In Rural Geography I: Why Should Rural Geographers ‘Care’?Susanne Stenbacka (Human Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden) explores the existing literature discussing the concept of care and its intersection with rural geography. Stenbacka encourages rural geographers to incorporate care theory into their research, arguing that care can be used both as a tool and a lens through which to view the challenges faced by rural spaces.

In Natural Resource Policy and Collaborative Processes, Crystal M. Callahan and Katherine M. Himes (both Public Policy Research, University of Idaho) advocate for introducing collaborative governance to the natural resource policy process. The authors explore several successful Idaho case studies in which collective governance was utilized to address “wicked problems” plaguing Idaho’s natural resource policy.

In The Dark Side of the Balloon: Restrictions on Foreign Investment in US Farmland, Sarah Everhart (Delaware Law) argues that legislators should shift their focus from preventing foreign ownership of US farmland to supporting domestic farmers’ access to farmland.

In Rural Politics in the United States, authors Trevor E. Brown and Suzanne Mettler (both Government, Cornell University) survey recent literature on rural politics and recommend a broader lens to better understand the impact of place on voters. They discuss the current state of rural politics literature, how to measure place and rurality, the role of public opinion, and recommend a comparative approach for future rural studies.

The Rural Reconciliation Project hosted Professor Hannah Haksgaard of the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law to discuss her new book on rural attorneys in South Dakota.

The Rural Lawyer: How to Incentivize Rural Law Practice and Help Small Communities Thrive is the culmination of a series of interviews Professor Haksgaard conducted with South Dakota’s Rural Attorney Recruitment Program participants. These interviews highlight the experiences of participating attorneys, reveal the program's impact, and deepen understandings about what practice in rural communities looks like. 

In Trading Acres, Jessica A. Shoemaker (Law, University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and James Fallows Tierney (Law, Illinois Institute of Technology) address the growing trend of financialization of farmland.  

In It’s on All the Time in Our House: Police Scanners and Everyday Rural Life, author Michael Branch (Sociology, Hartwick College) explores the long-time use of police scanners by laypeople in a rural town in upstate New York. He argues that, despite the perceived community benefits, there are also unforeseen consequences for those living in the community.

For too long, the story of rural America has seemed inevitable: mines closed; farming became unprofitable; rural post offices and train stations shuttered. When read in the passive voice, the declines of rural places and their people just…happened. But considering that the overwhelming majority of the American landscape is rural, how has so much of the country come to be thus marginalized? And if we care about rural communities—and about the cities and suburbs that ostensibly rely on their resources, no matter how invisible that relationship may be today—how can we work towards revitalization?

Over eight chapters, legal scholar and practitioner Ann M. Eisenberg summarizes and systematically dismantles the passive voice at the core of myths about rural decline, dependency, and potential renewal.

Macro-level structural forces, local institutions, race, class, livelihoods, culture, landscapes, and neighborhood dynamics all come together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. It is at this essential intersectional nexus that Amanda McMillan Lequieu’s 2024 book, Who We Are is Where We Are: Making Home in the American Rust Belt, so adeptly advances the conversation on place-based marginalization and struggle. Who We Are identifies this holistic, multi-factor intersection of place, culture, and economic survival as something we all instinctively know, but may still struggle to define: “home.”

If you pay attention to public discourse about rural populations, you might have noticed something missing in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election: think-pieces on rural voters. These think-pieces—musing on rural voters’ motivations, their seemingly disproportionate susceptibility to Donald Trump’s appeal, and their role in deciding the most recent election—were everywhere after the 2016 presidential election that led to Trump’s first term. Even in 2020, after Joe Biden’s victory and evidence of more complexity in rural voting patterns, analysts and pundits seemed eager to assess the role of the rural vote. Yet, rural voters just don’t seem to be top of mind for this round of post-election analysis. Why might that be?

In Reimagining Rural Health Equity: Understanding Disparities And Orienting Policy, Practice, And Research In Rural America, Anne N. Sosin and Elizabeth A. Carpenter-Song (Both Anthropology, Dartmouth College) argue that advancing rural health equity beyond the pandemic requires understanding the underlying problems that create rural disparities and redesigning the policies and practices that encourage the rural disadvantage. 

In Shared Stewardship, Elizabeth Kronk Warner and Jesús A. Salazar (Both Law, University of Utah) challenge the trend of excluding tribes from participation of co-stewardship of national lands.  The authors examine the existing standards and offer creative solutions to forging a path to tribal co-stewardship.