The Amish are one of the fastest growing ethnoreligious groups in rural America. They are not only growing in historic settlements but are also starting new settlements. This study synthesizes and ...tests hypotheses about Amish migration destinations and settlement sustainability. Specifically, hypotheses address factors related to population, agriculture, and proximity to other Amish. Findings suggest that the locations Amish settle have several defining characteristics including: low population density, nonmetropolitan county designation, context conducive to small‐scale farming (e.g., low farm acreage price, moderately rolling hills), vicinity to a small commercial center, low to negative population growth, and proximity to an existing Amish settlement. Some characteristics are showing increasing flexibility, such as a small‐scale farming context and proximity to a commercial center. Conversely, settling in areas with a growing population or at a distance from another Amish settlement contributes to a higher likelihood of community dissolution.
This article examines the marginalisation of small‐scale semi‐subsistence farming in the context of the European Union's sustainable development reforms as implemented in the new member countries. In ...documenting how small‐scale farming in post‐socialist Lithuania has been redefined from being a solution to the environmental and social degradation of industrialised agriculture under socialism to becoming a major obstacle in building sustainable agriculture, this case study offers a critique of sustainability as a developmental project and the asymmetrical relationships implicit in the rural development politics in Europe. Taking a historical‐comparative approach, this study demonstrates that the notion of sustainability has been built on assumptions about the industrialisation and globalisation of agri‐food systems that exclude alternative local forms of production, consumption and distribution. As a result, the implementation of such sustainable development policies leads to the reproduction of the industrialised agriculture and the exclusion of small‐scale farmers from the vision of sustainable rural societies.
The 27th Congress of the European Society of Rural Sociology (ESRS) will take place on 24-27 July 2017. This year it will be held at the highly hospitable Jagiellonian University, the oldest ...university in Poland established in 1364. The decision of the ESRS authorities to choose Poland and, specifically, the Royal City of Kraków for this year’s Congress is undoubtedly a great honour for the Polish community of rural sociologists, recognised as one of the biggest and most active in Europe. For nearly 100 years, the development of this subdiscipline has been driven by the major contribution of sociologists associated with the centre in Kraków, functioning mainly, albeit not exclusively, within the structures of the Jagiellonian University Institute of Sociology.
Against the background of increasingly complex and diverse agri-food systems, calls are made in rural sociology to no longer describe and distinguish food systems based on dualistic oppositions. The ...aim of this paper is to understand to what extent food system actors use different dualisms to build their ontological narratives. Based on a qualitative analysis, we analyse the narratives of key actors in the Flemish food system on food system challenges, and their relation with specific dualistic concepts and associated meanings, experiences and practices. Two distinct narratives emerge that are embedded in opposing dualisms, what leads us to believe that dualistic oppositions are still a part of the agri-food reality and are something to take into account when different actors have to collaborate.
Q Methodology and Rural Research Previte, Josephine; Pini, Barbara; Haslam-McKenzie, Fiona
Sociologia ruralis,
April 2007, Volume:
47, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Traditionally, rural scholarship has been limited in its methodological approach. This has begun to change in recent years as rural researchers have embraced a range of different methodological ...tools. The aim of this article is to contribute to greater methodological pluralism in rural sociology by introducing readers to a method of research that is rarely engaged in the field, that is, Q methodology. The article describes the defining features of the approach as well as providing examples of its application to argue that it is a method that offers particular opportunities and synergies for rural social science research.
Regional products play an increasingly important role in European economies and policies. The economic value of these products is considerable, and they are frequently regarded as significant ...generators of rural and regional development. But what processes underlie the formation of a regional product? While scholars have rightly called for attention to be paid to the contextual nature of regional products, this article aims to take a progressive step in this discourse and explore if, given the contextual nature of regional products, specific patterns can be identified that serve to make products regional. To this end I investigate the qualification of a reinvented agricultural product, madder (Rubia tinctorum), which is grown to produce dyestuff in Zeeland, The Netherlands. Based on the case of Zeeland madder and a comparison with other regional products I identify five qualification patterns, namely essentialism, strategic positioning, identity work, internal mobilisation and localising control. These patterns cross the divide between economy and culture and show how both elements become interwoven in the process of making products regional. Moreover, the patterns usefully highlight the hybridity of regional products, that is, their association with alternative food networks and conventional food networks.
