What is Rural Sociology?

Rural sociology is the study of social organization, social processes, and spatial patterns in areas with relatively small populations and low population density. Emerging in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the field reflected the fact that most Americans lived in rural areas and were connected to agriculture. Historically, the concept of “rural” has been understood in three main ways. First, it refers to places with low population density, contrasting with densely populated urban areas. Second, it is associated with occupation, particularly farming, which has traditionally been the dominant economic activity in rural communities. As a result, rural areas generally contained fewer non-agricultural industries and occupations than cities. Third, rurality has been linked to values and culture. Rural communities were often viewed as traditional, homogeneous, and resistant to change, while urban areas were seen as diverse, modern, progressive, and sophisticated. Early sociologists such as Redfield and Tönnies highlighted these contrasts through concepts like “folk” versus “urban” societies and Gemeinschaft versus Gesellschaft.

                            History of Rural Sociology

Rural sociology developed most extensively in the United States, where it became a distinct academic discipline during the early twentieth century. Although rural sociological research exists worldwide, it is often known by other names, such as peasant studies, village studies, or development studies, particularly in developing countries. The first department of rural sociology was established at Cornell University in 1915, and the discipline gained institutional recognition through the creation of the journal Rural Sociology in 1936 and the Rural Sociological Society in 1937. During the Great Depression, rural sociologists received significant support to study the living conditions of farm families and evaluate New Deal programs aimed at improving rural life.

Charles Galpin is one of the founders of rural sociology. He taught agricultural economics and sociology at the University of Wisconsin. For many years, he worked for the Ministry of Agriculture in Washington, where, at the national level, he organized field research on social trends and living conditions in rural areas. The results of this research are presented in the book The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community (1915). Galpin coined the term "rurban" to better explain the relationship between village and town. With this concept, he wanted to point out the fact that communities are rarely purely rural or urban, but usually, within a larger rural community, there is a local urban center where people from rural areas perform various activities every day.

American rural sociology traditionally focused on topics such as population change, community organization, family life, social stratification, rural development, and, more recently, environmental issues. The discipline has been strongly empirical and data-driven, relying heavily on fieldwork, social surveys, and demographic analysis. Much of its research was motivated by practical concerns and the needs of rural communities, particularly through collaborations with the Cooperative Extension Service, which sought to improve agricultural productivity and rural living conditions.

Throughout its history, rural sociology has served two sometimes conflicting purposes. On one hand, it has provided the scientific knowledge needed to design modernization and development programs for rural areas. On the other hand, it has sought to preserve important aspects of rural life and community traditions, occasionally placing it at odds with advocates of technological and economic change. Early rural sociologists also contributed significantly to mainstream sociology, with several scholars holding leadership positions in both the Rural Sociological Society and the American Sociological Association.

Community studies became a defining feature of rural sociology. Researchers examined communities, regions, and states as the United States experienced major transformations in agriculture and population distribution. Following World War II, the number of farmers declined dramatically, while rural-to-urban migration increased. These changes shifted scholarly attention toward economic development, migration, and the challenges facing rural communities. Universities such as Cornell, Wisconsin, and Michigan State emerged as leading centers for rural sociological research, including international studies. Many researchers expanded their focus to developing countries, contributing to scholarship on rural development around the world.

By the late twentieth century, rural sociology increasingly addressed environmental concerns, helping to shape the emerging field of environmental sociology. Research on agriculture and food systems became particularly important, linking issues of food production, food safety, nutrition, and public health. Contemporary rural sociologists now serve a broader range of stakeholders, including environmental groups, public health advocates, and policymakers.

Current research reflects a more critical perspective on public policy and rural institutions. Scholars increasingly examine how governments, economic interests, and social inequalities based on class, race, ethnicity, and gender influence rural development.

