One of the most significant recent elements of restructuring in rural areas is the transition from an economy based on agricultural production to an economy based on the countryside as a form of commodity. In this transition process, different narratives or images of an area are produced to promote villages and other places in the countryside as…

Quality and sustainability are both socially constructed, ambiguous terms, but they have not been heretofore linked in the rural studies literature. The "quality turn" has received particular attention from researchers for its potential to organize linkages among various forces in agrofood systems, providing more income to producers by…

In current policy discourse, rural decline is often described as an inevitable process associated with such broader structural trends as globalization and urbanization. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the supposed inevitability of rural decline in northern British Columbia (BC), Canada. We argue that rural decline in northern BC has been…

This paper argues that the notion of distance ought to be re-conceptualized and promoted to the theoretical foreground of sociological analyses of rural economic action. Using research in rural British Columbia, Canada, I argue that current changes in rural political economy (for instance, the restructuring of industrial resource production, the…

This paper puts higher agricultural English education how to serve for "Sannong" construction as priority, combining the actual market demand, based on teaching reform in the past few years, tries to explore English nurturing model and curriculum system for real delivery the agriculture-related qualified foreign language professionals.…

In a rapidly changing society like Botswana, the competition for employment, training and progression on the job has become very high. The development of skills is therefore a crucial and integral part of nation building, which needs a direct link to a training programme to continuously help staff to cope with the different needs they meet in the…

The topic of this paper has emerged from the work of Shelton (2000, 2003), Bernhardt, Kawagley and Hill (2000), Boylan and McSwan (1998), Bryden and Boylan (2004) and others on "place-based" and "consequential" education in rural areas, prompting the question: if place-based and consequential education is "good" for…

This paper assesses the potential of environmental co-operatives (EC) to deliver environmental benefits and an integrated and strengthened rural economy in the UK. It is based on research into Dutch EC, which have about 10,000 members, of which a quarter are non-farmers. The paper details the benefits EC have delivered to their members, the Dutch…

In Britain, and Wales particularly, inclusion and equal opportunities for all became key principles guiding the work of the many partnerships that were established at the beginning of this century. A primary objective of this paper is to develop a greater understanding of the politics and processes within "partnership" as a widely used…

Over the last decade, rural leadership policies and programmes have attracted substantial support from all tiers of government. These policies are promulgated as a support mechanism for enhancing the internal capacity of rural communities to adjust to changes in the social and political-economic landscape. Leadership training programmes have been…

The study focused on constraints affecting the utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for agricultural extension activities by Agricultural Extension Officers in Nigeria's Niger Delta Region. Data were derived from 160 extension officers affiliated to both public and private extension organizations in four states of the…

Poor people make use of a variety of contextually relevant resources to pursue their livelihood strategies, and there is wide empirical evidence that opportunities and constraints for accessing these may vary considerably for women and men, particularly in the rural areas of developing countries. In this article, micro-evidence from a case study…

The development of European Community administrative authority has greatly influenced the development of an evaluation culture among the southern and central member states of the European Union. The present case study from Spain provides an example of this diffusion through the use of an empowerment evaluation approach to build evaluation capacity…

There is growing recognition of the important role played by natural heritage in rural economic development, but limited empirical work as yet to inform this debate. This paper examines the nature and strength of local economic linkages associated with the natural heritage in four case study areas in Scotland, differentiated in terms of their…

Climate change is having a major effect on water cycles. There is an increased intensity and frequency of severe storms resulting in flooding. Floods in other parts of the world cause death on a major scale. Meanwhile across the planet, one billion people (a sixth of the world's population) do not have access to safe drinking water, and two…