The image of the family farm as storehouse of the traditional values that built this nation -- self-reliance, resourcefulness, civic pride, family strength, concern for neighbors and community, honesty, and friendliness -- persists, as many recent surveys show. But the reality of this rich tradition is rapidly changing, eroding the security once represented by these nostalgic images of rural America. Although the United States is still by far the world's leading overall producer of agricultural products, the number of American families making their livelihood through farming is much diminished, and if our demographers are correct, the number of family-operated farms is destined to fall still further in the coming decades as consolidation, cycles of boom and bust, and corporate invasions redefine who will farm the land. Harvest of Hope is a story of farm family life through the words of those who live it. The saga of the generations who have lived and worked on Basin Spring farm in western Kentucky is the thread that binds together the stories of eighty other farm families. They talk about their family businesses, their way of life, and the forces reshaping their lives. The challenges of making a living in farming either strengthen families or break them. Technology, government programs, and community changes that are supposed to be the hope for their future often come with unexpected drawbacks. The stories in this book -- tales of growing up in farming, working in a multifamily business, juggling jobs on and off the farm, and struggling to maintain financial security and comfortable working relationships -- reveal what American farming families know about hope and survival in a changing world. The authors offer a multifaceted view of the present situation, as well as suggestions for ways of enhancing the positive elements that have enriched and inspired Americans in the past. It is an analysis that highlights the myths and realities of a business and way of life that has a powerful hold on the American imagination. The reader comes away from this work with a clear idea of the tribulations farming families endure and the delicate balance between the spiritual and other rewards of farm life.

This Complete revision of Dr. Shaffer's classic "Community Economics" provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of economic structure in small communities and urban neighborhoods of America. Authors Shaffer, Deller, and Marcouiller review the economics of smaller communities with continued emphasis on how to build and achieve theoretically sound community economic development policy. The text also demonstrates how local participation and knowledge can be used to identify problems, form solutions, and maintain community support for long-term goals.

The main body of economic research and literature has neglected the economics of smaller communities. "Community Economics: Linking Theory and Practice" fills that information void. This text serves as a comprehensive guide on smaller, open economies and urban neighborhoods for economists, regional planners, rural sociologists, and geographers. Additionally, "Community Economics" is an issue-oriented handbook of development strategies for development practitioners, planning and zoning officials, and others involved in the ay-to-day activities of community economic development.

Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal--that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas B. Downey shows in How Schools Really Matter, achievement gaps have very little to do with what goes on in our schools. Not only do schools not exacerbate inequality in skills, they actually help to level the playing field. The real sources of achievement gaps are elsewhere. A close look at the testing data in seasonal patterns bears this out. It turns out that achievement gaps in reading skills between high- and low-income children are nearly entirely formed prior to kindergarten, and schools do more to reduce them than increase them. And when gaps do increase, they tend to do so during summers, not during school periods. So why do both liberal and conservative politicians strongly advocate for school reform, arguing that the poor quality of schools serving disadvantaged children is an important contributor to inequality? It's because discussing the broader social and economic reforms necessary for really reducing inequality has become too challenging and polarizing--it's just easier to talk about fixing schools. Of course, there are differences that schools can make, and Downey outlines the kinds of reforms that make sense given what we know about inequality outside of schools, including more school exposure, increased standardization, and better and fairer school and teacher measurements. How Schools Really Matter offers a firm rebuke to those who find nothing but fault in our schools, which are doing a much better than job than we give them credit for. It should also be a call to arms for educators and policymakers: the bottom line is that if we are serious about reducing inequality, we are going to have to fight some battles that are bigger than school reform--battles against the social inequality that is reflected within, rather than generated by--our public school system.

With China's rapid advancements in urbanization and industrialization, there has been significant labor movement away from agriculture in the rural regions. Using four village case studies, Song examines how this restructuring process affects the rural population. Much of her research is centered on their various perceptions and reactions towards the market reforms. How are their lives reshaped through the employment transition? Along with the changes of family life and the diversification of development models, how do an individual's gender and background play a role in determining employment? These are the broad questions that Song addresses through detailed analysis of four different villages, in light of China's move towards decentralization of its rural economy.

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 a 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.