                 Theoretical Approaches in Rural Sociology

Western thought has traditionally viewed rural life through two contrasting perspectives. The first, inspired by the Arcadian ideal of Greek mythology, romanticizes rural communities as places of virtue, social cohesion, and moral strength. Thinkers such as Tönnies and later scholars argued that industrial cities represented a decline in civilization, while rural societies preserved desirable qualities such as community spirit, family farming, local autonomy, and environmental stewardship. This perspective emphasizes protecting rural life from the disruptive effects of urbanization and industrial capitalism. The second perspective emerged from the Enlightenment and modern rationalism. It regarded urban-industrial society as more advanced, efficient, and progressive, viewing rural areas as remnants of a preindustrial past. From this standpoint, rural society was seen as increasingly marginal and destined to play a lesser role in modern development.

Tönnies, in Community and Society (1887), in which he presented the well-known dichotomous division into "community" (Gemeinschaft) and "society" (Gesellschaft- also sometimes translated as „association“) as the two main ideal types of human groups. The community is the first, in the historical sense, and it is created by the „natural will“ (Wesenwille). The community is a place of common life, and the best examples of the community are the household and family, neighborhood, village and rural life, and ethnic communities (which are connected by customs, language, and religion). The community is similar to a living organism, while society is transitory and superficial and similar to a mechanical aggregate or artifact. A community is formed spontaneously through long-term "organic" development and is determined by emotions, customs, traditions, solidarity, trust, and intimacy. Tönnies sees the origin of the relationship of connection in the community in the very fact of birth within the community, and the factors that affect the relationship are gender and origin. The strongest ties are those between mother and child, husband and wife, and brothers and sisters. The maternal relationship is based on pure love, while the relationship between the spouses can lead to the one-sided submission of the woman. To avoid this subordination, it is necessary to build a lasting relationship of mutual affirmation, while care and love for common children and property can help in that. The attitude of the father towards the children best expresses the attitude of domination in the community. As patriarchy proved to be better in war and economic activities, it became a general cultural form. Apart from biological kinship, the greatest sources of the community are common life, common religion, common language, and intellectual closeness. Organic or natural will, in the community, is based on understanding and harmony.

Lenin, in The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), argued that in the nineteenth century, Russia represented a feudal society in which the peasantry continued to live in serfdom, while at the same time, the cooperative form of ownership persisted. However, Russian feudalism is not characterized by only one form of production (agricultural-feudal), but it forms a "social formation" that includes other forms of production, and above all, the beginnings of the capitalist form of production. Russian feudalism, as an economic order, operates within a strong and centralized absolutist state. 

The concept of ‘‘rural-urban continuum’’ was introduced by Sorokin and Zimmerman in Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology (1929). They claim that cities have the role of innovators, while the rural areas serve as the keepers of national culture. The heterogeneity of the population and the large share of immigrants make cities have a more "international" spirit, while patriotism and attachment to the local environment develop in rural areas. On the other hand, the differences between rural and urban areas are decreasing because of the urbanization of the rural world and the ruralization of cities.

Robert Redfield advocated for a similar "rural-urban continuum" approach. Instead of viewing rural communities in isolation from the wider civilization, he believed that there was a continuum, from small communities to the largest cities. Although the inhabitants of cities are more secular and individualistically oriented, there are no clear lines of separation, but continuous changes in the patterns of social organization and values, which go from the smallest to the largest settlements. Trade has in the past connected rural communities with urban communities, while the impact of modernization and urbanization has only further connected these settlements and communities.

Eric Wolf, in books Peasants (1966) and Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (1969), argues that peasants are populations that function, politically and economically, between isolated tribes and industrial society. The peasants are, for the most part, economically self-sustaining; that is, they produce almost everything they need and make only a part of their agricultural or handicraft products for the market. In some situations, the peasants sell their products themselves, while in others, these products represent a form of tax or rent in kind received by landowners or feudal lords. However, the political and economic relations of the peasants with the wider society always have some form of domination and coercion. As a result, conservative attitudes and resistance have emerged. These resistances can take many forms, from resistance to taxation to the tendency to resist being pushed into the proletariat.

In the books Peasants and Peasant Society (1971) and The Awkward Class (1972), Theodor Shanin researched peasants and their economy. In his opinion, the peasants have a completely different economic structure than capitalist and socialist economies. The way the peasants work, eat, and live is based on what he calls the "informal economy", which consists of a network of family, informal, and, often, even criminal activities. Both classical and Marxist economists have rejected this type of economy as marginal, but Shanin notes that half of the world's population functions in this type of economy.

