The Social Topography Of A Rural Community

The Social Topography of a Rural Community is a micro-history of an exceptionally well-documented seventeenth-century English village: Chilvers Coton in north-eastern Warwickshire. Drawing on a rich archive of sources, including an occupational census, detailed estate maps, account books, private journals, and hundreds of deeds and wills, and employing a novel micro-spatial methodology, it reconstructs the life experience of some 780 inhabitants spread across 176 households. This offers a unique opportunity to visualize members of an English rural community as they responded to, and in turn initiated, changes in social and economic activity, making their own history on their own terms. In so doing the book brings to the fore the social, economic, and spatial lives of people who have been marginalized from conventional historical discourse, and offers an unusual level of detail relating to the spatial and demographic details of local life. Each of the substantive chapters focuses on the contributions and experiences of a particular household in the parish-the mill, the vicarage, the alehouse, the blacksmith's forge, the hovels of the labourers and coalminers, the cottages of the nail-smiths and ribbon-weavers, the farms of the yeomen and craftsmen, and the manor house of Arbury Hall itself-locating them precisely on specific sites in the landscape and the built environment; and sketching the evolving 'taskscapes' in which the inhabitants dwelled. A novel contribution to spatial history, as well as early modern material, social and economic history more generally, this study represents a highly original analysis of the significance of place, space, and flow in the history of English rural communities.

Rural people and communities continue to play important social, economic and environmental roles at a time in which societies are rapidly urbanizing, and the identities of local places are increasingly subsumed by flows of people, information and economic activity across global spaces. However, while the organization of rural life has been fundamentally transformed by institutional and social changes that have occurred since the mid-twentieth century, rural people and communities have proved resilient in the face of these transformations. This book examines the causes and consequences of major social and economic changes affecting rural communities and populations during the first decades of the twenty-first century, and explores policies developed to ameliorate problems or enhance opportunities. Primarily focused on the U.S. context, while also providing international comparative discussion, the book is organized into five sections each of which explores both socio-demographic and political economic aspects of rural transformation. It features an accessible and up-to-date blend of theory and empirical analysis, with each chapter's discussion grounded in real-life situations through the use of empirical case-study materials. Rural People and Communities in the 21st Century is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in rural sociology, community sociology, rural and/or population geography, community development, and population studies.

This book arises out of an ESRC project devoted to an examination of the economic, social and cultural impacts of the ‘service class’ on rural areas. The research was an attempt to document these impacts through close empirical work in a set of three rural communities, but something happened on the way. The authors found that the ‘rural’ became a real sticking point. Respondents used it in different ways - as a bludgeon, as a badge, as a barometer - to signify many different things - security, identity, community, domesticity, gender, sexuality, ethnicity - nearly always by drawing on many different sources - the media, the landscape, friends and kin, animals. It became abundantly clear that the ‘rural’, whatever chameleon form it took, was a prime and deeply felt determinant of the actions of many respondents. Yet it was also clear that to the authors they possessed no theoretical framework that could allow them to negotiate the ‘rural’ to deconstruct its diverse nature as a category. Rather each of the extended essays in the book is an attempt by each author to draw out one aspect of the ‘rural’ by drawing on different traditions in social and cultural theory.

Communities in rural America are a complex mixture of peoples and cultures, ranging from miners who have been laid off in West Virginia, to Laotian immigrants relocating in Kansas to work at a beef processing plant, to entrepreneurs drawing up plans for a world-class ski resort in California's Sierra Nevada. Rural Communities: Legacy and Change uses its unique Community Capitals framework to examine how America's diverse rural communities use their various capitals (natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built) to address the modern challenges that face them. Each chapter opens with a case study of a community facing a particular challenge, and is followed by a comprehensive discussion of sociological concepts to be applied to understanding the case. This narrative, topical approach makes the book accessible and engaging for undergraduate students, while its integrative approach provides them with a framework for understanding rural society based on the concepts and explanations of social science. This fifth edition is updated throughout with 2013 census data and features new and expanded coverage of health and health care, food systems and alternatives, the effects of neoliberalism and globalization on rural communities, as well as an expanded resource and activity section at the end of each chapter.

This book, originally published in 1987, provides an integrative, analytical aproach to rural areas in advanced economies. Causation and the consequences of societal change have been emphasised, in a framework which draws out processes which oeprate at different geographical scales (and with varying intensities across space).

The urbanisation of the coutryside; Aspects of community theory; The migration of people; The diffusion of ideas and innovations; Patterns and process of settlement; Places and localities; Social ecology; Community life: a synthesis; Community life: some analytical approaches.

`This book raises the theoretical level of rural studies to new heights...the Handbook of Rural Studies will likely become a key resource on the bookshelves of the next generation of graduate students...′ - Gary Paul Green, University of Wisconsin-Madison `This Handbook powerfully demonstrates that rural spaces, rural societies and rural natures are at the very forefront of critical social science endeavour. Read this book, become a rural social scientist′ - Henry Buller, University of Exeter `An outstandingly comprehensive review of theory, research and the study of rural questions...an essential reference for students, scholars, politicians, developers and rural activists′ - Imre Kovach, Institute for Political Sciences, Budapest `This collection is an essential addition to any rural scholar′s library and will be a critical resource for both established rural scholars and rising graduate students interested in rural research topics′ - Peter B Nelson, Middlebury College `The Handbook of Rural Studies is a tour de force on changing rural people and places in a rapidly urbanizing global economy -- the most comprehensive interdisciplinary treatment of "rural" available anywhere. This is absolutely must reading for social scientists concerned about finding a prominent place for "rural" in scholarly discourse, institutional analysis, and public policy debates on the political economy of space′ - Daniel T Lichter, Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University The Handbook represents the vitality and theoretical innovation at work in rural studies. It shows how political economy and the ′cultural turn′ have led to very significant new thinking in the cultural representations of: rurality; nature; sustainability; new economies; power and rurality; new consumerism; and exclusion and rurality. It is organized in three sections: approaches to rural studies; rural research: key theoretical co-ordinates and new rural relations. In a rich and textured discussion, the Handbook of Rural Studies explains the key moments in which the theorization of culture, nature, politics, agency, and space in rural contexts have transmitted ideas back into wider social science.

Focuses on the various problems of rural America and provides a foundation for understanding rural society.