Social science and popular media have described political polarization as a threat to democracy and effective policy. Scholars connect right/left political divides to macro-level social divisions, such as those between rural and urban residents, environmentalists and farmers, and pro-versus anti-government sentiments. While previous scholars have complicated these dichotomies, political polarization scholarship often seeks out evidence of polarization without considering these complications. In addition, we know little about how polarization is affecting community responses to social problems. This paper explores the rhetoric of political and social polarization as it appears in community responses to a particular social problem, the decline of small and mid-sized dairy farms in southern Wisconsin. During interviews, farmers, municipal leaders, and community members indeed used polarizing rhetoric and identified polarization as a problem in their communities. We argue, though, that the connections between commonly bifurcated identities, including a common attachment to the land and relationships across the rural–urban continuum, are equally important. We conclude by encouraging policy responses meant to address the fallout of the loss of mid-sized dairy farms to draw on these connections to avoid inadvertently reinforcing political divisions.
{"title":"Disrupting Political Polarization: The Role of Politics in Explanations of Farm Loss in Southern Wisconsin☆","authors":"Claudine Pied, Shan Sappleton","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12511","url":null,"abstract":"Social science and popular media have described political polarization as a threat to democracy and effective policy. Scholars connect right/left political divides to macro-level social divisions, such as those between rural and urban residents, environmentalists and farmers, and pro-versus anti-government sentiments. While previous scholars have complicated these dichotomies, political polarization scholarship often seeks out evidence of polarization without considering these complications. In addition, we know little about how polarization is affecting community responses to social problems. This paper explores the rhetoric of political and social polarization as it appears in community responses to a particular social problem, the decline of small and mid-sized dairy farms in southern Wisconsin. During interviews, farmers, municipal leaders, and community members indeed used polarizing rhetoric and identified polarization as a problem in their communities. We argue, though, that the connections between commonly bifurcated identities, including a common attachment to the land and relationships across the rural–urban continuum, are equally important. We conclude by encouraging policy responses meant to address the fallout of the loss of mid-sized dairy farms to draw on these connections to avoid inadvertently reinforcing political divisions.","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50166924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01Epub Date: 2023-05-19DOI: 10.1111/ruso.12491
Danielle Rhubart, Jennifer Kowalkowski, Logan Wincott
Social and emotional support (SaES) is essential for older adult mental health and is shaped by individual-level factors and the built environment. However, much of the focus on the built environment, and specifically social infrastructure - the physical places that facilitate social interaction and social tie formation - relies heavily on urban settings or samples with limited diversity. Consequently, there is little understanding if social infrastructure matters for the SaES of older adults in rural America, and across race and ethnicity. Therefore, we use social cohesion as a conceptual lens and the community gerontology framework to determine if availability of social infrastructure is associated with SaES among older adults in rural America and if this relationship varies across race and ethnicity. Using data from 110,850 rural older adults from the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System and data from the National Neighborhood Data Archive, we show that among rural ethnoracial minority older adults, higher densities of social infrastructure are associated with higher SaES. This is not true for rural non-Hispanic White older adults. Results highlight the importance of accounting for both social infrastructure as part of the built environment and heterogeneity across race and ethnicity in studies that examine older adult mental and emotional health.
{"title":"The Built Environment and Social and Emotional Support among Rural Older Adults: The Case for Social Infrastructure and Attention to Ethnoracial Differences.","authors":"Danielle Rhubart, Jennifer Kowalkowski, Logan Wincott","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12491","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ruso.12491","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social and emotional support (SaES) is essential for older adult mental health and is shaped by individual-level factors and the built environment. However, much of the focus on the built environment, and specifically social infrastructure - the physical places that facilitate social interaction and social tie formation - relies heavily on urban settings or samples with limited diversity. Consequently, there is little understanding if social infrastructure matters for the SaES of older adults in rural America, and across race and ethnicity. Therefore, we use social cohesion as a conceptual lens and the community gerontology framework to determine if availability of social infrastructure is associated with SaES among older adults in rural America and if this relationship varies across race and ethnicity. Using data from 110,850 rural older adults from the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System and data from the National Neighborhood Data Archive, we show that among rural ethnoracial minority older adults, higher densities of social infrastructure are associated with higher SaES. This is not true for rural non-Hispanic White older adults. Results highlight the importance of accounting for both social infrastructure as part of the built environment and heterogeneity across race and ethnicity in studies that examine older adult mental and emotional health.</p>","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10567077/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41216156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gissur Ó. Erlingsson, Richard Öhrvall, Susanne Wallman Lundåsen
When Sweden transformed its geography of local government in 1952 and 1962–1974, the number of municipalities was reduced from 2,498 to 278. The reforms were infused by the “central place theory,” which aimed to identify a larger town as the “local capital” (centralort) for each municipality. The centralort became the municipalities' political and administrative center, responsible for providing public services to surrounding settlements. Taking our point of departure in this historical legacy, as well as the literature on “geographies of discontent,” we ask whether there are geographical tensions within today's Swedish municipalities. Are there differences in satisfaction, trust, and views on the future of one's place of residence when comparing the centralort with its surrounding settlements? Using two datasets—Statistics Sweden's citizen survey carried out in 241 municipalities and Trustbarometer in 49 municipalities—we find that citizens in the centralort are more satisfied with democracy than those in peripheries, where individuals residing in the municipalities' most rural parts are the most dissatisfied. Moreover, different issues are perceived as more pressing and salient in the centralort compared to surrounding settlements.