For much of the twentieth century, rural sociology in the United States was dominated by structural functionalism and largely relied on social psychology and survey research. This approach tended to be descriptive and politically neutral, focusing on social structures and community organization rather than examining the broader economic and political forces shaping rural life.

The emergence of the “new rural sociology” in the late twentieth century marked a significant shift. Scholars such as Newby and Buttel argued that rural sociology needed a more critical theoretical framework to explain why farmers and rural communities were experiencing economic hardship, social disintegration, and declining ways of life. The new rural sociology paid greater attention to concerns about the loss of family farms, the challenges facing agricultural communities, and the role of public institutions, particularly land-grant universities and agricultural research systems.

A defining feature of this perspective was its use of Marxist and neo-Marxist theories to analyze agriculture. Researchers sought to explain the coexistence of expanding large-scale capitalist farming with the continued survival of smaller family farms. They also examined whether land-grant universities and publicly funded agricultural science had contributed to the growth of industrial agriculture by supporting policies favorable to large agricultural enterprises. Despite modernization efforts, rural poverty remained widespread, especially among minority populations.

In recent decades, the sociology of agriculture has developed along two major directions. The first is the “farming styles” approach, often associated with the Wageningen School in the Netherlands. Influenced by neo-Weberian and actor-oriented perspectives, this approach emphasizes the diversity of farming practices, cultures, technologies, and decision-making processes. It argues that local conditions and farmer agency create varied agricultural systems, limiting the homogenizing effects of globalization.

The second and more influential direction is the agro-industrial globalization perspective. This approach views agricultural change as driven largely by global political and economic forces, including trade liberalization, international financial institutions, multinational corporations, and global markets. Scholars emphasize the growing power of agribusiness corporations, which increasingly shape production standards, regulations, and food supply chains. They also highlight how international debt, monetary instability, and structural adjustment policies promoted by organizations such as the IMF and the WTO have encouraged export-oriented agriculture and reduced national control over food systems.

                                  Agricultural Change

Many scholars argue that one of the most significant social transformations of the twentieth century has been the rapid decline of peasant societies and traditional farming lifestyles, particularly after World War II. This process of “depeasantization” has been most pronounced in industrialized countries, although it has been even more dramatic in many developing nations, where the decline of rural communities has been accompanied by large-scale migration to urban areas.

Global population patterns illustrate this trend. In 1950, approximately 1.78 billion people lived in rural areas, compared with 718 million in urban areas. However, in 2007, the world’s urban population exceeded its rural population for the first time in history. By 2025, around 4.76 billion people lived in urban areas, while 3.46 billion remained in rural regions.

The United States provides a clear example of these changes. In 1940, there were roughly 7 million farms, supporting about 30 million people, or one-quarter of the national population. By the end of the twentieth century, the number of farms had fallen to approximately 1.8 million, while the farm population had dropped to fewer than 7 million people, representing less than 2 percent of the total U.S. population.

At the same time, agricultural production has become increasingly concentrated among a relatively small number of large farms. The 1997 Census of Agriculture revealed that just 26,000 farms with annual sales exceeding $1 million—only 1.4 percent of all farms—generated about 42 percent of total farm sales. This trend toward concentration has continued. In 2024, family farms still accounted for 97 percent of all U.S. farms, but their economic significance varied greatly by size. Small family farms, with gross cash farm income below $350,000, represented 86 percent of all farms yet contributed a relatively small share of total production. In contrast, large-scale family farms, earning $1 million or more annually, comprised only about 5 percent of farms but produced approximately half of the total value of agricultural output.

As a result, U.S. agriculture has become increasingly polarized. A relatively small number of large commercial farms generate most agricultural production, while a large number of small, often part-time farms account for much of the farm population but relatively little output. Meanwhile, the traditional medium-sized full-time family farm has steadily declined in both numbers and economic importance, reinforcing the dual structure of modern American agriculture.

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