This article attempted to overview the use of the monographic method in sociological research of Lithuania. Historically, the monographic method stimulated the development of rural sociology in ...Eastern European countries. The fulfilment of the aim is inevitably related to a question about institutionalisation and the development of sociology and such a sub-discipline as rural sociology in Lithuania.
The outcomes of the inquiry allow one to argue that the monographic method is in oblivion rather than in active use, belonging to the history of sociological research in Lithuania. However, the monographic method, often unnamed, is widely applied to contemporary local history research.
The geopolitical reasons had a significant impact on retardation in the institutionalisation and development of national sociology. The politics of national identity management, including those of science and education, can be among the important reasons for the absence of institutionalised rural sociology in Lithuania. However, a national social demographical context determining the permanent public and political need “to solve a peasant question” created the bulk of applied research in the Lithuanian countryside that can be considered as adequate data in the frame of rural sociology.
This Special Issue has its origins in a 2015 European Society for Rural Sociology Working Group on Impacts and implications of alternative food practices in a post-neoliberal transition. The session ...set out to explore examples of resistance to neoliberal food systems and related innovative practices. The contributions covered a diverse set of concrete cases and proposals for new theoretical frameworks that consider path-ways, implications, and the impacts of practices aimed at shifting the food system towards one that is more just and sustainable. Reflecting on the outcomes of the Working Group it was clear that conventional food system models, dominant since the late 1970s, are no longer ‘fit-for-purpose’. In this regard, ‘business as usual’ practices are increasingly seen as unable to deal with interconnected sets of food system pressures (e.g., climate change, peak oil, food security, changing diets) (IAASTD 2009; Foresight 2011; Hinrichs 2014), which are unforeseeable in terms of timing, scale, intensity or consequence (Jiggins 2016). Sustainability innovations, also termed ‘sustainability transitions’ (Hargreaves et al. 2013; Avelino et al. 2016), are fundamental processes of social change that are needed to address the complex and interrelated problems affecting food systems. For innovations to be meaningful and effective, it is argued that they must transform main-stream practices (Werbeloff et al. 2016). However, many of the innovations being widely proposed and taken up (e.g., sustainable intensification, climate smart agriculture and robotics, seed-based strategies) involve incremental adjustments to existing neoliberal modes of provisioning, and fail to provide transition pathways that radically challenge and transform structural weaknesses and system failings (Loos et al. 2014; Marsden 2016).
The whole of Pitirim Sorokin's fascinating and difficult scientific life led to his fundamental works on urban-rural relationships being expressed in the terms 'rural-urban continuum' and ...'rurbanism'. However, only a few special studies have been devoted to different aspects of his biography and scientific interests. The legacy of Sorokin as a rural sociologist has not yet become a subject of special studies in Russian social science. This contribution considers the key stages of Sorokin's scientific career as contributing to the development and institutionalization of rural sociology as a discipline closely connected with urban sociology.
Rural sociology first gained wide recognition during the 1930s when the intersection of economic depression and environmental crisis underlined the suffering of rural peoples. The historical ...conjuncture of growing rural poverty and environmental crisis has reappeared in the twenty‐first century. What does this recurring combination of circumstances portend for rural sociology? Does it imply a revival of the policy‐oriented sociological analyses of the 1930s? A comparative historical analysis of rural sociology during the New Deal, the post−World War II period, and the contemporary era suggests a qualified answer to this question. The contemporary era resembles the 1930s in providing compelling rationales for engaged scholarship, but the cross‐class coalitions between government social scientists and the rural poor that characterized the 1930s have not materialized in the twenty‐first century. Despite this difference, some common themes, such as a growing emphasis on interdisciplinary research, a primary concern with rural poverty, and an increased interest in the distinguishing features of resilient communities, have characterized scholarship during both periods. These similarities suggest that the practice of applied and engaged scholarship, so prevalent in the rural sociology of the 1930s, has found new traction in dealing with the social and ecological problems of twenty‐first‐century rural communities.
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