Rethinking Rural Studies

A comprehensive treatment of a complex subject, Rethinking Rural Studies both traces where the discipline has been and provides multiple pathways for scholars to pursue in the future. Written accessibly by two of the most venerable experts in the field, it takes on a wide range of topics, methods, and theoretical approaches while never losing sight of the interconnections of people, place, and environment. -- Jennifer Sherman, Washington State University, US In Rethinking Rural Studies, David Brown and Mark Shucksmith combine their extensive experience to construct a timely and critical review of the major challenges facing rural societies and map a pathway to a hopeful rural studies. An essential read for all rural researchers. -- Michael Woods, Aberystwyth University, UK Brown and Shucksmith, giants in the field of rural scholarship, provide a critically important set of perspectives regarding how we understand social, economic, political, and institutional dynamics across urban and rural spaces. Rethinking Rural Studies appears at an historical moment in which deeper and more relational understandings of spatial inequalities and processes and the social and political consequences that result have perhaps never been needed more. -- Kai A. Schafft, Pennsylvania State University, US

David L. Brown, Emeritus International Professor of Development Sociology, Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Ithaca, New York, USA and Mark Shucksmith, Emeritus Professor of Planning, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, UK

Contents Introduction: Rethinking Rural Studies 2 Beyond the urban hierarchy: rethinking power and dominance in a dynamic settlement system 3 Rethinking rural economy and family livelihoods 4 Wellbeing, governance and rural development: towards an agenda for research and policy 5 Poverty, social inequality and rural studies 6 Spatial inequality, spatial justice and a right to the countryside 7 Rural population matters, but demography is not destiny 8 Science, technology and the food and fibre system: legacies and transformations 9 Rethinking natural resources, energy and rural environments 10 Conclusion: a hopeful rural studies Bibliography