Agriculture and rurality: beginning the 'final separation'?

摘要

This paper analyses when is a farm a farm, when is rural rural, and whether the issue of the rural-urban continuum has returned. Decades ago rural sociology worked itself into two subjects: rural-urban differences and attempts to define the rural-urban fringe. Although these conceptual problems eventually were exhausted, recent developments in California, USA, raise the possibility of a revival, although in new form. Three cases (the success of Napa Valley winemaking and the urban crowding that hasaccompanied it, the explosion of wine grape acreage in neighbouring Sonoma County as demand for premium wine grapes has increased dramatically, and an antibody-manufacturing goat "farm" in Santa Cruz County) have spurred community controversies and arenow generating debates over the definition of "agriculture," whether agriculture is rural, and when is rural rural.