A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

The Rural Reconciliation Project and Professor Hannah Haksgaard of the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law co-hosted an online Law and Rurality Workshop in Fall 2025.

In Economic Development for Native Nevada: How Indian Gaming Can Further Tribal Self-Determination, author Makai Zuniga (J.D. Candidate, Nevada, Las Vegas Law) examines the historical and ongoing economic barriers faced by Nevada’s Indigenous tribes and proposes strategies for rural tribes to enter the gaming market despite restrictive regulations.

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. 

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

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 Broadband Internet Speed Upgrades and the Farmland Market: A Shift-Share Instrumental Variable Approach, authors Xiaorui Qu, Qinan Lu, Minghao Li, and Wendong Zhang (all College of Economics and Management, China) conduct an empirical analysis of the impact of investment in broadband internet on the value of America’s farmland.

In How Service Exclusion Affects Rural Depopulation. An Approach Based on Structural Equation Modeling, M. Pilar Alonso (Geography, History and History of Art, Universitat de Lleida), Pilar Gargallo, Jesús A. Miguel, Manual Salvador (all Applied Economics, Universidad de Zaragoza), Luis Lample (Accounting and Finance, Universidad de Zaragoza), and Carlos López Escolano (Geography and Territorial Planning, Universidad de Zaragoza) present an analysis of rural depopulation trends in the Aragon region of Spain.

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In Financial Incentives and Landowner Interest in Reforesting Open Lands in the Southeastern United States, authors Chloe Schnieder and Nina Randazzo (Environmental Defense Fund), Ram Kumar Adhikari (Forestry, Mississippi State University), and Neelam Chandra Poudyal (Natural Resources, University of Tennessee) examine the factors influencing landowners’ willingness to participate in reforestation programs.

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.