Dear ASA Development Section:
Dudley Poston and I along with Neil Argent, an Australian colleague, are organizing a demographic working group for this summer’s European Society for Rural Sociology Congress that will be held in Krakow, Poland during July 24-27.
We want to encourage section members to submit abstracts to our Working Group. The ESRS has an overall theme, “Uneven Processes of Rural Change” that is articulated via plenary sessions, but the bulk of the congress is comprised of working groups built around particular issues and areas of study. Depending on how many papers are submitted, the various WG’s are typically allocated 3-5 sessions on the program. In other words, our WG will be like a mini population conference within the larger program. Dudley, Neil, and I have done this multiple times and it always turns out well, and is a lot of fun. In addition, ESRS has a lot of social events and excursions that come with the registration fee, and Krakow is a really beautiful and interesting city.
Abstracts should be sent directly to me by December 20. I’ll pass them on to Neil and Dudley.
Our session is described below:
Title: Population Change, Economic Transformations, Environment and Rural Community Well Being
Conveners: Neil Argent, University of new England, Australia; David L. Brown, Cornell University, USA; Dudley Poston, Texas A&M University, USA.
Objectives: To examine the interrelationships between population change and local community well- being. A second objective is to examine the relationships between population change and changes in the natural environment.
Topic of the WG: This working group will examine the determinants and consequences of rural population change. The main focus will be on how changes in population size, structure, socio-demographic composition, and spatial distribution affect and are affected by community well-being as indicated by such factors as inequality, poverty, un- and underemployment, economic restructuring, etc. We also encourage scholars to submit papers focusing on population-environment interrelationships (by which we include changes in resource-based industries such as mining as well as climate change. Since we are interested in examining the interrelationships between population change and community, we propose to examine how community well-being and environmental change affects population dynamics, and vice versa. We are hoping that scholars from a wide range of nations will participate so that we can examine how population-society relationships might be affected by the nations in which they occur.
Format: The format will be standard paper sessions with discussants. Papers will have to be submitted at least two weeks prior to the conference so that the discussant has ample time to prepare helpful remarks. We may also organize a panel discussion of the impacts of population change, environmental change and rural society and economy.
David L. Brown
International Professor of Development Sociology
Cornell University
Visiting Professor, APL Newcastle University, UK
Past chair, ASA Section on Development Sociology
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