“We Don't Know How to Do This”: Rural Parents' Perspectives on and Roles in Enrollment at a Private,Selective Liberal Arts College

Rural youth trail their non-rural counterparts in college enrollment and attainment, especially for degrees from selective schools; these gaps further spatial inequality in the United States. Much research has focused on rural parents as impediments to rural college-going: many rural parents did not attend college, and their educational aspirations for their children are lower than those of urban parents. However, every year, thousands of rural students do head to college, even to selective schools, and little is known about their parents' influence on their enrollment. This qualitative study focuses on rural parents without a bachelors degree, investigating the roles they play in their children's aspirations and enrollment at a private, selective liberal arts college and examining their perspectives on this type of school. The results suggest that parents are an important source of social capital, supporting aspirations and enrollment. They also show that these parents see a liberal arts education as a path to a remunerative and rewarding career, and, in supporting their children's college choice, they value factors—financial aid, proximity, and a welcoming school culture—that mitigate the social, cultural, and moral boundaries separating home from college.     

Coming out and coming back: Rural gay migration and the city

This research focuses on the complex meaning and role of the city in American and French rural gay men’s imaginary and life experience. It explores how gay men who grew up in the country build their sense of self through back-and-forth movement from rural to urban spaces. Therefore, it questions traditional gay migration studies, which have often equated gay migration and rural–urban migration, positing a unidirectional pattern. After contextualizing rural male homosexuality, this paper presents four life itineraries which highlight the central role the city has for rural gay men when exploring their same-sex desires and attractions. Based on the analysis of their life narratives, we show that for most of them, their coming out, their first same-sex experience, and coming to terms with their sexuality happens “far from home” in a city or a college town. However, this research suggests that the city has a more ambivalent role for rural gay men. While the city exists as a space of social practices where alternative sexualities can be experienced and explored, at the same time for many rural gay men the city remains substantially unattractive. In their view, the perceived “effeminizing power” of the city questions and challenges their attraction for this space. Therefore, the experience of the city becomes both liberating and disciplinary – liberating because it allows the exploration of their same-sex desires and attractions, disciplinary because it (re)presents a gay identity in which they find no resonance. Thus this research indicates that rural gay migration to the urban spaces, which is key to identity formation, includes not only departure to the city but also a necessary return to the country to maintain rural gay men’s understanding of themselves.     

Unveiling the mantra. The salience of network-based community belonging in understanding the structural and agentic conditions of the migration-development nexus

There is more and more evidence that migration and development cannot be considered as two dimensions, whose nexus emerges naturally as a mantra with reciprocal advantages both in developing and in developed countries. This article investigates the theoretical framework of a migration-development nexus as a double time-dependent process of social change, at the same time embedded both in the long durée of the reproduction/innovation of social practices and in the short durée of an agent's personal reflectivity. I argue that the wide scenario of this interplay is the place for the cultural, symbolic, and moral dimensions of a migrant's membership of a network-based community, which acts as a cultural compass in determining migrants' attitudes towards the development of their home country. Strong community membership can be associated with real engagement in the development issues of members left behind (as part of the collective self), only if we assume that membership and belonging are not necessarily shaped by kinship or ethnic considerations, but vary according to the structural features of migrants' social networks – for example the way in which migrants define networks as their own communities, the results of past community memories, and how they imagine their future community on the basis of current experience and perception. The paper discusses these issues in the light of the structure-agent debate in social sciences and migration studies.     

Borrowing from the Rural to Help the Urban: Organic Farming Exemplars in Postsocialist China

This article examines an alternative food movement in China called exemplary agriculture. A key characteristic of the movement is its recuperation of legacies of state socialism including exemplary morality (leadership by example and the emulation of role models) and the pervasive urban/rural dichotomy (a dichotomy that privileges the urban over the rural economically, politically and culturally). Adopting practices derived from rural culture and putting a positive spin on them, movement protagonists promote alternative urban lifestyles they believe will improve the experience of city living and the malice of modernity. Drawing on ethnographic research across organic farms and farmers’ markets, this article examines some of the tensions revealed when these legacies of socialism interact with processes of globalisation such as consumer culture. It offers insights into the changing nature of activism in postsocialist China and how new economic classes are attempting to reconfigure the cultural and moral landscape of the city.     

