With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by much of the United States, local school districts are encouraged to develop CCSS-aligned curricula that are culturally relevant for an area's students. However, addressing cultural relevancy within communities where rural and urban cultures intersect requires a conceptualization of a…

This article examines the imagery and imaginaries of islander identity and makes an original contribution to the fields of gerontology and nissology. Drawing on data collected through in-depth interviews with 19 older residents of two small-island communities located off the island of Ireland, we address the central roles played by older people in…

This paper examines the attempts made by the renewing kibbutzim to maintain their way of life as much as possible through the adjustment of their gating mechanisms. In this type of a rural gated community, sorting procedures and admittance criteria of nonmembers are the most notable elements. Background material and interviews with informants at…

The author examines how the residents of two displaced rural Kansas towns, and their descendants, exhibit a sense of identity common to small farm communities throughout the Great Plains, and how tenacious these ties are even after the physical reminder of their communal bonds no longer exists. By examining the struggles to survive faced by these…

Understanding the links between resource dependence and socio-economic wellbeing has long been a subject of interest amongst social scientists in North America. By contrast, relatively few Australian studies exist on this topic. This is despite the significant role of resource industries in shaping Australia's economic and social geography. Where…

This paper asks, what are the attributes of the rural working class population in England and Wales? Drawing on the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) Longitudinal Study (LS), household and personal attributes at both the 1991 and 2001 Censuses are examined, with a view to exploring how far the rural working classes can be conceptualised as a…

Shifts the focus of poverty theory from individual characteristics to a more structural, community level. Defines and tests a measurement model of a structural conceptualization of poverty by applying confirmatory factor analysis to data on 5 poverty indicators from 881 nonadjacent nonmetropolitan counties. Contains 69 references. (SV)

Purpose: To examine substance use differences among African-American adolescents living in rural and more urban areas in Iowa and Georgia and factors thought to be related to those differences. Specifically, negative affect and perceived availability were examined as mediators of the relation between community size and alcohol, tobacco, and drug…

For effective crisis intervention, the rural social worker must consider various factors specific to the rural community, e.g., knowledge of rural helping networks and core rural values, structure of kinds of crises likely encountered, and successful methods of intervention. (JHZ)

After discussing theories of attitude change, recommends that mental health workers overcome the negative attitudes of rural communities toward mental health programs by forming positive, personal, affective bonds with rural community members. Presents strategies for establishing and maintaining these bonds in private life, clinical work, and…

Six-year followup study of five rural Missouri communities found that community viability in terms of maintenance as trade and service center had become disconnected from demographic variables such as school enrollment. Unexpectedly, leaders of more viable places were not better educated or demographically different from other leaders, but had…

Data from a 1977 telephone survey of 501 urban to rural North Carolina migrants show global satisfaction measures reflect more than is included in standard lists of community attributes and reflect satisfaction with few attributes in particlar. The analysis demonstrates community satisfaction can help explain respondents' potential for moving…

Examines effects of agricultural and socioeconomic attributes of rural households on household members' outmigration. Uses data from 180 households surveyed in 1963 and 1971 in 3 diverse Colombian "counties." Suggests that different patterns of community structure and structural change produce different patterns of migrant selectivity.…

Surveys of 267 newcomers to 6 rural parishes in Lancaster and Mid Devon (England) and interviews with 113 survey respondents revealed definitions of "the rural" as abstract social representations. Respondents' representations of the rural focused on the physical environment, contained many aspects of the "rural idyll," but also…

Research indicates that living in company towns created a population lacking in initiative and self-determination. In one community that was a company town until the mid-1950s, key-informant interviews indicated high levels of dropping out, illiteracy, teen pregnancy, poverty, and dependency. However, a survey of high school students revealed no…