Rural Sociology Research Articles

Local Food: A Social Movement?

This article analyzes the development of “local food” institutions from a social movements perspective. Over the last decade, institutions that “shorten the links” between producer and consumer have developed through a diverse collaboration of many social sectors (farmers, agronomic experts, retailers, chefs, food writers, and several distinct consumer sectors). Some agronomists and rural sociologists critical of the globalization and industrialization of agriculture have recognized this development as heralding Polanyian “reembedding” of market exchanges in social relations. This article analyzes whether and how local food is a social movement, using new social movement theory as an analytic framework.

Mobilities and Ruralities: An Introduction

The rural is on the move, now as always. In rural studies, however, there has long been a bias towards imagining the rural as stable. The old gemeinschaft– gesellschaft continuum saw the rural as the realm of long-standing ascriptive ties of family, community, place, and ethnicity, in contrast to the achieved statuses of urban life. Where there was mobility in rural life, it was to leave it behind for the competitive uncertainties of life among strangers in cities. Social mobility meant spatial mobility and little social mobility was recognised in the rural, with all its traditionalism. Adoption-diffusion theory – perhaps rural sociology’s most widely diffused and adopted contribution, even if rural sociology is rarely recognised as its source – similarly rested on the image of a stable rural, resistant to innovation, except among those few, sought-after early adopters. Far more of the rural population were late adopters of change or even laggards. Where change has been recognised in the rural it has generally been as part of a narrative of protection, defending the rural from the ravages of capital, gentrifiers, pollution and other emanations of the urban: the rural as victim. The rural has rarely been envisioned as a source of activeness on its own. The victim has also become a villain through its stabilities, confounding culture with idyllic myths of order and old virtues in much social constructionist work. In light of this bias it may seem curious that the rural has long relied on extensive mobility in both economic and social life. But mobility is central to the enactment of the rural. Markets, employment, shopping, socialising, schooling, attending church, seeing a doctor, visiting parks: these all require traversing space, often great reaches of it, whether one lives in a rural place or is travelling to one. From this perspective it is reasonable to claim that the rural is at least as mobile as the urban, if not more so. Rural scholars are starting to develop this appreciation of a mobile rural, as this special issue manifests, itself a product of the 2007 meetings of the European Society for Rural Sociology on the theme of ‘Mobilities, Vulnerabilities and Sustainabilities: New Questions and Challenges for Rural Europe’. After the long season of urbanisation, in which we largely envisioned the rural as a reservoir that was draining away, our attention shifted to counter-urbanisation (Champion 1998), the return of urban people to the countryside. We did not see this as ruralisation, for the most part. Rather, Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Journal Code: SORU Proofreader: Elsie Article No: 518 Delivery date: 14 May 2010 Page Extent: 6

Re-regionalizing the food system?

Betsy Donald, Meric Gertler, Mia Gray and Linda Lobao Department of Geography, Queen’s University, Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room D201, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6, betsy.donald@queensu.ca Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St George Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G3, Canada, meric.gertler@utoronto.ca Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge, CB2 3EN, UK, pmg27@cam.ac.uk Departments of Rural Sociology, Sociology and Geography, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA, lobao.1@osu.edu

Eat Local? Constructions of Place in Alternative Food Politics

AbstractIn recent years those seeking alternatives to industrialized and globalized food systems have looked beyond organic production to develop a range of alternative food networks (AFNs). Alongside these developments in sustainable food and agriculture activism, a body of literature has emerged in rural sociology, agri‐food studies and human geography exploring the development of alternative food networks. This article explores some potential synergies between this literature and geographical theory surrounding space and place. Place has been identified as central to AFN discourse and efforts to localize food systems, and while the benefits of localized food systems can be accepted uncritically by activist communities and the media, important questions have been raised about the reflexivity of local food activism. This article argues that a closer engagement with place theory would help avoid the fetishized constructions of the local often present in alternative food politics. Drawing on geographical debates about place, this article demonstrates the ways in which geographical place theory could inform and develop literatures examining alternative food politics.

Climate Change and Societal Response: Livelihoods, Communities, and the Environment

Climate change may be considered a natural disaster evolving in slow motion on a global scale. Increasing storm intensities, shifting rainfall patterns, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and other manifold alterations are being experienced around the world. Climate has never been constant in any location, but human-induced changes associated with greenhouse gases and fossil fuel use are new and rapidly shifting conditions for rural communities and regions across the planet. Rural sociologists have long been carving out the contours of this topic through research on family well-being, rural livelihoods, community, and the environment. Now climate change and subsequent policy responses present a new and fundamental source of social change. The purpose of this article is to assess lines of research and theory that consider and direct our understanding of the impacts of climate change, the ways it might be mitigated, and the coping strategies of rural people and communities that are both victims and perpetrators in the global realignment. As climate-change impacts and policy responses begin to impinge on rural populations, the first line of resistance and participation will be the rural community. The distribution of rewards from climate-change mitigation is broad and diffuse; the distribution of costs, compromised livelihoods, and community disruption often is focused.