Unofficial Hanoians: Migration,Native Place and Urban Citizenship in Vietnam

Independent migration to Hanoi has surged dramatically over two decades of deepening market reforms, blurring the distinctions between urban and rural lives once maintained so carefully by the Communist Party of Vietnam. However many urban migrants face ongoing legal and social obstacles in Hanoi, tied to an outmoded system of household registration (ho khau), and widespread anxieties about the ‘floating population’ threatening to overwhelm the city. This article shows how one group of ‘unofficial Hanoians’—migrant motorbike taxi drivers from Nam Dinh Province—navigate a system of differentiated urban citizenship by forging communities and mutual assistance networks around shared ‘native places’ (que huong) to find employment, housing and social support in the city. It also reveals how Hanoi's marginal urban spaces—home to entrenched migrant communities of ambiguous legality—emerge as key arenas in the negotiation of Vietnamese citizenship, forcing national leaders, city officials, landlords and residents to grapple with questions of free movement and the rights of rural citizens to transgress urban space.     

Fragmentation in Social Security Old-Age Benefit Provision in China

Currently, in many countries most workers are covered by a national social security benefits program that applies equally in all parts of the country. In China, however, social security old-age benefits are provided in a highly fragmented manner. This article documents the high degree of fragmentation. It discusses both why that has occurred and the effects of the fragmentation on participants. It examines effects of the fragmentation on benefit levels, focusing on variations in the generosity of benefit formulas but also considering other measures of benefit adequacy. Fragmentation is seen to cause differences in benefit levels even within a single city. While the new National Rural Pension Scheme is a major improvement in the provision of retirement security for rural workers, important differences still exist in the social security programs for urban and rural workers.     

构建“想象的地方”:从地方的视角看广州城市空间的文化表述

在世界同质化加剧的今天,地方的独特性和差异性成为城市提升吸引力的重要手段。从地方的视角体察城市的演进和变化,进而构建"想象的地方",或者可以成为地方参与城市规划与建设的一种方式。不过,地方本身是一个复杂的概念。地方根著于历史,但地方又是一个"未完成的过程",因而地方处于流变之中。根据地方的社会建构理论,广州的作为地方的独特性和差异性首先可以集中表现为由千年古港的经济活动所建构的商贸文化传统。以千年古港和商贸之都为核心,构建"想象的地方",就是将这种商贸文化传统融入多种表现形式的城市叙事,通过地方记忆的再现,获得地方认同。     

CROSSING TEHRAN AVENUE

The online city magazine TehranAvenue.com (TA) occupies the transnational crossroad of digital and urban space. It thus provides an important case study of how urban studies, postcolonial theory and critical cyber studies can be combined fruitfully to explain the potentialities and limits of digital and social networks in transnational Middle Eastern contexts. The article explores metaphors of the Internet as city, theories of transnational urban space and recent studies of the Internet and its politico-cultural uses in Iran to establish a theoretical method that can explain the simultaneity of local and transnational in digital and urban spaces. Qualitative data (email and telephone interviews with TA's founder, editor and contributors), combined with content analysis of the site, supports the claim that the city as metaphor and metonym can account for the intersection between contemporary North African and Middle Eastern digital spaces and national and diasporic urban spaces. The digital city – or blogabad – expands physical urban space into transnational networks. But there are important limits to the transnational reach of mediated social networking practices. In fact, the located identifications of web users are often much more important than the global reach of the technologies they use.     

