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Editors' introduction to the special issue “Privilege, vulnerability and care: Interspecies dynamics in rural landscapes” Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Helen Wadham, Nora Schuurman, Katherine Dashper
INTRODUCTION Animals are central actors within rural societies but remain largely invisible within both our empirical and theoretical analyses. Approximately 20 years ago in the pages of this journal, Tovey (2003) pointed to the significance of animals in effectively defining rurality: They are central to the rural economy and society and foster a sense among rural residents that they are organically
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Making meat moral: A comparison of rearing and killing practices in Swedish cattle farming Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2024-02-28 Hanna Charlotta Wernersson, Wiebren Johannes Boonstra
To eat or not eat meat? That has become a central sustainability question. This article zooms in on the moral sustainability of cattle farming and does so from an on‐farm perspective: through an ethnographic study of two Swedish cattle farms, we explore how rearing animals for food is made moral. The farms represent two distinct styles of farming, and discursive and non‐discursive methods are used
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Stories of country women: Advancing feminist intersectionality for climate change adaptation in Australia Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2024-02-27 Sarah Casey, Gail Crimmins, Joanna McIntyre, Sandy O'Sullivan
Drought has always had a historical presence in ‘rural’ Australia and is predicted to intensify in frequency and duration due to climate change. We argue here that the creeping havoc drought visits upon humans, animals and ecosystems in an Australian context is a form of ‘slow violence’ . Such harm and hardship are often obscured because they are more challenging to conceptualise and symbolise than
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Power and culture: Understanding EU policies on agriculture and gender equality Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Sally Shortall, Vangelis Marangudakis
In this article, we examine how the European Union (EU) acts as an international organisation, developing policies to be implemented by national governments. We focus on agriculture and gender equality. We examine the relationship between the EU and Member States regarding the construction and delivery of policies. It is a complex process, with differential levels of power and other actors in the process
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‘You don't want to be seen to be struggling’; identifying sociocultural barriers and facilitators for Irish farmers’ mental health help‐seeking Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Joseph Firnhaber, Sandra M. Malone, Anna Donnla O'Hagan, Sinead O'Keefe, John McNamara, Siobhan O'Connor
Farmers face significant mental health issues, including depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. Additionally, rural populations widely endorse stoic values which can be a barrier to farmers’ help‐seeking. In this study, we identified sociocultural barriers and facilitators to Irish farmers’ mental health help‐seeking. We conducted 17 semi‐structured interviews with Irish farmers and three focus
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Engagement of new entrants in mountain farming through the lens of generativity: Lack of family farming background and its implications in Alpine Austria and Italy Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2024-02-22 Bernhard Grüner, Savina Konzett
While mountain family farmers rely on cultural, financial and material resources passed on from previous generations, new entrants typically lack such intergenerational amenities. Applying the concept of ‘generativity’ to agriculture prove valuable in examining start‐up motives, obstacles, opportunities and impacts regarding generational renewal via newcomers without a family farming background. Following
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I'm not ‘fake rural’: Rural student negotiation of identity and place in medical school Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2024-02-11 Nicole Shepherd, Romy Wilson Gray, Wendy Hu, Sarah Hyde, Riitta Partanen, Alexia Pena, Lucie Walters, Rebecca Olson
This article addresses the accessibility of medical education for rural students, focusing on the intersection of rurality and socioeconomic privilege. We present findings from a study of rural background medical students from four Australian medical schools, which explored their experiences of admissions processes and their ongoing socialisation. Participants characterised admissions pathways as complex
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Older people and care networks in rural areas: An exploratory study in Italy Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Marco Arlotti
A care crisis concept has been introduced in the literature to describe the growing decoupling process between the expanding care needs of older people and the difficulties of informal and family networks in coping. These changes happened in rural areas quicker and with greater intensity than in urban areas.Against this background, the article investigates older people living in rural areas in Italy
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New immigration destinations in Sweden: Migrant residential trajectories intersecting rural areas Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-12-20 Karen Haandrikman, Charlotta Hedberg, Guilherme Kenji Chihaya
