A few words about methodology. In keeping, I believe, with the spirit of PFI, this book is a species of what has come to be called “participatory research”—that is, research in which the people under study help conduct the study. Two of my colleagues in this project, Donna and Sue, are longtime members of PFI. Donna is a former member of the board of PFI and farms in western Iowa with her husband and son. Sue has been an active volunteer in PFI since its beginning, and her husband, Rick Exner, was one of the people involved in founding the organization in 1985 and was long PFI’s only employee. Greg and I represent more the external and academic side of the project, Greg as a former graduate student in sociology at Iowa State University and now an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Fox Valley, and I as an associate professor of rural sociology at Iowa State, and now at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where I am an associate professor of rural sociology. Neither Greg nor I had any previous personal connections to PFI or farming before the research began.
I should emphasize the phrase “represent more”: all four of us have academic degrees in sociology and have close connections with Iowa State University. Donna has a bachelor’s degree in sociology, Greg now has a doctorate in sociology, and Sue has a doctorate in rural sociology, all from Iowa State. I taught rural sociology at Iowa State for nine years before moving to the University of Wisconsin–Madison and served as Greg’s and Sue’s major professor. Plus, to study PFI and sustainable agriculture is to study the university itself, given the longtime role of land grant universities in agricultural research and the special association of PFI with Iowa State University. And as the research progressed, my own personal ties to PFI increased when my wife took a position at Iowa State in sustainable agriculture education, a position that led her to work closely with PFI on a number of projects. I also joined a folk band with Rick Exner and two PFI farmers, and we performed at several PFI events. For Greg too, his interest in sustainable agriculture and his personal participation in it increased over the course of the research. Although we did not initially conceive of the study in this way, it turned out in the end that we were all participants of one sort and degree or another.
Bell, Michael M. and Fredrick Hendricks, eds., with Azril Bacal. 2003. Walking Towards Justice: Democratization in Rural Life. Research in Rural Sociology and Development book series. Amsterdam and New York: JAI/Elsevier.
from http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/699531/description#description
Democracy is back, at least as a topic of concern among rural sociologists. The Neoliberal cast of the recent pursuit of globalization in world politics has led to the development of a wide range of critiques united by the same question: what about democracy? From this perspective, the main issue with globalization is the globalization of what - the market or the policy, the citizen as consumer or the citizen as citizen.
This volume brings together some of the recent work of rural sociologists on democracy, in an effort to bring into sharper focus this work's distinctive contributions to the understanding the question of what is and should be globalized, with particular emphasis on rural concerns and rural people. Half the world still lives in rural areas, and the entire world depends upon the success of rural areas in providing the means for human subsistence. The impact of globalization on rural sociology democratization thus has implications for everyone.
rural sociology, michael m. bell, sustainable agriculture, environmental sociology