Climate Change and Rural Sociology: Broadening the Research Agenda

Climate change is the preeminent environmental problem of our time, and Joseph Molnar’s call for greater attention to it by rural sociologists is both welcome and timely. The agenda he lays out for rural sociology’s engagement with climate change, however, seems rather narrow and restrictive. Examining the potential impacts of climate change, feasible mitigation options, and possible coping or adaptive strategies for agricultural (and other natural-resource) industries and rural communities are obviously topics for which rural sociologists are particularly well qualified. However, rural sociology should be able to make broader contributions to understanding the human dimensions of climate change. To make this point I will comment in particular on the scope of Molnar’s research agenda, its dependence on natural science, and its rather casual treatment of the “climate debate.” In the process of dealing with these interrelated issues, I suggest a broader research agenda for rural sociologists and other social scientists interested in climate change and reference a wide range of literature that should provide guideposts for pursuing such research. These suggestions are informed in part by a report from a 2008 National Science Foundation workshop on “Sociological Perspectives on Climate Change” (Nagel, Dietz, and Broadbent forthcoming). My fundamental goal is to complement and extend Molnar’s call, not to critique it, even though some of my commentary will of necessity be critical.

Alberto Arce, Gustavo Blanco and Margarita Hurtado (eds.), Políticas públicas como objeto social: imaginando el bien público en el desarrollo rural latinoamericano (Guatemala City: FLACSO; Wageningen: Wageningen University; Valdivia: Universidad Austral de Chile, 2008), pp. 293, pb.

Alberto Arce, Gustavo Blanco and Margarita Hurtado (eds.), Políticas públicas como objeto social: imaginando el bien público en el desarrollo rural latinoamericano (Guatemala City: FLACSO; Wageningen: Wageningen University; Valdivia: Universidad Austral de Chile, 2008), pp. 293, pb. - Volume 42 Issue 1

Who killed rural sociology? A case study in the political economy of knowledge production.

Rural sociology is examined as a case study in the social forces that shape and direct the production of knowledge. Knowledge production is viewed as the product of the nexus of three sets of forces. First, there are the rewards and punishments of any system of social control. While knowledge is produced under very different conditions than other commodities, concrete products (‘research’) are produced in a social milieu and in response to distinct forces. Forces that pull research in particular directions are represented by the availability of research funds and the clarity by which certain types of research are regarded as more important than others. Pushes are represented not only by the unavailability of research funds but also by discouragement of certain research trajectories. These range from friendly advice by senior faculty to graduate students, to impediments in career development, to active persecution. Second, the system of social control is embedded in an institutional network within which knowledge production occurs. Rural sociology is centrally linked to a clearly delineated institutional network composed of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the land-grant college complex. This complex constitutes a dense institutional network influencing the knowledge production system directly. Third, rural sociology is influenced by its institutional relationship to sociology as a discipline. In this case, as long as it does not involve the mission orientation of the subdiscipline (e.g. the pushes and pulls), the general discipline has effects on what can be termed the ‘autonomy’ of knowledge production within rural sociology.

Visiting a Farm: An Exploratory Study of the Social Construction of Animal Farming in Norway and the Netherlands based on Sensory Perception

Most citizens in modern societies have little personal knowledge or experience of animal farming. This study explores the social construction of animal farming by studying how citizens perceive and evaluate modern farming after visiting a farm in real life. We wanted to understand how (non-farming) citizens develop an opinion of modern dairy farming when experiencing dairy farming in real life and practice, and how they translate what they see, smell and feel into an evaluative perception and mental image. We therefore conducted dairy farm visits with citizen panels in Norway and the Netherlands and asked the panel members to register what they saw, heard, smelled and felt and what they appreciated (or not) on the farm. The aspects that respondents registered could be grouped into four themes: the animals and their products, the rural landscape, farm practices and the farmer. When respondents described their experiences of these aspects on a specific farm, they appeared to look at them from three angles: modernity, tradition and naturality. Most respondents wanted farms to be modern, traditional as well as natural, but they were ready to negotiate and to accept compromises. Many respondents considered the farmer to be responsible for reconciling modernity, tradition and naturality. By taking different topics and issues into account and looking at animal farms from multiple angles, the respondents’ developed a balanced and nuanced opinion of animal farming. The image that they constructed was not dualistic (arcadia versus factory) but pluralistic, thus at the same time more complex but also more flexible than expected. We expect that the development of a pluralistic image and balanced opinion was facilitated through the direct experience of dairy farming and farm life. The article starts with a theoretical analysis and aims to contribute to recent debates in rural sociology in two ways: 1) it studies how material experience and mental perception interact in the construction of an evaluative image of animal farming; and 2) it explores the social construction of animal farming as embedded into to the construction of nature, rurality and human-animal relationships. It concludes by discussing the contribution of the findings to the ongoing theoretical debate in this field.