This paper aims to examine the residential trajectories of immigrants that intersect rural areas in Sweden. It adds to the literature on new immigration destinations (NIDs) and addresses the need to include migration routes intersecting rural areas, immigrants’ secondary migration patterns and temporal dimensions of migration, as well as the multiplicity of migrants in such destinations. We examine
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Sacred serpents and the discourse on conservation: Interrogating interspecies dynamics in rural Bardhaman Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-12-08 Salini Saha
Built on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural Bardhaman, West Bengal, India, the article argues for the centrality of animals’ non-human agency as sacred beings involved in interactive experiences with humans, amidst changing climatic conditions. For the people of Musharu, the sacredness of their village deity is embedded in their practical ways of living and inhabiting with special varieties
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Stewardship and everyday governance: Managing materialities in a south-eastern village community, Estonia Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-12-08 Kadri Kasemets
This article examines landscape stewardship from the perspective of landscape biography and focuses on different outcomes on how individual and collective stewardship connected to local place attachment and historic understandings are leveraged as local knowledge in sustaining locally important landscapes. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with local people and active residents in
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Personal, peaceful, progressive: Integration workers’ narratives of refugee settlement and the rural Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-12-06 Turid Sætermo, Guro Korsnes Kristensen
Settlement of refugees in rural areas in Norway is part of a national strategy to counter depopulation and thus links to ideas of revitalization and more promising futures for these areas. It also links up to an idea of smaller communities as ‘better at integrating’, as smaller communities both enable and necessitate more contact between the original population and newcomers. However, although some
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Articulating sustainable transitions, food justice and food democracy: Insights from three social experiments in France, Belgium and Brazil Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Claire Lamine, Martina Tuscano, Marlène Feyereisen, Terena Peres Castro, Sibylle Bui
Transitions to sustainable consumption and production patterns now appear as a widely acknowledged necessity for contemporary food systems. Sustainable transition processes raise major issues of social justice as they often exclude some actors and social groups, as the literature on alternative food networks has amply shown. Based on three case studies anchored in different national contexts (France
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Support structures for a plural economy in rural areas? Analysing the role of community-based social enterprises Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-11-22 Lucas Olmedo, Katja Marika Rinne-Koski, Mary O'Shaughnessy, Anne Matilainen, Merja Lähdesmäki
Community-led innovative solutions, including community-based social enterprises, have been brought to the fore as significant actors with the potential to contribute to neo-endogenous rural development. Through 34 interviews with stakeholders of four community-based social enterprises operating in rural Ireland and Finland, we analyse the role of these organisations in the institutionalisation of
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The mice plague and the assemblage of beastly landscapes in regional and rural Australia Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-11-07 Holly Randell-Moon
Beginning in the spring of 2020, a mouse and rat plague spread across the rural grain belt in New South Wales, Australia. Lasting for almost 10 months, the plague was described by the local media as a ‘horror’ which ‘terrorised’ farmers and ‘ravaged’ farms. Focusing predominantly on news media reporting of the plague, this article shows how the mice and rats were constructed as abject matter out of
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Caring peripheries: How care practitioners respond to processes of peripheralisation Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-11-08 Nienke van Pijkeren, Iris Wallenburg, Hester van de Bovenkamp, Siri Wiig, Roland Bal
The centralisation of acute health care is a key policy concern in many countries. Less attention has been given to the side effects of centralisation: peripheralisation, occurring mainly in rural areas and post-industrial towns. In this research, we start filling this gap by exploring how this trend of concentration of health care can contribute to a phenomenon referred to as ‘discursive peripheralisation’
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Beekeeping, stewardship and multispecies care in rural contexts Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-10-09 Siobhan Maderson, Emily Elsner-Adams
Rural society consists of both humans and other-than-human species, whose needs may appear to contradict each other. There is a growing awareness of the shared ecological fate of all members of this interspecies community and the importance of transitioning to more caring, sustainable relationships between species. Various rural activities, and relationships with other species, are considered to be
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Social capital and short food supply chains: Evidence from Fisheries Local Action Groups Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Richard Freeman, Jeremy Phillipson, Matthew Gorton, Barbara Tocco
