A cross-cultural study of switching barriers and propensity to stay with service providers

Community solidarity is considered a definitive quality of many rural towns and one that could be dramatically influenced by accommodating tourism development. Previous research indicates that tourism brings people from different cultural backgrounds into a community. In this exploratory study, evidence indicates that tourism development changes residents' relationships to one another and to their community. Five propositions are discussed concerning the impacts of rural tourism: community diversification, delineation of social boundaries, conformity to an ideal town image, shared image as a source of bond ing, and a shifting basis of community solidarity.

Rural Tourism Development: Shifting Basis of Community Solidarity:

Researchers and practitioners have made great strides at implementing crime reduction and prevention policies in urban areas; however, such policies are largely absent in less densely populated nonmetropolitan settings. This article provides a review of major findings from two recent nonmetropolitan studies using survey data from 1,125 citizens nested in 31 nonmetropolitan residential units (RUs) located in the state of Michigan. Hierarchical linear modeling results provide empirical evidence that the differential ability of nonmetropolitan Michigan residents to realize mutual trust and solidarity (i.e., social cohesion) is a major source of RU variation in citizens’ perceived incivility and burglary. Toward this end, several policy recommendations are endorsed in nonmetropolitan communities, whereby resources of social capital can help facilitate collective efficacy for the purpose of social control and improvement of citizen quality of life. Using a social capital framework is likely to benefit rural re...

The Utility of Social Capital and Collective Efficacy: Social Control Policy in Nonmetropolitan Settings

Following a discussion of the relationship between agricultural economics and rural sociology, the current status of the latter is discussed, including the differences between European and American approaches. The background to an emerging ‘sociology of agriculture’ is described and recent developments in the sociological analysis of some of its constituent components are considered. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between landholding and the social structure and to the development of ‘agribusiness’ as a vertically-integrated food-production complex. The impact of these on labour relations in agriculture and on the rural community are outlined. The article concludes with an assessment of future trends in rural sociology, concentrating on themes of rural development, the sociology of agriculture and the sociology of natural resources.

Rural sociology and its relevance to the agricultural economist: a review†

We often think of history in linear terms: past as prologue, one event following another, one year leading into the next. In a Rostowian-styled model of development, this kind of linear progression prefigures not only conceptualizations about the past, but also assumptions about the present. This paper reexamines the unexpected appearance of women and women’s lives embedded in early rural sociological research to consider how implicit assumptions about the past prefigure what we expect to “see” and influence the way we make sense of it.

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An Unexpected Legacy: Women, Early Rural Sociological Research, and the Limits of Linearity

Any survey of a decade of research in a particular area should describe the substantive nature (topics treated) as well as methodological characteristics. We take up the first of these in the section on thematic emphases and the second in our discussion of levels of analysis. Initially, however, it is important to clarify the definition of guidelines for the selection of the rural community studies reviewed here. By rural we mean communities that are (a) relatively small in size (in many cases they would meet the US census definition of rural, i.e. have a population of 2500 or less1); (b) nonmetropolitan, i.e. do not fall within the penumbra of a metropolitan area (for example, suburbs, regardless of size, are excluded, as are other fringe areas); and (c) of a clearly rural character, i.e. exist in the midst of an agricultural area, an area characterized as a "primacy economy," or one marked by other obvious nonurban cultural, social, and ecological characteristics. Rather than using rigid definitions, we examined each study on its merits with the above considerations in mind. A community with a population of, say, 3500 was not necessarily excluded merely because it exceeded the census definition of rural. If it appeared to be essentially rural in character and was not within a metropolitan area (e.g. a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area), it would be included. To qualify as a community study there must be some indication that the investigator was examining an interaction system in which territoriality (or a spatial dimension) was an explicit factor. Not only did there have to be some evidence of either an explicit or implicit conceptualization of "community" in the mind of the investi-

In the united states: a decade in review

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2946085

Irwin T. Sanders

Papers

In the united states: a decade in review

Rural Community Studies in the United States: A Decade in Review