Many popular images of rural people and places present them as homogeneous in terms of demographic, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics and trends. This may lead to oversimplification of rural areas and limited efforts to meet the needs and priorities of people living in them. Achieving a better understanding of rural communities requires defining our concepts and identifying indicators of rurality in terms of continuity and change. Following an exploration of the terms “rural” and “non-metropolitan,” Dr. Green shares a series of graphical images and narratives about Mississippi’s rural people and places using population-level information, emphasizing what these “snapshots” of rural life tell us about Mississippi and how we might use them to form a “collage” that captures both the similarity and diversity of rural life in our state.
Dr. John J. Green is trained as a rural sociologist, with more than 20 years of experience conducting research in rural Mississippi and the Southern U.S. His professional affiliations are with the Southern Rural Development Center and the Department of Agricultural Economics at Mississippi State University. His expertise is in the use of community and state demography with public data users to address issues related to quality of life and wellbeing.