Fisheries and coastal economies across Europe have witnessed substantial structural changes that have brought about challenges for territorial cohesion and social renewal within the fishing sector. Notably, there has been a disconnect between the industry and local communities, with fisheries largely producing commodities for wide-ranging and often distant markets. In response, short food supply chains
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Interspecies encounters with endemic health conditions: Co-producing BVD and lameness with cows and sheep in the north of England Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Lewis Holloway, Niamh Mahon, Beth Clark, Amy Proctor
This article focuses on the relationships between people and farmed nonhuman animals, and between these animals and the farmed environments they encounter, in the enactment of interspecies endemic disease situations. It examines how the nonhuman embodied capacities, agency and subjectivities of cows and sheep on farms in the north of England make a difference to how the endemic conditions of lameness
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Cyborg farmers: Embodied understandings of precision agriculture Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Daniel van der Velden, Laurens Klerkx, Joost Dessein, Lies Debruyne
Precision agriculture is often seen as disembodied and placeless, promised to either bring about a fourth agricultural revolution or as the start of dystopian rural futures, where farmers and their knowledge will be replaced by machines. A growing body of literature shows more nuanced ways of working with precision agriculture. This illustrates the need to investigate how, and under which conditions
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Aligning top-down and bottom-up modes of governance? How EU Fisheries Local Action Groups support small-scale fisheries and coastal community development in Sweden Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Sebastian Linke, Nathan Siegrist
Small-scale fisheries and coastal communities experienced dramatic downward trends over recent decades impacting rural development on European coastlines. Fisheries governance in the European Union (EU) follows exogenous top-down regulations steering fishing practices through detailed regulations. In contrast, the EU's structural funding system of Fisheries Local Action Groups (FLAGs) involves an endogenous
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Analysing the impact of climate and social changes on small farms in the Italian Alps: The importance of the local scale Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-09-21 Sarah H. Whitaker
This article discusses how climate changes are intersecting with other environmental and social pressures to affect farmers in the Lombardy region of the central Italian Alps. Alpine areas are particularly susceptible to climate change. Natural sciences studies have documented widespread changes to weather, landscapes, and ecosystems in the Alps caused by climate and social changes, yet studies of
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Fisheries local action group managers as reflexive practitioners: The enhancement of projects and networks and the renewal of the Finnish fishing livelihood Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Pekka Salmi, Kristina Svels
The implementation of the European Fisheries Local Action Group (FLAG) system applies a neo-endogenous approach, which can restructure public intervention in favour of a mosaic of local territories. By resting on a Finnish case study, this article studies the local adaptation of the FLAG system and how FLAG managers are positioned as intermediaries in horizontal and vertical networks that enhance local
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Banal gastronationalism and anti-EU populism Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Pavel Pospěch
The common market of the EU imposes standards on food products and minimum requirements for their quality. Products that do not meet these requirements have to be renamed. This article analyses the media coverage of a prominent political controversy surrounding four food products, produced in the Czech Republic: Inland Rum, Fruit Marmalade, Spread Butter and Almond Brandy. The renaming of these products
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The globalisation of Italian agriculture. Transformations of migrant labour composition in agriculture in Trentino Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Francesco Della Puppa, Serena Piovesan
The cultivation of apples is one of the principal economic activities in Trentino, which is responsible for 25% of Italian apple production and 4% of European apple production. The industry is structurally based on migrant work, especially from Eastern European countries in the EU. This model has come up against obstacles due to EU migrant workers redrawing their trajectories: They now tend to remain
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Frame alignment processes for locally useful agricultural soil research and extension: The role of farm advisors Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Vaughan Higgins, Melanie Bryant, Catherine Allan, Geoff Cockfield, Peat Leith, Penny Cooke
Farm advisors are recognised as playing an increasingly central role in facilitating interactions between scientists and farmers to improve local implementation of sustainable soil management practices and agricultural innovations more broadly. However, there has been limited scrutiny of what farm advisors do when faced with conflicting interpretations among actors over techniques or approaches for
