On Innovation in Teaching Rural Sociology

Introduction to the special issu

Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio Kawamura, and Mark Schucksmith, eds., From Community to Consumption: New and Classical Themes in Rural Sociological Research. Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Volume 16

Review of From Community to Consumption: New and Classical Themes in Rural Sociological Research, Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Volume 16, by Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio Kawamura, and Mark Schucksmith, eds

Presidential Address: Reimagining the Future of Agriculture: Building Knowledge for Sustainability and Resilience

The theme of the 2014 SRSA meeting called attention to the interrelationships between agricultural sustainability and community resilience, which have become interrelated goals in building agriculture and communities that support vibrant local food economies in a rapidly globalizing food economy. In this presidential address, I will start with a story of my aunt, who was a farm wife/woman in Tanba Sasayama, Japan. Then, I will return to William H. Friedland’s critique of rural sociology/rural sociologists from 32 years ago to reflect on the impact of an increased importance of these two concepts on transforming the institutional landscape of agricultural sciences. I will ask how agricultural sustainability and community resilience can, as new paradigms, contribute to addressing critical issues that many farm households and rural communities face

The Language of Advertising: A Pragmatic Approach.

The language used in advertising has been the subject of studies in different diciplines, but surprisingly little has been done in linguistics. The main purpose of my study is to give an adequate analysis of the language of written advertising in the U.K. and in Japan, within the framework of pragmatics, and to explain how communication occurs between the advertiser and audience. I consider what communication is and how it is achieved, and investigate aspects of communication prominent in the language of advertising. The first chapter is a survey of the literature, covering structuralist, semiotic and linguistic aproaches to the language of advertising. The second chapter is a discussion of pragmatic theories. It is argued that Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986a) provides the best basis for explaining the comprehension of utterances, including advertising. A study of puns forms the subject of the third chapter. As a trigger for processing which does not necessarily add to the informative content of an utterance, puns provide a potential problem for Relevance Theory. But I argue that Relevance Theory sheds light on the variety of ways in which puns function in advertising. In the fourth chapter, I investigate another potential problem for Relevance Theory, posed by the language of advertising, that of partial suppression of the speaker's intentions. The fifth chapter focuses on the projection of the image of women in advertising

Consumers and Citizens in the Global Agrifood System: The Cases of New Zealand and South Africa in the Global Red Meat Chain

This chapter aims to show that the process of changing rules within the capitalist market system, specifically meat safety governance reform in New Zealand and South Africa, raises profound obstacles for human agency, yet opens new spaces for conceptualizing who participates in promoting change. Agency and structure are complex concepts with dueling tensions that alter the form and substance (as Wright and Middendorf argue in their Introduction to this volume) of individual and collective action in the red meat commodity chains of these two countries. We show that, far from being monolithic, the ways in which capitalism and a changing agrifood structure affect actors in a commodity chain, and the ways in which these actors respond, vary across time and space. We hope to make clear the ways in which structures affect agency, but we also aim to show how structural changes open new opportunities for agency

Technoscience in Agriculture: Reflections on the Contributions of the MSU School of Sociology of Food and Agriculture

This paper argues that one of the most important contributions of the MSU School of Agrifood Governance and Technoscience (MSU-SAGT) was its focus on previously less explored and analyzed roles of technoscience in agriculture.The notion of technoscience was derived from the broader field of Science and Technology Studies, especially from Actor Network Theory.Studies conducted under Lawrence Busch’s direction conceptualized this notion to indicate networks/collectives of human and nonhuman actors implicated in production, distribution and consumption of food. While these studies analyzed the role of technoscience in transforming agriculture, they also examined ethical issues (e.g.,social justice and democracy)that arise from the simultaneous restructuring of social relations and practices that redistribute power and profit through various commodity chains.To highlight the contributions of MSU-SAGT to the study of technoscience in agriculture, this paper will discuss the theoretical underpinnings of this line of scholarship by comparing how the notions of networks, actors, and symmetry are used in Commodity Systems Analyses and Actor Network Theory. In our discussion, we will draw empirical examples from our work on rapeseed conducted in the 1990s. We emphasize that the application of the technoscience paradigm with innovative methodological approaches developed at MSU enabled us to problematize and theorize scientific practices in agriculture as ‘politics by other means’. This explicitly raised issues of social justice and democracy as implicated in agrifood practices. This paper will conclude by emphasizing that the MSU-SAGT has stressed the importance of those temporal and spatial dimensions of technoscience politics that simultaneously transform global and local dynamics of agrifood production

A Positive Feedback Signal Transduction Loop Determines Timing of Cerebellar Long-Term Depression

SummarySynaptic activity produces short-lived second messengers that ultimately yield a long-term depression (LTD) of cerebellar Purkinje cells. Here, we test the hypothesis that these brief second messenger signals are translated into long-lasting biochemical signals by a positive feedback loop that includes protein kinase C (PKC) and mitogen-activated protein kinase. Histochemical “epistasis” experiments demonstrate the reciprocal activation of these kinases, and physiological experiments—including the use of a light-activated protein kinase—demonstrate that such reciprocal activation is required for LTD. Timed application of enzyme inhibitors reveals that this positive feedback loop causes PKC to be active for more than 20 min, allowing sufficient time for LTD expression. Such regenerative mechanisms may sustain other long-lasting forms of synaptic plasticity and could be a general mechanism for prolonging signal transduction networks

Agriculture of the Middle Participation in State Branding Campaigns: The Case of Kentucky

In the past decade, statewide agricultural branding campaigns have blossomed. Examining the case of the Kentucky Proud™ (KyP) program, this paper investigates the potential benefit of a state-level marketing strategy for the declining class of midsize farms, referred to as Agriculture of the Middle (AOTM). First, we discuss why AOTM farms are important to maintaining a viable agriculture structure. Second, we introduce the context of state branding and explain how KyP developed as part of the transition from highly tobacco-dependent agriculture. Using recent agricultural census data and a survey of KyP members, we compare the key characteristics between three sets of pairs: (a) U.S. AOTM farmers and Kentucky AOTM farmers, (b) Kentucky AOTM farmers and KyP-member AOTM farmers, and (c) KyP AOTM farmers and other KyP-member farmers. The findings indicate that Kentucky\u27s AOTM farmers are unique compared to U.S. AOTM farmers, and that the KyP program benefits particularly those AOTM farmers transitioning from tobacco-dependent agriculture. We also found that the logo of the state branding campaign helps member farmers differentiate their products, and that the program helps most members gain knowledge and skills for marketing their products. Overall, findings suggest that state branding campaigns designed to incentivize agricultural marketing of local foods have the potential to help farmers of the middle. Further research needs to be done in order to track the long-term impact of different agricultural branding campaigns

The Role of Southern SARE Projects in Enhancing the Quality of Life in Rural Communities in the South

As an institutional mechanism, funding agencies play a key role in actualizing perspectives about sustainable agriculture by funding research, education, and outreach activities. This paper examines trends in sustainable agriculture research and education projects funded by the Southern SARE program in the last 15 years. First, it analyzes key trends in the research foci of 174 projects, which demonstrate two main threads of thought and research in sustainability: one oriented toward addressing production issues and the other toward community issues. The paper then examines projects that use “quality-of-life measures” to guide their research processes and discusses common challenges that these projects face. The concluding section presents our recommendations to future researchers and to SARE for research strategies that may allow SARE to continue its contributions to the enhancement of quality of life for farmers, rural residents, and rural communities