Where Does All the Money Go? Measuring Effects of Agricultural Policy Transfers on Farm Income: Discussion

American Journal of Agricultural EconomicsVolume 91, Issue 5 p. 1302-1303 ASSA Meeting Invited Paper Session Where Does All the Money Go? Measuring Effects of Agricultural Policy Transfers on Farm Income: Discussion David Abler, David Abler professor Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Penn State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author David Abler, David Abler professor Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Penn State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 December 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8276.2009.01301.x This article was presented in an invited paper session at the 2009 ASSA annual meeting in San Francisco, CA. The articles in these sessions are not subjected to the journal's standard refereeing process. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume91, Issue5December 2009Pages 1302-1303 RelatedInformation

The Contested Redefinition of a Sustainable Countryside: Revisiting Frouws' Rurality Discourses

This article gives an overview of the present day discourses on the sustainable development of Dutch agriculture. It aims to advance rural sociology by illustrating how these sustainability discourses actually contain completely opposing views of the future of the countryside. A qualitative analysis of interviews done with innovators in the agricultural sector indicates that the different discourses on the sustainable development of agriculture are a natural continuation of the different views of rurality previously identified by Jaap Frouws (1998). The redefinition of Dutch agriculture and the Dutch countryside is still contested; each discourse has its own vision on the sustainable development of the sector and the surrounding space. We conclude, therefore, that sustainable development has not functioned as an unifying concept to help different parties overcome their differences and work on win-win solutions. The sustainability agenda seems to have intensified an already slumbering difference of interests and perspectives, with the utilitarian, the agri-ruralist and the hedonist discourse each incorporating their own sustainability perspective. The hedonist and utilitarian discourses in particular aspire to sustainable agriculture on different scales and with opposing arguments. In a many respects they are polar opposites, and this has consequences for the possibility of bringing together stakeholders working towards sustainable agriculture.

Review Essay:Rural Sociology, Migration, and Community Change

Research in Rural Sociology and Development: Focus on Migration, edited by Harry K. Schwarzweller and Brendan P. Mullan. Population Change in the Rural West: 1975–1990, edited by John M. Wardwell and James H. Copp. Lanham, MD Community of Strangers: Change, Turnover, Turbulence and the Transformation of a Midwestern Country Town, by Joseph A. Amato and John Radzilowski.

La sociologie rurale et la question territoriale : de l’évitement à la réhabilitation

Rural sociology and the territorial question: from avoidance to rehabilitationDuring the formation of sociology, it was important to examine the concepts for staking out this new disciplinary field. Among them, the concept of was repressed because it referred to a paradigm of life too close to the idea of a community with its implications of a homology between a group and a spatial unit. This review of a seminar devoted to space in the late 1970s shows how the reluctance to use this concept by researchers who, laying a claim to Marxism, were critical of the Mendrasian approach amounted to a rejection of it, the being synonymous with a closed rural object. Nonetheless, the concept of space enabled these same scientists to raise the question of nature, while starting a new research program on questions related to the environment. Confronted with this new approach, sociology has rehabilitated the concept of territory, but of a territory with groups of action and no longer tainted by the idea of a social totality. Rural sociology and the territorial question: from avoidance to rehabilitationDuring the formation of sociology, it was important to examine the concepts for staking out this new disciplinary field. Among them, the concept of was repressed because it referred to a paradigm of life too close to the idea of a community with its implications of a homology between a group and a spatial unit. This review of a seminar devoted to space in the late 1970s shows how the reluctance to use this concept by researchers who, laying a claim to Marxism, were critical of the Mendrasian approach amounted to a rejection of it, the being synonymous with a closed rural object. Nonetheless, the concept of space enabled these same scientists to raise the question of nature, while starting a new research program on questions related to the environment. Confronted with this new approach, sociology has rehabilitated the concept of territory, but of a territory with groups of action and no longer tainted by the idea of a social totality.