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Multiple dimensions of sustainability: Towards new rural futures in Euope Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-07-27 Seema Arora-Jonsson, Ruth McAreavey, Cecilia Waldenström, Arvid Stiernström, Emil Sandström, Ildiko Asztalos Morell, Brian Kuns, Marien González-Hidalgo, Patrik Cras, Cristian Alarcon-Ferrari
INTRODUCTION The term ‘sustainability’ has exploded in academic writing in recent years and rural studies is no exception. Conceptualising sustainability has meant needing to deal with the entanglements of the social, natural and economic in one frame. The Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030: Transforming our World have been seen as a stunning achievement for having succeeded in marrying goals
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From crisis to sustainability: The politics of knowledge production on rural Europe Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Seema Arora-Jonsson, Ruth McAreavey
What does it mean to study places in ‘crisis’ and how does that affect the research done on the ‘rural’? To be considered to be in crisis is not really new as any literature review of rural studies indicates. And yet, we live now in a new context, with new challenges for ‘rural’ research, in particular that of sustainability. Sustainability is the new policy focus and is increasingly reflected in research
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Farmers who tinker: Grounded alternatives to incrementalism and the growth imperative Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-06-23 Matt Comi
While hop yards have historically been small-acreage operations with high levels of infrastructure, North American hop growing has increasingly followed a neo-plantation model of high-acreage and high-automation farms. These large hop yards often have highly developed marketing and breeding components, and these growers’ practices have reshaped the hop marketplace. Within this landscape are a scattered
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A spatial justice perspective on EU rural sustainability as territorial cohesion Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-06-15 Marie Mahon, Michael Woods, Maura Farrell, Rhys Jones, Bryonny Goodwin-Hawkins
Territorial cohesion is a guiding set of EU principles to achieve sustainable development. However, evidence suggests that within and across rural and peripheral regions in particular, prosperity and social and economic wellbeing continue to lag behind other regions. The aim of this article is to examine how a spatial justice perspective can provide new development insights on rural sustainability
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From panic to business as usual: What coronavirus has revealed about migrant labour, agri-food systems and industrial relations in the Nordic countries Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-06-10 Brian Kuns, Lowe Börjeson, Klara Fischer, Charlotta Hedberg, Irma Olofsson, Ulla Ovaska, Bjarke Refslund, Johan Fredrik Rye, Hilkka Vihinen
This article focuses on migrant labour in Nordic agriculture, wild berry picking and food processing. The starting point is the fear of a food crisis at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic (2020) because of the absence of migrant workers. The question was raised early in the pandemic if food systems in the Global North are vulnerable due to dependence on precarious migrant workers. In the light
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Unsustainable practices among contemporary maritime fishing communities of Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain): A socioecological and historical approach Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-05-08 Daniel J. Albero Santacreu, Ariana Domínguez García
In this research, we address the relationship that exists between the development of certain unsustainable fishing practices among professional small-scale fishery, industrial fishery and recreational fishing and the historical and social changes observed in the configuration of maritime fishing communities in Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain). We also explore the impact that European, Spanish and
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Governing resettlement beyond safety: Multilevel governance as a model for sustainable resettlement of unaccompanied refugee children in rural Sweden? Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-05-07 Ildikó Asztalos Morell
This article explores the sustainability of the resettlement of unaccompanied refugee children from their perspective. Against the backdrop of a critical assessment of the multilevel governance of resettlement, it compares two rural municipalities. Unaccompanied refugee children in the municipality with a disempowering local governance model were hindered to engage with civil society, while in the
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‘I think this is where this lovely word “sustainability” comes in’: Fruit and vegetable growers' narratives concerning the regulation of environmental water use for food production Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Chloe Sutcliffe, Jerry Knox, Tim Hess
This article concerns UK commercial fruit and vegetable growers’ narratives regarding the sustainability of water use for food production. In it we explore their perspectives on efforts by regulators to limit agricultural withdrawals of water from the natural environment in line with EU Water Framework Directive objectives, alongside their views on retailer sustainability commitments. Discourse analysis
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‘A just price is future’: The capital–life conflict in a viticulture region (El Penedès) Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Patricia Homs Ramírez de la Piscina
