences of schooling for teachers and students. In doing so, the book embeds the study of rural education in explorations of patrilineal inheritance on family farms, international migration, globalisation and economic restructuring. It aims to start a conversation about the robust and complex ways in which the confluence between 'rural' and 'education' may be imagined, experienced and researched. This book was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

The first ethnographic study of a community with structured trading relationships, the nomadic forest community of the Hill Pandarm.

This is an important innovative analysis of communication and society in Pahang, West Malaysia, based on fieldwork carried out in Kampung Kuala Bera. Dr Wilder is concerned with communication networks of all kinds as found in a long-established Malay village, including the uses of language, small-scale (kinship and village-based) networks, and higher-level systems (the district and the nation as a whole). Dr Wilder lays particular emphasis on the role of communication in the process of economic development and on administration during a period of rapid and induced social change. His study is prefaced by a detailed historical account of Pahang and a thorough sociological analysis of Kampung Kuala Bera. The ethnography is meticulously detailed; its special contribution includes the first-ever publication of a Malay village genealogy, a systematic account of birth-order names (a major feature of the kinship system), complete figures on marital breakdowns for the whole village population, and an intensive analysis of leadership in its local context. This work will be of value to students of Southeast Asian societies, rural sociology, network studies, economic development, political education and the mass media in third world countries.

Social workers are typically trained in an urban context and are unprepared for the difficulties and challenges of rural social work yet rural areas experience the greatest need for licensed social workers. This up-to-date text featuring a stellar list of contributions from experts in the field integrates research, theory, and evidence-based practice to demonstrate social work applications in a rural environment. Integrating a strengths-based, asset-building approach to rural social work, this book reflects the latest knowledge and research in social work, including Evidence-Based Practice, Concept Mapping, Community Action Research, Globalization, and more.

From acclaimed journalist Sophy Roberts, a journey through one of the harshest landscapes on earth--where music reveals the deep humanity and the rich history of Siberia Siberia's story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos--grand instruments created during the boom years of the nineteenth century, as well as humble, Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the westernizing influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos traveled into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers and exiles. Siberian pianos have accomplished extraordinary feats, from the instrument that Maria Volkonsky, wife of an exiled Decembrist revolutionary, used to spread music east of the Urals, to those that brought reprieve to the Soviet Gulag. That these instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle. The Lost Pianos of Siberia is largely a story of music in this fascinating place, fol-lowing Roberts on a three-year adventure as she tracks a number of different instruments to find one whose history is definitively Siberian. Her journey reveals a desolate land inhabited by wild tigers and deeply shaped by its dark history, yet one that is also profoundly beautiful--and peppered with pianos.

Contradictions between impressive levels of economic growth and the persistence of poverty and inequality are perhaps nowhere more evident than in rural Brazil. While Brazil might appear to be an example of the potential harmony between large-scale, export-oriented agribusiness and small-scale family farming, high levels of rural resistance contradict this vision. In this volume, individual contributions from a variety of researchers across the field highlight seven key characteristics of contemporary Brazilian resistance that have broader resonance in the region and beyond: the growth of international networks, the changing structure of state-society collaboration, the deepening of territorial claims, the importance of autonomy, the development of alternative economies, continued opposition to dispossession, and struggles over the meaning of nature. By analyzing rural mobilization in Brazil, this collection offers a range of insights relevant to rural contention globally. Each contribution in this title increases our understanding of alternative agricultural production, large-scale development projects, education, race and political parties in the contemporary agrarian context. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

This book debates the emergent proprieties of rural and peri-urban South Africa since land and agrarian reforms were initiated after the transition to democracy in 1994. It explores how these reforms have broadened options for the use of land and natural resources. Reform-minded policies in South Africa have assumed that if access to land and other natural resources is less problematic, the use of these resources would be intensified which in turn would alter the structure and dynamic of rural and urban poverty. Reforming Land and Resource Use in South Africa examines in detail, and from several disciplinary perspectives, whether and how this has occurred, and if not, why not. A key argument that this collection pursues is whether land reform has resulted in transformed use of natural (i.e. land, crops, cattle, rangeland, wild products etc.) and other strategic resources (labour, knowledge, institutions, networks etc.), and the value communities and household place on them. The contributions explore a combination of new or alternative meanings of land, including a look beyond crops and cattle per se to include the collection and selling of wild products, as well as a discussion of how land for agriculture has become redefined by land reform beneficiaries as urban land, for settlement and urban employment opportunities, in addition to urban-based agricultural activities. Unlike most analyses and commentaries on land reform, this book pursues an analysis of land reform dynamics at various levels of aggregation. National and regional level analyses of poverty and the ramifications of the property clause are combined with analyses at disaggregate levels such as the land reform project or village. The book will be of interest to both researchers and policy makers with an interest in rural development and social change.