Social effects of group migration between developing countries

Recent large-scale emigrations from developing countries have been provoked by world economic crises and/or by reaction to dangers posed by armed conflicts. Migrants eventually induce social, economic, and political problems in receiving countries, including 1) increases in the population, with adverse effects on existing social institutions; 2) increases in demand for goods and services; 3) displacement of nationals from occupations in the countryside and in the cities; 4) increases in the size of the informal sector of the national economy; 5) deterioration in the salary structures of the informal, rural, and urban sectors of the economy; 6) transculturation; 7) occasional loss of customs and traditions by the local population; and 8) the introduction of diseases and social problems. The receiving countries do benefit from the infusion of skills. Governments must also do everything possible to facilitate integration of refugees. The consequences of migration for developing countries include the following aspects: 1) adaptation of labor markets to demands of the economy, 2) degree and type of concentration of migrant populations in the receiving country, 3) differences that arise between formal and informal and urban and rural sectors of the economy, 4) type and degree of concentration and interaction of population groups, and 5) possible moral deformation of some migrants and their deviant behavior. In conclusion, receiving countries must have policies that responsibly address the presence of economic immigrants and refugees on their territory, without this being considered detrimental to the national interest.     

Social work in rural areas: a personal and professional challenge

Australians live in diverse areas, city and country, coast and hinterland, desert and rainforest, urban and remote areas. While much social work practice is located in large population centres, the problem of providing a social work service in rural and remote areas is a challenging one. This article examines some of the issues for rural social workers practicing where networks are small and multilayered, anonymity, privacy and safety for the social worker cannot be guaranteed, and a broad range of knowledge and skills are demanded. As a profession, it is important to acknowledge the complexity of delivering an ethical, responsive and appropriate service in rural areas. For rural social workers, this challenge impacts in both their professional and personal roles.     

Women's fear of crime: A rural perspective

This paper examines women's experience of fear of crime in rural areas. It argues that much existing research on issues of gender, fear and safety have focused on urban areas and that as a result we know relatively little about women's experience of fear in a rural context. As well as arguing that we need to redress the balance and respond to the dearth of knowledge about rural women's fear, the paper asserts the importance of a rural perspective in understanding the relationship between fear and the social and cultural construction of place. The rural in particular provides an important site for such an understanding since, as is argued here, the notion of safety is central to constructions of rurality. The paper presents data on rural women's experience of fear and crime from research carried out in New Zealand and the UK. It draws on work undertaken in four rural communities and begins to identify the extent and nature of women's fears and how these relate to their experience of rurality. The paper shows how while popular constructions of the rural as friendly, safe and largely crime free endure, there is a recognition amongst rural women of the growing problems surrounding personal safety. It also demonstrates the importance of social constructions of the rural community in identifying the relevance of the ‘stranger’ and the marginalised ‘other’ to women's feelings of fear.     

Population growth and rural-urban migration,with special reference to Ghana

While the population of Ghana is expected to double in 25 years at the current rate of increase (approximately 2.5% per annum), the population of urban centers is increasing even faster. The 1970 census shows the urban population growing by 4.8% per annum. This is mainly the result of rural to urban migration and, to a smaller extent, the increase in the number of urban centers from 39 in 1948 to 98 in 1960 to 135 in 1970. In the 1970 census only 57.1% of the population were enumerated in their locality of birth and only 20.9% in a locality other than their place of birth but in the same region. 4.1% were born outside Ghana, mostly in another West African country. 1 striking difference between urban and rural areas is the differing sex ratio of the working population. In rural areas there are 91.0 males aged 15-64 years for every 100 females while in urban areas there are 107.1. Most migration in Africa is for employment and those most likely to migrate are working-age males. Because secondary schools are scarce in rural areas, urban dwellers generally have a higher education level. There are no significant differences between overall labor force participation rates for females. The nationwide participation rate was 38.9% for both males and females (males 43.8%, females 34.1%); in urban areas the total was 40.0% (males 46.3%, females 33.7%) and in rural areas 38.5% (males 42.7%, females 34.3%). Ghanaian women have traditionally occupied a prominent place in the labor force. The theory that urban migration is due to urban-rural income disparities is not confirmed by figures. Considering the high amount of unemployment in urban areas, a rural dweller can average as much as a city dweller. In fact, poorly educated migrants are the ones most affected by urban unemployment. A recent study by Kodwo Ewusi considered the impact of many variables on migration; he found depressed social conditions at the place of origin are more compelling motivations than economic factors but that once people decide to migrate, they base their choice of destination primarily on economic opportunities available at that end. Distance bears little relationship to choice of destination. To stem this tide efforts need to be made to increase rural income, provide employment opportunities for those displaced as agriculture becomes more efficient, and to provide for greater amenities in rural areas. Urban unemployment is an ever-increasing problem, accentuated by population growth and migration. Intensive rural development is needed to reverse this trend.     