Rural crime has long been overlooked in the field of crime prevention. Sustained academic interrogation is necessary, therefore, to reduce the extensive economic and social costs of rural crime as well as to challenge some of the myths regarding the prevention of rural crime. Rural Crime Prevention: Theory, Tactics and Techniques critically analyses, challenges, considers and assesses a suite of crime prevention initiatives across an array of international contexts. This book recognises the diversity and distinct features of rural places and the ways that these elements impact on rates, experiences and responses. Crucially, Rural Crime Prevention also incorporates non-academic voices which are embedded throughout the book, linking theory and scholarship with practice. Proactive responses to rural offending based on sound evidence can serve to facilitate feelings of safety and security throughout communities, enhance individual wellbeing and alleviate pressure on the overburdened and typically under-resourced formal elements of the criminal justice system. This book provides an opportunity to focus on the prevention of crime in regional, rural and remote parts of the globe. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, policing, sociology and practitioners interested in learning about the best-practice international approaches to rural crime prevention in the twenty-first century.

Older people in the countryside are vastly under-researched compared to those in urban areas. This innovative volume, the first project-based book in the New Dynamics of Ageing series, offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective on this issue, focusing on older people's role as assets in rural civic society. It demonstrates how the use of diverse methods from across disciplines aims to increase public engagement with this research. The authors examine the ways in which rural elders are connected to community and place, the contributions they make to family and neighbours, and the organisations and groups to which they belong. Highly topical issues around later life explored through these perspectives include older people's financial security, leisure, access to services, transport and mobility, civic engagement and digital inclusion - all considered within the rural context in an era of fiscal austerity. In doing so, this book challenges problem-based views of ageing rural populations through considering barriers and facilitators to older people's inclusion and opportunities for community participation in rural settings. Countryside Connections is a valuable text for students, researchers and practitioners with interests in rural ageing, civic engagement and interdisciplinary methods, theory and practice.

Collectively, cities take up a relatively tiny amount of land on the earth, yet they emit 72 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Clearly, cities need to be at the center of any broad effort to reduce climate change. In Greenovation, the eminent urban policy scholar Joan Fitzgerald argues that too many cities are only implementing random acts of greenness that will do little to address the climate crisis. She instead calls for "greenovation"-using the city as a test bed for adopting and perfecting green technologies for more energy-efficient buildings, transportation, and infrastructure more broadly. Fitzgerald contends that while many city mayors cite income inequality as a pressing problem, few cities are connecting climate action and social justice-another aspect of greenovation. Focusing on the biggest producers of greenhouse gases in cities, buildings, energy and transportation, Fitzgerald examines how greenovating cities are reducing emissions overall and lays out an agenda for fostering and implementing urban innovations that can help reverse the path toward irrevocable climate damage. Drawing on interviews with practitioners in more than 20 North American and European cities, she identifies the strategies and policies they are employing and how support from state, provincial and national governments has supported or thwarted their efforts. A uniquely urban-focused appraisal of the economic, political, and social debates that underpin the drive to "go green," Greenovation helps us understand what is arguably the toughest policy problem of our era: the increasing impact of anthropocentric climate change on modern social life.

Mediterranean agriculture is by and large envisaged as a landscape of small farms of high nature value producing worldwide recognisable quality food products that make up the basis of the famous Mediterranean diet and shape Southern European cultures. However, the dynamics developing in the Mediterranean countryside are further complex and diverse; comprising differentiated agricultural systems which have been scarcely analysed in an integrated fashion. This volume illustrates and deepens the understanding of current agrarian dynamics developing in Mediterranean countries in the light of recent theoretical contributions. The book compiles and analyses a set of Mediterranean case studies that show the range of transformations shaping contemporary agriculture in Southern Europe, which allow considering the usefulness of recent theoretical frameworks in explaining the array of dynamics underway; contributing to the refinement of contemporary conceptualizations.

A new approach to rural development is emerging. Instead of being about attracting companies that might create jobs over which communities have no control, the emerging paradigm is about connecting the unique underutilized assets of place with market opportunity to grow assets that are owned and controlled by and for the benefit of low-wealth people and places. But asset development is about more than bricks and mortar or narrowly defined financial assets. There are many kinds of assets that communities require to thrive - such as social capital, natural capital, political capital, and intellectual capital. The emerging new approach to rural development is, then about broadening the definition of "wealth," engaging underutilized assets, and a key third element: harnessing the power of the market - rather than relying solely on philanthropy and government. Wealth Creation provides a conceptual guide with practical examples for policymakers, practitioners of economic and community development, community organizers, environmentalists, funders, investors, and corporations seeking a values-based framework for identifying self-interests across sectors that can lead to opportunities to transform existing systems for the collective good.

