Roundup: February 21, 2025
A regular feature of our growing online journal, The Rural Review, these roundup posts collect notable recent research, analysis, and related rural news and commentary. Feel free to send suggestions for future collections to us here. And, more details on other opportunities to contribute to The Rural Review can be found here.
Recent Publications
In Gridlock: Infrastructure and Jurisdiction in Eastern Navajo Agency published in Antipode, Silas Grant (Newkirk Center for Science & Society, University of California) employs the concept of “gridlock” to examine how settler legal orders in Eastern Navajo Agency defer investments in life sustaining infrastructures, like roads, and act as a potentially deadly effect of settler governance.
Jesus Oliva (Sociology and Social Work, Public University of Navarra, Spain) and Luís Camarero (Theory, Methodology and Social Change, National University of Distance Education, Spain) published Accessibility, Car Dependence and Rural Peripheralization: The Automobility Gap in the Spanish Countryside in Sociologia Ruralis. The article considers how car dependency must be addressed beyond a transport problem as a variable of social peripheralization, creating unequal mobilities depending on access to a private vehicle.
Reimagining Rural Health Equity: Understanding Disparities and Orienting Policy, Practice, and Research in Rural America by Anne N. Sosin and Elizabeth Carpenter-Song (both Anthropology, Dartmouth College) argues that the US has chronically failed public health, and that these failures are most apparent in rural regions where underinvestment left rural America uniquely vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic.
News & Commentary
The Wall Street Journal published an article about the heightened tensions surrounding immigration in a small town about an hour outside of Indianapolis. Seymour, Indiana has experienced substantial increase in immigration over the last few decades; while some residents support integration efforts, others welcome the prospect of mass deportations.
A recent analysis by the Economic Innovation Group explored the economic and political dynamics of rural America to uncover why, despite rural America’s increasing economic and demographic diversity over the last two decades, its political preferences for the Republican party has become prevalent.
The Brookings Institution published its analysis of the geographic targeting of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other public infrastructure investments to vulnerable and underdeveloped rural communities to identify how federal funds can best be directed to economically distressed rural places.
An article in NC Newsline reported on initiatives aimed at helping counties and small towns develop affordable housing options. Maysville, in western North Carolina, for example, is slated to receive awards from the NC Office of Recovery and Resiliency and benefit from the University of North Carolina’s “Our State, Our Homes” initiative.
Recordings & Events
An episode of the Funding Rural Podcast considered the role of community colleges as rural economic drivers capable of sustaining communities through education efforts that reflect the economic realities of the regions they serve. The podcast considers how philanthropic organizations might support rural community colleges in their mission to meet the needs of local industries.
Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine is offering a free online suicide prevention course tailored for veterinary students, veterinarians, and agribusiness professionals. The course provides an overview of mental health challenges in rural America and equips participants with practical support strategies and resources. Register here.
Finally, as a reminder, the Project is co-hosting an in-person panel and play reading about the upcoming production, Eminent Domain, in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, from 5:30-6:30pm in the Nebraska East Union. This is part of our Rural Identity program series.