{"title":"Geographical Tensions Within Municipalities? Evidence from Swedish Local Governments☆","authors":"Gissur Ó. Erlingsson, Richard Öhrvall, Susanne Wallman Lundåsen","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12509","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12509","url":null,"abstract":"When Sweden transformed its geography of local government in 1952 and 1962–1974, the number of municipalities was reduced from 2,498 to 278. The reforms were infused by the “central place theory,” which aimed to identify a larger town as the “local capital” (<i>centralort</i>) for each municipality. The <i>centralort</i> became the municipalities' political and administrative center, responsible for providing public services to surrounding settlements. Taking our point of departure in this historical legacy, as well as the literature on “geographies of discontent,” we ask whether there are geographical tensions <i>within</i> today's Swedish municipalities. Are there differences in satisfaction, trust, and views on the future of one's place of residence when comparing the <i>centralort</i> with its surrounding settlements? Using two datasets—Statistics Sweden's citizen survey carried out in 241 municipalities and Trustbarometer in 49 municipalities—we find that citizens in the <i>centralort</i> are more satisfied with democracy than those in peripheries, where individuals residing in the municipalities' most rural parts are the most dissatisfied. Moreover, different issues are perceived as more pressing and salient in the <i>centralort</i> compared to surrounding settlements.","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50166927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kathryn McConnell, J. Tom Mueller, Alexis A. Merdjanoff, Paul Berne Burow, Justin Farrell
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal spending on government safety net programs in the United States increased dramatically. Despite this unparalleled spending, government safety nets were widely critiqued for failing to fully meet many households' needs. Disaster research suggests that informal modes of social support often emerge during times of disruption, such as the first year of the pandemic. However, use of formal government programs and informal support are rarely examined relative to each other, resulting in an incomplete picture of how households navigate disaster impacts and financial shocks. This study compares estimates of informal social support to formal government program use in the rural U.S. West, drawing on data from a rapid response survey fielded during the summer of 2020 and the 2021 Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC). We find that informal social support systems were, on aggregate, used almost as extensively as long-standing government programs. Our findings highlight the critical role of person-to-person assistance, such as sharing financial resources, among rural households during a disruptive disaster period. Routine and standardized data collection on these informal support behaviors could improve future disaster research and policy responses, especially among rural populations.
{"title":"Informal Modes of Social Support among Residents of the Rural American West during the COVID-19 Pandemic☆","authors":"Kathryn McConnell, J. Tom Mueller, Alexis A. Merdjanoff, Paul Berne Burow, Justin Farrell","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12507","url":null,"abstract":"During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal spending on government safety net programs in the United States increased dramatically. Despite this unparalleled spending, government safety nets were widely critiqued for failing to fully meet many households' needs. Disaster research suggests that <i>informal</i> modes of social support often emerge during times of disruption, such as the first year of the pandemic. However, use of formal government programs and informal support are rarely examined relative to each other, resulting in an incomplete picture of how households navigate disaster impacts and financial shocks. This study compares estimates of informal social support to formal government program use in the rural U.S. West, drawing on data from a rapid response survey fielded during the summer of 2020 and the 2021 Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC). We find that informal social support systems were, on aggregate, used almost as extensively as long-standing government programs. Our findings highlight the critical role of person-to-person assistance, such as sharing financial resources, among rural households during a disruptive disaster period. Routine and standardized data collection on these informal support behaviors could improve future disaster research and policy responses, especially among rural populations.","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71435455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Imaginaries of empty, verdant lands have long motivated agricultural frontier expansion. Today, climate change, food insecurity, and economic promise are invigorating new agricultural frontiers across the circumpolar north. In this article, I draw on extensive archival and ethnographic evidence to analyze mid-twentieth-century and recent twenty-first-century narratives of agricultural development in the Northwest Territories, Canada. I argue that the early frontier imaginary is relatively intact in its present lifecycle. It is not simply climactic forces that are driving an emergent northern agricultural frontier, but rather the more diffuse and structural forces of capitalism, governmental power, settler colonialism, and resistance to those forces. I also show how social, political, and infrastructural limits continue to impede agricultural development in the Northwest Territories and discuss how smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities differently situate agricultural production within their local food systems. This paper contributes to critical debates in frontiers and northern agriculture literature by foregrounding the contested space between the state-driven and dominant public narratives underpinning frontier imaginaries, and the social, cultural, and material realities that constrain them on a Northwest Territories agricultural frontier.