Un temps fort de la sociologie rurale française

En 1962, sous la direction d’Henri Mendras, le Groupe de sociologie rurale lance un grand programme de recherche intitule « Inventaire et typologie des societes rurales francaises ». Ce programme donne lieu a un debat opposant deux demarches sociologiques, l’une d’inspiration fonctionnaliste, l’autre d’inspiration marxiste. La restitution de ce debat donne a l’auteur l’occasion de revenir sur un episode majeur de l’histoire de la sociologie rurale francaise, qui invite a reflechir plus generalement sur les fondements de la demarche sociologique. Une reflexion dont on peut penser qu’elle est plus opportune que jamais.

Introduction to the Theme Section: Rural Sociology and Animal Disease

Introduction to the Theme Section: Rural Sociology and Animal Disease

Climate Change and the Contemporary Evolution of Foodways

Climate Change and the Contemporary Evolution of Foodways

Polish Rural Sociology or the Ancillary, Complaisant and Servile Role of Science

Artykuł prezentuje możliwość spojrzenia na dzieje polskiej socjologii wsi przez pryzmat ról społecznych, jakie pełniła ta dyscyplina w różnych okresach. W latach międzywojennych realizowana była funkcja „służebna”, sformułowana przez Władysława Grabskiego jako postulat poznawania wsi po to, by dostosowywać się do jej potrzeb. W okresie PRL-u mieliśmy najpierw do czynienia z funkcją „służalczą”, kiedy socjologowie prowadzili badania inwigilujące mieszkańców wsi oraz pisali raporty-donosy, odtajniając dane respondentów w czasie najgorszych represji stalinowskich. W latach późniejszych dominowała funkcja „usłużna”, gdy posługiwano się nauką dla uzasadnienia ideologicznych decyzji partii (gloryfikacja pgr-ów, analizy chłopo-robotników itp.). Stałą cechą polskiej socjologii wsi przez te wszystkie lata pozostaje zbyt sztywne trzymanie się modelu wsi, który nie uwzględnia istnienia wielu elementów ani dokonujących się przemian, a także brak pogłębionej refleksji teoretycznej. Owocuje to niewypracowaniem własnego paradygmatu, lecz trzymaniem się założeń antyruralistycznie zorientowanej socjologii ogólnej, a to sprzyja deprecjonowaniu wsi i rolnictwa.

Presente e futuro della cultura contadina

- While a re-evaluation of the peasant role is emerging at the scientific level, public and institutional opinion is still influenced by the classical image of antimodern peasants. In the last years, rural sociologists and some agrarian economists have emphasized the persistence of the "peasant model of farming". Considering the present food and environmental crises, the new functions developed in the family farm represent a structural change, both in social and economic terms. By proposing the definition of strategic fertility as a specific relationship with the soil in view of a durable reproduction, the author is outlining the new relevant aspects of the peasant culture. Key words: peasant culture; peasant agriculture; family farm; land; biological fertility; co-evolution.

Tra sicurezza e sovranitŕ alimentare

- The author is discussing the different meanings and applications of the concepts of food security and food sovereignty, with reference to scarcity/lack of food, food quality, universal right to food. Then the article introduces the themes that will be developed in the papers included in this volume. It underlies in particular the opportunity of analysing food issues with a integrated approach, linking the strategies of the agro-industrial system with the new social practices for sustainable food production and responsible consumption. Finally is recalls the renewed interest of rural sociologists for peasantries and rural movements.Key words: food security, food sovereignty, alternative food networks, sustainability, peasantries, rural movements.

Democratizing States and the Use of History*

Abstract A pervasive anti‐statism often blinds us to the democratic victories in the past and thus to possibilities in our future. This article argues that big government can democratize society and uses historical investigation to make the point. The study of history emancipates us from the tyranny of the present. Progressive social change has come about in the United States and elsewhere as combined bottom‐up, top‐down initiatives. I present two such cases of democratization during the New Deal era. The first is about rural sociologists' participatory‐action research with local citizens for policy planning. This program, while short‐lived, fed into the creation of the field of community development. The other is a land‐reform experiment among poor African Americans. In the 1960s these “resettlement communities” became local strongholds of the civil‐rights movement, and their descendants carry on the struggle today. I use these two historical instances to show that big states as well as social scientists have been effective agents of democracy, and suggest that they can be again. History then enable us to re‐imagine, re‐new, and re‐form our democratic tradition of rural sociology.