El Penedès is an area of Catalonia (northeastern Spain) characterised by its viticulture activity. Its landscape and territorial identity are marked by vineyards and the creation of still and sparkling wines such as cava. This article analyses the tensions between the three dimensions of sustainability (economic, sociocultural and environmental) among viticulturist practices and discourses in El Penedès
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The journey of staying: A transitional and mobility perspective on the staying rural preferences of rural young adults Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Henk Hofstede, Koen Salemink, Tialda Haartsen
This article presents insight into rural young adults’ reflections on their past, present and future staying rural preferences (transitional perspective) and how they relate to their experiences and connections outside the rural home area (mobility perspective). Using a biographical approach, we conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with young employed adults living with their parents or alone in
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Affected by and affecting forest fires in Sweden and Spain: A critical feminist analysis of vulnerability to fire Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-04-06 Marien González-Hidalgo
Usually, vulnerability is equated to weakness and resistance to strength. Drawing on a feminist critique of this conceptualisation, this article aims to discuss how vulnerability to forest fires and local action are mutually and contradictorily related. I analyse the ways in which people in two rural communities surrounded by tree monocultures in Sweden and Spain think, feel and act after being exposed
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Growing superdiverse, growing apart—Modes of incorporation of international migrants in rural areas Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Jakub Stachowski, Bente Rasmussen
This article analyses the perceived impact of international migration on host rural communities from the perspectives of local stakeholders. Based on in-depth interviews conducted in two rural locales in Norway, we identify a consensus about the indispensability of international labour migrants for the demographic and economic sustenance of the host rural communities. At the same time, the perspectives
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Regulating gene editing in agriculture and food in the European Union: Disentangling expectations and path dependencies Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-02-26 Sonja Lindberg, Carmen Bain, Theresa Selfa
This study investigates how proponents and critics of gene editing in agriculture and food (GEAF) employ expectations—discourses with future-oriented impacts—as they compete to secure desired futures and mobilise social processes and resources towards their goal of influencing GEAF (re)regulation and agro-food systems within the EU. We draw on 27 semi-structured interviews and 53 Euractiv media articles
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Sustainable development and sacrifice in the rural North Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-02-24 Arvid Stiernström
In this article, I examine how the grand narratives of sustainability, development and mining impact local governance in a Swedish municipality. I do this by studying three mining projects under implementation and relate them to notions of development and sacrifice to lend insights into what the new trends of mining in Europe outlined above mean for the rural North. I regard sustainable development
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The limits of devolving sustainable development to the local level: The case of the Greenbelt of Fennoscandia initiative Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-02-21 Ian Florin
This article investigates how the framing of nature conservation in terms of sustainable development both enables and constrains participation at the grassroots level. The Green Belt of Fennoscandia, an initiative to develop a transnational ecological network between Finland, Russia and Norway, is used as a case study. A desk study and 40 interviews with participants of two regional working groups
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How FAST are women farmers in Greece transforming contested gender identities in a (still) male-dominant sector? Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Alexandra Tsiaousi, Maria Partalidou
Women farmers’ experiences are not necessarily homogeneous between contexts, and overall different social structures might have different spillover effects into agriculture. Despite the so-called ‘feminisation’ of Greek agriculture—manifested as an increase in the proportion of officially registered farm heads being female and recognition of female contribution to farming—the question remains of how
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Farming wellbeing through and beyond COVID-19: Stressors, gender differences and landscapes of support Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-02-17 David Christian Rose, Hannah Budge, Michael Carolan, Jilly Hall, Conor Hammersley, Jorie Knook, Matt Lobley, Caroline Nye, Alexis O'Reilly, Faye Shortland, Rebecca Wheeler
Although there has been a recent surge in research on drivers of poor farmer wellbeing and mental health, there is still a limited understanding of the state of wellbeing in farming communities around the world and how it can be best supported. This special issue seeks to extend our knowledge of how a combination of different stressors can challenge the wellbeing of farmers, farming families and farm
