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Rural Communities: Legacy and Change (3rd ed.). 2008. Cornelia Butler Flora and Jan L. Flora Westview Press: Boulder, CO.
Increasing attention is being given to the fortitude and plight of rural communities today. Demographers, on the one hand, show that many rural counties are undergoing a "rural rebound" or "renaissance" (Johnson & Beale 1999; 2001). After decades of out-migration by young generations, rural counties are experiencing new patterns of in-migration and population gains as families relocate for cost-ofliving, privacy, and other quality of life benefits. On the other hand, rural counties and the nation as a whole have been experiencing economic restructuring and the transition to a post-industrial global economy. While some rural communities are successfully addressing the new economic challenges they face, many are not. Documentary films, such as Walmart and The Town That's Been Through The Mill, vividly show the devastating economic and social effects to individual proprietors, the working class, and rural community life when large corporations set up shop in or desert small town America. Scholars of globalization and the information society forecast that rural communities (and older industrial urban cities) face economic obsolescence and growing poverty as a new world order of global cities and an itinerant cosmopolitan class have emerged (Sassen 2001; Castells 1993). The demographic patterns and economic issues in this body of literature, news, and documentary sources suggest a diversity of characteristics, issues, and concerns of rural communities across this nation. Yet to date, empirical analysis of rural communities as a whole-and especially research that yields strategies that can be effectively used to address the new challenges-has been limited. This represents a significant gap in our general understanding of changes and the diversity of outcomes across rural communities, especially when considering that one-fifth of our nation's population maintains primary residence in rural areas.
In Rural Communities: Legacy and Change, Cornelia Flora and Jan Flora strengthen our understanding of recent changes, including how some rural communities have adapted to social and economic changes and why many others have not. The analysis and arguments emerge from "rural profiles," a description of economic and...