Gabriel N. Rosenberg argues that public acceptance of the political economy of agribusiness hinged on federal efforts to normalize rural heterosexuality.

A thoughtful text integrating strengths, assets, and capacity-building themes with contemporary issues in rural social work practice Now in its second edition, Rural Social Work is a collection of contributed readings from social work scholars, students, and practitioners presenting a framework for resource building based on the strengths, assets, and capacities of people, a tool essential for working with rural communities. This guide considers methods for social workers to participate in the work of sustaining rural communities. Each chapter features a reading integrating the themes of capacity-building and rural social work; discussion questions that facilitate critical thinking around the chapter; and suggested activities and assignments. Rural Social Work, Second Edition explores: Important practice issues in rural communities, including the challenges of working with stigmatized populations such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, the homeless, and people living with HIV/AIDS Practice models that hold special promise for rural social workers, including evidence-based practice and community partnership models Newer research tools such as asset mapping, social network analysis, concept mapping, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Exploring how social workers can integrate the tremendous resources that exist in rural communities into their practice, Rural Social Work, Second Edition provides a solid introduction to the complex, challenging, and rewarding work of building and sustaining rural communities.

Although national and international aspects of the global sport system have become more important in the past decades, it is still at the local level where most of the sporting activities are realized. In order to draw attention to this aspect, the European Association for the Sociology of Sport (eass) chose the title “Local sport in Europe” for its 4th conference that was held in Münster, Germany in 2007. This volume is a collection of papers that were presented at this conference, containing amongst others the three keynote lectures by Horst Hübner (Local sports activity and sports facilities), Fabien Ohl (Local sport between identity and economy) and Gertrud Pfister (Sport for all – opportunities and challenges in different sport systems). The papers cover a great variety of topics that mirror problems and issues of contemporary society, such as violence, racism, gender and health issues, but also current problems of funding and organizational changes in the field of sport. The volume is subdivided into three principal themes: Sport, culture and society, Sport, ethics and identity and Sport, management and politics.