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Continuity, change and new ways of being: An exploratory assessment of farmer's experiences and responses to public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic in a rural Irish community Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Alexis O'Reilly, David Meredith, Ronan Foley, Jack McCarthy
Farming occupations are, in the Global North, generally solitary, and a growing body of research identifies this as one of the factors that underpins low levels of wellbeing and poor mental health amongst farmers. The primary public health response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic focused on reducing transmission of the virus by limiting interactions of people. This article seeks
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‘Values-based Territorial Food Networks’—Benefits, challenges and controversies Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-01-27 Gusztáv Nemes, Rachel Reckinger, Veronika Lajos, Simona Zollet
The special issue titled ‘Values-based Territorial Food Networks – Benefits, challenges and controversies’ and this introductory editorial aim to bridge conceptual and disciplinary differences within the literature on alternative agro-food networks and related concepts. In the editorial we outline a new umbrella term, Values-based Territorial Food Networks (VTFNs), which synthesises the key commonalities
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Digitalisation, politics of sustainability and new agrarian questions: The case of dairy farming in rural spaces of Italy and Sweden Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-01-25 Cristián Alarcón-Ferrari, Alessandra Corrado, Marco Fama
The article analyses how and why agricultural digitalisation unfolds in contrasting agricultural sub-sectors and rural spaces in Europe, with a particular focus on dairy farming. The authors explore the differences and similarities underpinning and produced by agricultural digitalisation and how this intersects with meanings of rural development and the politics of sustainability. Building on qualitative
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Emergent rural–urban relations in Covid-19 disturbances: Multi-locality affecting sustainability of rural change Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Tarmo Pikner, Kati Pitkänen, Raili Nugin
The recent Covid-19 pandemic highlighted rural–urban interactions, in particular the fact that cities are dependent on the accessibility of non-metropolitan and rural spaces and vice versa. This article seeks to understand how these interactions contributed to emergent relational spaces of rurality during the Covid-19 crisis. The article analyses politicised mobilities between localities and rural–urban
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Production and consumption in agri-food transformations: Rethinking integrative perspectives Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Jonathan D. Beacham, David M. Evans
The adverse consequences of contemporary agri-food relations, particularly in terms of public health and environmental sustainability, have led to growing calls—across interdisciplinary research and policy perspectives—for fundamental systemic change. Focusing on the interconnections and ‘workings’ of agri-food systems, these accounts have coalesced around the vernacular of transformation to think
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Preference and paradox: Local residents’ perspectives on the reuse of post-agricultural brownfield sites Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-12-21 Josef Navrátil, Stanislav Martinát, Ryan J. Frazier, Petr Klusáček, Dan van der Horst, Jaroslav Škrabal, Tomáš Krejčí, Robert Osman, Kamil Pícha, Petr Dvořák
Structural change in the agricultural economy may result in the abandonment of agricultural buildings, creating rural brownfield sites. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, post-agricultural brownfields have become very common in Central and Eastern Europe. Our aim is to uncover and understand the reuse preferences for 16 reuse options, among 1275 survey respondents (local residents) from 272
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Putting social into agricultural sustainability: Integrating assessments of quality of life and wellbeing into farm sustainability indicators Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-12-19 Mary Brennan, Thia Hennessy, Emma Dillon, David Meredith
The measurement of societal wellbeing has moved beyond gross domestic product and has emerged as an important factor within the paradigm of holistic sustainability assessment, including agricultural sustainability. At this juncture, knowledge gaps exist between agricultural policy priorities and data infrastructure to evaluate social sustainability issues, particularly regarding farmer sustainability
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Padrón peppers or peppers from Herbón? Discussing the controversial attainment of a geographical indication in light of food (re)localisation approaches Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-12-14 Rubén Boga, Valerià Paül, Fiona Haslam-McKenzie
Globally, Padrón peppers are a widely known vegetable. Unknown to most, its origin lies in a small village, Herbón, located on the outskirts of the town of Padrón (Galicia, North-West Spain). Local farmers have faced serious problems due to competition with producers from elsewhere commercialising peppers as ‘Padron’. In response, local farmers sought to protect the specificities of the place of origin
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Landscapes of support for farming mental health: Adaptability in the face of crisis Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-12-08 Faye Shortland, Jilly Hall, Paul Hurley, Ruth Little, Caroline Nye, Matt Lobley, David Christian Rose
