Country Teachers in City Schools: The Challenge of Negotiating Identity and Place explores what it’s like to be a country teacher in a city school. Through conversations with teachers who grew up one place and ended up teaching in another, Chea Parton investigates the role of place on the personal and professional identity building of teachers as well as the way their identities influence their teaching practice. To conclude, Parton highlights important considerations for teacher education programs as they work to support and prepare teachers to be successful no matter where they land. She also provides concrete teaching strategies that classroom teachers and teacher educators can use to foster place-conscious identity work.

The tremendous loss of groundwater has been a longstanding concern in Kansas, where areas of the High Plains aquifer have plummeted. Groundwater Citizenship: Well Owners, Environmentalism, and the Depletion of the High Plains Aquifer investigates water conservation efforts, environmental priorities, and water supply awareness among private water well owners, a key social group whose water usage is pivotal to safeguarding aquifers. This book discusses how reliance on private and public water supplies influences watering practices by asking if owning a well changes the propensity to conserve water. To explore how water supplies shape environmental actions and beliefs, sociologist Brock Ternes constructed a one-of-a-kind dataset by surveying over 850 well owners and non-well owners throughout Kansas. His analyses reveal that well ownership influences several dimensions of water consumption, and he identifies how Kansans' notions of environmentalism are recalibrated by their systems of water provision. This book frames well owners as unique conservationists whose water use is shaped by larger structures-aquifers, water laws, and food systems. Groundwater Citizenship takes a sociological look at water systems to facilitate adaptive approaches to sustainable resource management.

In this interdisciplinary volume, sociolinguists and sociologists explore the intersections of language, culture, and identity for rural populations around the world. Challenging stereotypical views of rural backwardness and urban progress, the contributors reveal how language is a key mechanism for constructing the meaning of places and the people who identify with them. With research that spans numerous countries and several continents, the chapters in this volume add broadly to knowledge about status and prestige, authenticity and belonging, rural-urban relations, and innovation and change among rural peoples and in rural communities across the globe.

In this interdisciplinary volume, sociolinguists and sociologists explore the intersections of language, culture, and identity for rural populations around the world. Challenging stereotypical views of rural backwardness and urban progress, the contributors reveal how language is a key mechanism for constructing the meaning of places and the people who identify with them. With research that spans numerous countries and several continents, the chapters in this volume add broadly to knowledge about status and prestige, authenticity and belonging, rural-urban relations, and innovation and change among rural peoples and in rural communities across the globe.