This fourth Rural Sociological Society decennial volume provides advanced policy scholarship on rural North America during the 2010’s, closely reflecting upon the increasingly global nature of social, cultural, and economic forces and the impact of neoliberal ideology upon policy, politics, and power in rural areas.

The chapters in this volume represent the expertise of an influential group of scholars in rural sociology and related social sciences. Its five sections address the changing structure of North American agriculture, natural resources and the environment, demographics, diversity, and quality of life in rural communities. 

Preface
 
Rural America in a Globalizing World:  Introduction and Overview
Conner Bailey, Leif Jensen & Elizabeth Ransom
 
Part I Changing Structure of Agriculture
 
Agriculture and Food in the 2010s, Alessandro Bonanno
 
1. Economic Concentration in the Agrifood System: Impacts on Rural Communities and Emerging Responses
Douglas H. Constance, Mary Hendrickson, Philip H. Howard, William D. Heffernan
 
2. The Declining Middle of American Agriculture: A Spatial Phenomenon
Amy Guptill and Rick Welsh
 
3. Land Ownership in American Agriculture
Douglas Jackson-Smith and Peggy Petrzelka
 
4. Mexican-born Farmworkers in U.S. Agriculture
Eric B. Jensen
 
5. Agricultural Technologies and the Structure of the North American Agrifood System
Leland L. Glenna and Christopher R. Henke
 
6. Food Safety and Governance of the Agrifood System
Michelle R. Worosz and Diana Stewart
 
7. Changing Animal Agriculture and the Issue of Farm Animal Welfare
Jeff Sharp and Dani Deemer
 
8. Agrifood Movements: Diversity, Aims, and Limits
Clare Hinrichs and John Eshleman
 
Part II Natural Resources and the Environment
 
Connections: The Next Decade of Rural Sociological Research on Natural Resources and the Environment, Louise Fortmann, Merrill Baker-Médard and Alice Kelly
 
9. Impacts of Climate Change on People and Communities of Rural America
Lois Wright Morton and Tom Rudel
 
10. Contemporary Water Issues in Rural North America
Courtney G. Flint and Naomi Krogman
 
11. Resource Dependency in Rural America: Continuities and Change
Richard S. Krannich, Brian Gentry, A.E. Luloff, and Peter G. Robinson
 
12. The Gulf: America’s Third Coast
Robert Gramling and Shirley Laska
 
13. Biofuels and Rural Communities: Promises, Pitfalls and Uneven Social and Environmental Impacts
Theresa Selfa and Carmen Bain
 
14. New Natural Gas Development and Rural Communities: Key Issues and Research Priorities
Abby Kinchy, Simona Perry, Danielle Rhubart, Richard Stedman, Kathryn Brasier, and Jeffrey Jacquet
 
15. Got Coal? The High Cost of Coal on Mining-Dependent Communities in Appalachia and the West
Suzanne E. Tallichet
 
Part III Population Change in Rural North America
 
Rural Population Change in Social Context, David L. Brown
 
16. Demographic Trends in Nonmetropolitan America: 2000 to 2010
Kenneth M. Johnson
 
17. Population Shifts Across U.S. Nonmetropolitan Regions
John Cromartie and Timothy S. Parker
 
18. Rural Families and Households and the Decline of Traditional Structure
Jessica A. Carson and Marybeth J. Mattingly
 
19. Children and Youth in Rural America
Diane K. McLaughlin and Carla Shoff
 
20. Concentrations of the Elderly in Rural America: Patterns, Processes and Outcomes in a Neoliberal World
Peter B. Nelson
 
21. New Rural Immigrant Destinations: Research for the 2010s
Martha Crowley and Kim Ebert
 
Part IV Diversity in Rural America
Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Sexuality in Rural America, Carolyn Sachs
 
22. The Status of African Americans in the Rural United States
John J. Green
 
23. Hispanic Immigration, Global Competition, and the Dairy Industry in Rural Communities
J.D. Wulfhorst, Priscilla Salant, Leigh A. Bernacchi, Stephanie L. Kane, Philip Watson, and Erinn Cruz
 
24. Native Nations in a Changing Global Economy
Sarah Dewees
 
25. The Past is the Present: Gender and the Status of Rural Women
Cynthia B. Struthers
 
26. Rolling in the Hay: The Rural as Sexual Space
Julie C. Keller and Michael M. Bell
 
27. Rural Poverty: The Great Recession, Rising Unemployment, and the Underutilized Safety Net
Jennifer Sherman
 
Part V Rural Economies, Community, and Quality of Life
 
Economic Change, Structural Forces and Rural America: Shifting Fortunes across Communities, Linda Lobao
 
28. Education and Schooling in Rural America
Kai A. Schafft and Catharine Biddle
 
29. Work in Rural America in the Era of Globalization
Tim Slack
 
30. Rural Entrepreneurship
Lori A. Dickes and Kenneth L. Robinson
 
31. Community Organization and Mobilization in Rural America
Cornelia Butler Flora and Jan L. Flora
 
32. Community as Moral Proximity: Theorizing Community in a Global Economy
Todd L. Goodsell, Jeremy Flaherty, and Ralph B. Brown
 
33. Food Insecurity and Obesity in Rural America: Paradoxes of the Modern Agrifood System
Keiko Tanaka, Patrick H. Mooney and Brett Wolff
 
34. Thinking About Rural Health
E. Helen Berry
 
35. Housing in Rural America
Katherine MacTavish, Ann Ziebarth, and Lance George