Rural Communities ― Legacy + Change

Communities in rural America are a complex mixture of peoples and cultures, ranging from miners who have been laid off in West Virginia, to Laotian immigrants relocating in Kansas to work at a beef processing plant, to entrepreneurs drawing up plans for a world-class ski resort in California's Sierra Nevada. Rural Communities: Legacy and Change uses its unique Community Capitals framework to examine how America's diverse rural communities use their various capitals?natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built?to address the modern challenges that face them.Each chapter opens with a case study of a community facing a particular challenge, and is followed by a comprehensive discussion of sociological concepts to be applied to understanding the case. This narrative, topical approach makes the book accessible and engaging for undergraduate students, while its integrative approach provides them with a framework for understanding rural society based on the concepts and explanations of social scienceThis fifth edition is updated throughout with 2013 census data and features new and expanded coverage of health and health care, food systems and alternatives, the effects of neoliberalism and globalization on rural communities, as well as an expanded resource and activity section at the end of each chapter.

Cornelia Butler Flora is Charles F. Curtis Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University and Research Professor at Kansas State University.

Jan L. Flora is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Community Development Extension at Iowa State University and Research Professor at Kansas State University.