2019 World Magazine Book of the Year Short List 2019 The Gospel Coalition Book Award 2019 Send Institute's Top Ten Church Planting Related Books of 2019 Kevin DeYoung's Top 10 Books of 2019 Jesus loves small, insignificant places. In recent years, Christian ministries have increasingly prioritized urban areas. Big cities and suburbs are considered more strategic, more influential, and more desirable places to live and work. After all, they're the centers for culture, arts, and education. More and more people are leaving small places and moving to big ones. As a ministry strategy, focusing on big places makes sense. But the gospel of Jesus is often unstrategic. In this book, pastor Stephen Witmer lays out an integrated theological vision for small-place ministry. Filled with helpful information about small places and with stories and practical advice from his own ministry, Witmer's book offers a compelling, comprehensive vision for small-place ministry today. Jesus loves small places, and when we care deeply about them and invest in them over time, our ministry becomes a unique picture of the gospel-one that the world badly needs to see.

Presenting a broad range of case studies, this book explores rural social movements contesting natural resource development initiatives. Natural resource development takes multiple forms, including infrastructure corridors, mines, dams, resource processing plants and pipelines. Many of which are driven by economic valuations, whilst social and environmental effects are given limited consideration. In this volume the authors discuss the emergence, process and outcomes of social movements with respect to these natural resource development projects, including examples of confrontation seeking to either block developments or promote alternative development approaches, such as agritourism. The examples taken from Africa, Asia, North America, Europe and Latin America demonstrate the diversity of struggles stimulated by natural resource development, including both immediate and longer-term effects, repertoires of action, political and cultural work. Taken together the case studies provide a rich overview of current movements engaged in resisting the neoliberal agenda of global resource exploitation. This book will be key reading for scholars interested in social movements, natural resource development, environmental policy and development studies. It will also be of interest to activists engaged in mobilizations stimulated by natural resource development projects.

This book presents a critical analysis of the anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian ideologies that exist in rural communities in the United States. The author book also explores and recontextualizes existing research in rural education within this anti-democratic framework, as well as theorizing the consequences of this ideology as it takes place in the rural United States, specifically in regards to the physical and ideological shaping of rural communities to meet the needs of capitalist accumulation. Finally, it discusses the ways rural youth can reclaim the public sphere within their communities through critical education.

Growing up with social and economic upheaval in the peripheries of global neoliberalism, children in rural Zambia are presented with diverging social and moral protocols across homes, classrooms, church halls, and the streets. Mostly unmonitored by adults, they explore the ambiguities of adult life in playful interactions with their siblings and kin across gender and age. Drawing on rich linguistic-ethnographic details of such interactions combined with observations of school and household procedures, the author provides a rare insight into the lives, voices, and learning paths of children in a rural African setting.

This book examines the educational gaps that multilingual students in rural communities experience. It argues that responsive, successful relationships between schools and multilingual families are a crucial aspect of all educators' work and that no single strategy will work for all families. Rural multilingual family engagement involves building meaningful partnerships and relational trust, based on significant knowledge of families' cultures and language repertoires. Educators can reframe their work by learning from families and building on the strengths of multilingual families, which are too-often overlooked in school policies and educator practices. This is the first book to focus specifically on rural school settings. However, the conceptual framework of equity and linguistically responsive pedagogy are applicable across settings for educators who wish to support their multilingual students and families.

This pioneering study tells the story of the emergence of rural workers' gardens during a period of unprecedented economic and social change in the most dynamic and prosperous region of Scotland. Much criticised as weed-infested, badly cultivated and disfigured by the dung heap before the cottage door, eighteenth-century cottage gardens produced only the most basic food crops. But the paradox is that Scottish professional gardeners at this time were highly prized and sought after all over the world. And by the eve of the First World War Scottish cottage gardeners were raising flowers, fruit and a wide range of vegetables, and celebrating their successes at innumerable flower shows. This book delves into the lives of farm servants, labourers, weavers, miners and other workers living in the countryside, to discover not only what vegetables, fruit and flowers they grew, and how they did it, but also how poverty, insecurity and long and arduous working days shaped their gardens. Workers' cottage gardens were also expected to comply with the needs of landowners, farmers and employers and with their expectations of the industrious cottager. But not all the gardens were muddy cabbage and potato patches and not all the gardeners were ignorant or unenthusiastic. The book also tells the stories of the keen gardeners who revelled in their pretty plots, raised prize exhibits for village shows and, in a few cases, found gardening to be a stepping-stone to scientific exploration.

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.