Three Ecologies: Urban Metabolism and the Society‐Nature Opposition

This article is an intellectual history of two enduring binaries—society‐nature and city‐countryside—and their co‐identification, told through evolving uses of the concept of “urban metabolism.” After recounting the emergence of the modern society‐nature opposition in the separation of town and country under early industrial capitalism, I interpret “three ecologies”—successive periods of urban metabolism research spanning three disciplines within the social sciences. The first is the human ecology of the Chicago School, which treated the city as an ecosystem in analogy to external, natural ecosystems. The second is industrial ecology: materials‐flow analyses of cities that conceptualize external nature as the source of urban metabolism's raw materials and the destination for its social wastes. The third is urban political ecology, a reconceptualization of the city as a product of diverse socio‐natural flows. By analyzing these three traditions in succession, I demonstrate both the efficacy and the limits to Catton and Dunlap's distinction between a “human exemptionalist paradigm” and a “new ecological paradigm” in sociology.     

Urban Ethnography of the 1920s Working Girl

The 1920s was the era of the city. The urban population of the USA for the first time exceeded the population of rural areas and the nascent institutions of city life were flourishing. This article discusses the urban ethnography of the era with a focus on the way women and work was conceptualized, especially how ‘the city’ figured in explanation. Three ethnographies are examined — Frances Donovan's The Woman Who Waits (1920) and The Saleslady (1929) and Paul Cressey's The Taxi‐Dance Hall (1932). Donovan and Cressey presented their empirical material to show that the so‐called working girl faced a multifaceted world of opportunity in employment, not of disadvantage, as commonly emphasized in today's ethnographic studies of women and work. The conclusion reflects on the past, present and future in terms of the city's explanatory prominence in various eras.     

Utilizing the moral nobility of older Chinese women in governance: The uses of humility,empathy, and an ethics of care in moral clinics in Huzhou city

This paper examines the emergence of the role of “moral doctors” who volunteer in what are called “moral clinics” in Huzhou city. In these moral clinics, the characteristics, experiences, and attributes of older women, in particular, are highly valued and viewed as being essential to the role of the moral doctor. These moral doctors act as moral exemplars and conflict mediators in their local communities. Their moral capital and professionalism, combined with their gender, age, familial and neighborhood attributes, contribute to the accumulation of an affective feminized labor which employs the techniques of care, reason, and moral fortitude to govern the self and others. We unpack these ethical virtues exemplified by moral doctors and nurses in order to show how a female-centric “ethic of care” can become a set of techniques in governing others. In this paper, we elaborate on the role that these moral doctors perform to support the aims of the moral clinics in terms of fostering pro-social behavior and moral obligation in local communities. We argue that the performance of this type of “moral work” is both a mechanism of discipline and a process of self-actualization. We contribute to the current literature on “therapeutic governance” in China by showing how the non-expert medicalization of social ills by moral doctors is incorporated into the reproduction of social control.     