{"title":"Seeing Green: Lifecycles of an Arctic Agricultural Frontier☆","authors":"Mindy Jewell Price","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12506","url":null,"abstract":"Imaginaries of empty, verdant lands have long motivated agricultural frontier expansion. Today, climate change, food insecurity, and economic promise are invigorating new agricultural frontiers across the circumpolar north. In this article, I draw on extensive archival and ethnographic evidence to analyze mid-twentieth-century and recent twenty-first-century narratives of agricultural development in the Northwest Territories, Canada. I argue that the early frontier imaginary is relatively intact in its present lifecycle. It is not simply climactic forces that are driving an emergent northern agricultural frontier, but rather the more diffuse and structural forces of capitalism, governmental power, settler colonialism, and resistance to those forces. I also show how social, political, and infrastructural limits continue to impede agricultural development in the Northwest Territories and discuss how smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities differently situate agricultural production within their local food systems. This paper contributes to critical debates in frontiers and northern agriculture literature by foregrounding the contested space between the state-driven and dominant public narratives underpinning frontier imaginaries, and the social, cultural, and material realities that constrain them on a Northwest Territories agricultural frontier.","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50166929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Previous scholars have demonstrated that nonmetro residents who move to metro areas earn higher wages. It remains an open question whether this metro wage advantage persists in the contemporary era, and how migrating influences young adults from metro areas. Migrants may earn higher wages due to higher education. Alternatively, they may earn lower wages because they lack social capital. They may experience different associations of migration and wages when growing up in nonmetro versus metro areas due to different family backgrounds, education, and community contexts. This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 97 and multilevel/mixed-effects models to test these competing predictions. The findings show that young adults earned higher wages if they worked in metro rather than in nonmetro areas, regardless of migration, confirming a metro wage advantage. People who left nonmetro areas earned higher wages than if they stayed, consistent with a “rural brain drain.” In addition, people earned similar wages if they stayed in, returned, and moved from metro to nonmetro areas, even though migrants and returnees had higher average education. The non-significant wage differences may be due to the less diverse wage structure in nonmetro labor markets and in-migrants' lack of social capital.
{"title":"Migration Across Metro-Nonmetro Boundaries and Hourly Wages☆","authors":"Xiao Li, Alair MacLean","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12508","url":null,"abstract":"Previous scholars have demonstrated that nonmetro residents who move to metro areas earn higher wages. It remains an open question whether this metro wage advantage persists in the contemporary era, and how migrating influences young adults from metro areas. Migrants may earn higher wages due to higher education. Alternatively, they may earn lower wages because they lack social capital. They may experience different associations of migration and wages when growing up in nonmetro versus metro areas due to different family backgrounds, education, and community contexts. This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 97 and multilevel/mixed-effects models to test these competing predictions. The findings show that young adults earned higher wages if they worked in metro rather than in nonmetro areas, regardless of migration, confirming a metro wage advantage. People who left nonmetro areas earned higher wages than if they stayed, consistent with a “rural brain drain.” In addition, people earned similar wages if they stayed in, returned, and moved from metro to nonmetro areas, even though migrants and returnees had higher average education. The non-significant wage differences may be due to the less diverse wage structure in nonmetro labor markets and in-migrants' lack of social capital.","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50166928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rural America is undergoing a demographic transition, as the white population decline is matched by a growing movement of racialized minorities into small towns. In the current study, I examine processes of belonging among middle-class racialized minorities living in predominantly white and rural Northern New England. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with n = 58 individuals of color, I show how “misrecognition,” or the processes through which community members fail to affirm the humanity of others, can lead to diminished well-being. I elaborate a novel conceptual model linking a stigmatizing cultural context (chilly social climate; ignorance and racism) with misrecognition (social distancing; having to prove oneself) and well-being (unease; weariness). The study's main contribution is the generation of theory regarding symbolic boundary processes that undergird racialized minority residents' negotiation of the right to belong in a rapidly changing rural America.
{"title":"Misrecognition and Well-being in Culturally White Northern New England☆","authors":"Emily Walton","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12505","url":null,"abstract":"Rural America is undergoing a demographic transition, as the white population decline is matched by a growing movement of racialized minorities into small towns. In the current study, I examine processes of belonging among middle-class racialized minorities living in predominantly white and rural Northern New England. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with <i>n</i> = 58 individuals of color, I show how “misrecognition,” or the processes through which community members fail to affirm the humanity of others, can lead to diminished well-being. I elaborate a novel conceptual model linking a stigmatizing cultural context (chilly social climate; ignorance and racism) with misrecognition (social distancing; having to prove oneself) and well-being (unease; weariness). The study's main contribution is the generation of theory regarding symbolic boundary processes that undergird racialized minority residents' negotiation of the right to belong in a rapidly changing rural America.","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50166946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Does Community Leadership Contribute to Rural Environmental Governance? Evidence from Shanghai Villages*","authors":"Pingyang Liu, Aixi Han","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12504","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73770208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Expanding Search for Work: The Gender Gap in Livelihood Choices among the Rural Chinese, from 1989 to 2015☆","authors":"Y. Tong, Yiqing Gan","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12503","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76497900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contention in Times of Crisis: Recession and Political Protest in Thirty European Countries, by HanspeterKriesi, JasmineLorenzini, BrunoWüest, and SiljaHäsumermann, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 316 pp. $99.99 (hardback). ISBN: 978‐1‐108‐83511‐4.","authors":"Henry W. Allen","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12502","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84848031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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