The contributions to this collection focus on the intersecting dynamics of gender, generation and class in Southeast Asian rural communities engaging with expanding capitalist relations, whether in the form of large-scale corporate land acquisition or other forms of penetration of commodity economy. Gender, and especially generation, are relatively neglected dimensions in the literature on agrarian and environmental transformations in Southeast Asia. Drawing on key concepts in gender studies, youth studies and agrarian studies, the chapters mark a significant step towards a gendered and 'generationed' analysis of capitalist expansion in rural Southeast Asia, in particular from a political ecology perspective. The collection highlights the importance of bringing gender and generation, in their interaction with class dynamics, more squarely into agrarian and environmental transformation studies. This is key to understanding the implications of capitalist expansion for social relations of power and justice, and the potential of these relations to shape the outcomes for different women and men, younger and older, in rural society. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies.

Undoing the Revolution looks at the way rural underclasses ally with out-of-power elites to overthrow their governments-only to be shut out of power when the new regime assumes control. Vasabjit Banerjee first examines why peasants need to ally with dissenting elites in order to rebel. He then shows how conflict resolution and subsequent bargains to form new state institutions re-empower allied elites and re-marginalize peasants. Banerjee evaluates three different agrarian societies during distinct time periods spanning the twentieth century: revolutionary Mexico from 1910 to 1930; late-colonial India from 1920 until 1947; and White-dominated Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) from the mid-1960s to 1980. This comparative approach also allows examination of both the underclass need for elite participation and the variety of causes that elites use to incentivize peasant classes to participate, extending from religious-ethnic identity and common political targets to the peasants' and elites' own economic grievances. Undoing the Revolution demonstrates that both international and domestic investors in cash crops, natural resources, and finance can ally with peasant rebels; and, after threatened or actual state collapse, they can bargain with each other to select new state institutions.

People love getting nostalgic and what better way than the history of school days of yesteryear? Over six hundred school buildings are scattered across the Centennial State-and some were still operating in rural communities through the 1950s. A community's construction of a school building reflected the importance of universal education, and also a desire to establish permanence in the community itself in the ever-expanding Western frontier. These schools were often the social centers of the community. Civic town meetings were held in them, as well as other political events. Today, these schools are the touchstones to Colorado's pioneering past. Colorado's Historic Schools is part-regional history, and part-travel guide featuring over 150 of the most significant schools across the state, all recognized as historic landmarks. Along with interesting school stories and building descriptions, there are historic photos, and information on how to visit the schools that are open to the public. Readers will also enjoy sidebars featuring stories of legendary teachers, tragedies, and even murder over the 150-year history of Colorado's schools.

The aftermath of modern conflicts, deeply rooted in political, economic and social structures, leaves pervasive and often recurring legacies of violence. Addressing past injustice is therefore fundamental not only for societal well-being and peace, but also for future conflict prevention. In recent years, truth and reconciliation commissions have become important but contentious mechanisms for conflict resolution and reconciliation. This book fills a significant gap, examining the importance of context within transitional justice and peace-building. It lays out long-term and often unexpected indirect effects of formal and informal justice processes. Offering a novel conceptual understanding of 'procedural reconciliation' on the societal level, it features an in-depth study of commissions in Peru and Sierra Leone, providing a critical analysis of the contribution and challenges facing transitional justice in post-conflict societies. It will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, international relations, human rights and conflict studies.

Originally published in 1982, this book emphasizes the continued significance and distinctiveness of rural settlement, while at the same time recognizing the great changes of recent decades. The early chapters review the field of rural study and trace the evolution of man-land relationships in the establishment of the traditional elements of rural settlement. Later chapters discuss the changes wrought by urbanisation, the industrialisation and commercialisation of agriculture, the growth of recreation and the expanding role of public policy. The book stresses the processes which underlie rural settlement structure and, consistent with its geographical bias, the functional and cultural foundations of settled landscapes. While the main emphasis is on Europe and North America, the diversity of expression of general trends in rural settlement is recognised by drawing upon examples from Africa, India, Latin America and South-East Asia.

The popular dream of "escaping to the countryside" is a feature of most modern Western societies — so much so that "counterurbanisation" has long been the dominant factor in population redistribution in the developed world. This process of counterurbanisation is widely recognised but poorly understood. It involves much more than simple residential relocation and long distance commuting by affluent city workers. It has a wide-ranging impact on the economy, social structure, housing market, culture and lifestyles of everyone living in rural areas, frequently being associated with conflict between incomers and established rural residents. This book is the first to broadly cover theoretical approaches in migration, borrowing from the fields of geography, planning, sociology and psychology to disentangle this collective behaviour and uncover the character and motivations of the individuals involved. It integrates formal statistical analysis with a consideration of language, culture, social change and behavioural models to build a more complete picture of the process involved. With examples from Britain, mainland Europe, United States and Australia the book is a major contribution to the reconceptualisation of counterurbanisation.