Poor mental health is an important and increasingly prevalent issue facing the farming industry. The adaptability of what we, in this article, describe as ‘landscapes of support’ for farming mental health is important to allow support systems to adapt successfully in times of crisis. The term ‘landscapes of support’ refers to the range of support sources available to farmers, including government,
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Wellbeing, environmental sustainability and profitability: Including plurality of logics in participatory extension programmes for enhanced farmer resilience Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-11-07 Jorie Knook, Callum Eastwood, Karen Mitchelmore, Adam Barker
Environmental sustainability and economic challenges are requiring significant change in the agricultural sector, and this is driving an increased focus on farmer and farm business resilience. Participatory extension programmes (PEPs) are a well-known approach for supporting farmer change. The objective of this article is to explore how a PEP based on peer-to-peer learning can support farmers in increasing
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Hacking Hekla: Exploring the dynamics of digital innovation in rural areas Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-11-02 Magdalena Falter, Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson, Carina Ren
This article explores innovation initiatives in rural communities in Iceland conveyed through the implementation and perceived outcomes of the hackathon Hacking Hekla. Digitalisation is often proposed as a new, all-purpose tool for regional development that responds to rural challenges innovatively. However, the digital role is often less clear when examining finer development practices. Hackathons
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Mental health, societal expectations and changes to the governance of farming: Reshaping what it means to be a ‘man’ and ‘good farmer’ in rural Ireland Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-10-25 Conor Hammersley, David Meredith, Noel Richardson, Paula Carroll, John McNamara
Contemporary EU agricultural policies place a significant emphasis on current and future societal issues, e.g. climate, biodiversity, animal welfare, and air and water quality amongst others. The governance of farming practices has changed in order to deliver on these expectations resulting in increasingly specific regulations to ensure their delivery. For male farmers these developments have the potential
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Agriculture, COVID-19 and mental health: Does gender matter? Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-10-22 Hannah Budge, Sally Shortall
Agriculture is one of the most precarious professions, being vulnerable to weather extremes and animal disease. As crises hit the agricultural sector, a growing awareness and concern for the mental wellbeing of farmers developed. Economic decline, climate change and culling animals all have a profound impact on affected farmers. To date, research has tended to focus on the farmer, typically a man,
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Disentangling the diversity of small farm business models in Euro-Mediterranean contexts: A resilience perspective Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-10-20 Paolo Prosperi, Francesca Galli, Olga M. Moreno-Pérez, Yuna Chiffoleau, Stefano Grando, Pavlos Karanikolas, Maria Rivera, Giannis Goussios, Teresa Pinto-Correia, Gianluca Brunori
With growing concern for the unsustainability of food systems, the international research community has turned its attention to small farms as key actors to potentially face the global food crisis. This study aims to support a policy design that values the diversity of small farms business models vis-à-vis environmental, economic, social and institutional challenges affecting European farming systems
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Institutional erosion and new strategies: Changing contexts for learning in agriculture in Northern Sweden Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-10-20 Cecilia Waldenström
This article describes the erosion of institutions that support farmers’ learning and the construction of knowledge in agriculture in an area of agricultural decline. It is based on a qualitative study in northern Sweden, exploring farmers’ learning to farm, their peer networks, contacts with advisory services and their sales relationships. As farming is increasingly differentiated, with an intensification
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Resurgent back-to-the-land and the cultivation of a renewed countryside Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-10-10 Emil Sandström
In connection to concerns about, for example, climate change, peak oil, pandemics and the depopulation of many rural areas, there has been a counter-migration from urban to rural areas in past decades. An important part of this counter-migration is the so-called 'back-to-the-land' migration of former urban residents who move to rural areas and adopt primarily agrarian lifestyles. Through a review of
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Behind a fluttering veil of trust: The dynamics of public concerns over farm animal welfare in Norway Sociologia Ruralis (IF 3.567) Pub Date : 2022-09-11 Unni Kjærnes, Svein Ole Borgen, Christian Bernhard Holth Thorjussen
Farm animal welfare has climbed on the public agenda over the last decades. However, while expectations of public engagement in animal welfare are high, the scholarly literature does not point out any clear dynamic behind public involvement. This article argues that people's trust in institutional actors is a key explanatory factor. Most people's connection to farm animals and farms is indirect and