About Rural Sociology
If you are interested in becoming part of the learning processes designed to prepare you to take an active part in the discovery, integration, application and teaching of new knowledge about rural people and places, you should consider graduate study in rural sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Rural sociologists have made some of the most important intellectual contributions to our understanding of society.
As early as 1911, rural sociologists worked to identify the factors that contributed to identification with and attachment to community in isolated rural areas. Later, rural sociologists documented the diffusion processes by which farmers, consumers and rural households adopt new technologies.
More recently, rural sociologists have devoted their attention to:
- Retransitioning of rural communities due to globalization.
- Agricultural commodity systems.
- Sustainable environmental relationships between production systems and natural resource endowments.
- The effect of telecommunications and mass media on relationships within and among rural communities.
In addition, rural sociologists have been central figures in international development work for more than 40 years.
Soon after the first sociology department was established at the University of Chicago about 1900, the application of sociology to assist in the solution of rural problems became a focus at many land-grant institutions with the passage of the Purnell Act in 1925.
Rural sociology became a recognized field of study at MU when the Rural Life Program within the Department of Agricultural Economics was founded in 1919. MU has offered formal course work in rural sociology since 1921. Carl Taylor taught the first courses and provided leadership in creating a new field of study.