Making Heterogeneous Space: Land Development and the Proletarianization of Urban Underclass in Post War Japan

This paper aims to focus on a correlation between urban land development and a “proletarianization” of day‐laborers by examining Mitsui Fudosan Group [Mitsui Real Estate Group] as an agent of urban developments and construction industry in Japan, with examining daylaborers’ riots and moral economy as a counter‐culture against gentrified urban spaces.It is necessary to acknowledge the fact that the national projects – maintained by the closed market and the subcontracting labor system in the construction industry – also induce a radical opposition against the urban development. Although national projects are inevitably accompanied by gentrification, eviction of the homeless, and social exclusion of the underclass, unavoidable transgression or deviation conflicts with urban development, such as periodic and spontaneous riots by day‐laborers, demonstrates a vulnerability of the national unity. In fact, the day‐laborers changed the street labor market into their own field in order to overturn the hierarchy determined by the subcontracting structure in the construction industry. Their bodily expression in the form of riots had radically transgressed the ideas promoted in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as “One World,” or the 1970 Osaka Expo as “Progress and Harmony for Mankind.” The Olympic legacy was disrupted boldly and transformed into a radical egalitarian thought in this sense. The underclass is immediately defined and commodified by national projects, however, it does not mean that its body is completely involved in its time and space.     

Mother–child and teacher–child relationships and their influences on Chinese only and non-only children's early social behaviors: The moderator role of urban–rural status

Investigations regarding the differences between Chinese only and non-only children primarily examine children's social behaviors, which are closely related to their early relationships with mothers and teachers. In recent years, the number of non-only children born in urban areas has increased because of the softening of the One-Child Policy, which leads to the distribution of non-only children shifting from being primarily in rural areas to being in both urban and rural areas. The present study investigates the current characteristics and influences of mother–child and teacher–child relationships on Chinese only and non-only children's early social behaviors from the perspective of urban and rural differences. Data were obtained from 126 rural only children, 94 rural non-only children, 168 urban only children and 155 urban non-only children from 38 semi-urban kindergartens in Beijing, China. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that mother–child closeness positively predicted children's social skills particularly in non-only children, whereas mother–child conflict positively predicted internalizing behavior problems in all four groups. Teacher–child conflict negatively predicted children's social skills most strongly in urban only children. Teacher–child conflict aggravated rural only children's, urban only children's and non-only children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, but mother–child closeness buffered rural only children's externalizing behavior problems. Findings underscore the importance for mothers to improve closeness, especially with rural only children, and for teachers to avoid conflict with both urban only and non-only children, as well as with rural only children.     

Amazonian Native Youths and Notions of Indigeneity in Urban Areas

The indigenous presence in urban areas of Amazonia has become more visible as Indian populations have negotiated their own spaces and acted in new contexts previously reserved for the dominant society. This article looks at ways in which today's young Indians in an urban area define and interpret their new cultural and social situations, drawing from research conducted with Apurinã, Cashinahua and Manchineri youths in Rio Branco, a city in Acre state, Western Brazil. These young people occupy a variety of “native” and “non-native” habituses and develop their notions of indigeneity within complex social networks as part of their strategy for rupturing the otherness associated with indigeneity. The text contributes to the discussion on the theory of practice and identity politics, as well as embodiment. Young Indians in urban Amazonia constitute their agencies in multiple ways and use various embodiments based in the practices and knowledge of their native groups and those of urban national and global society. The young natives break with the image of Lowland South American Indians as peoples uncontaminated by urban influences and help promote new interactions between native populations in the reserve and the city.     

城市核心区的考古遗产——广州南越国遗迹的保护与展示实践

考古遗产是人类文化遗产的重要组成部分。对于一座城市来说,考古遗产是城市发展的记忆,是其历史文化内涵的重要体现。南越国宫署遗址、南越王墓和南越国木构水闸遗址,是考古发现最重要的南越国遗迹,是广州历史文化名城的精华,也是广州最重要的考古遗产。南越国遗迹发现于城市建设过程中,发掘后在原址保护并展示,既展现了广州的深厚历史文化内涵,也成为现代化广州重要的历史文化座标。