International Rural Gentrification

中产阶级化的概念--中等或高收入居民取代了特定地区内较贫穷的居民--在城市和城市环境中得到了相对较好的研究。它通常用来描述这种环境下的经济、人口和文化变化。农村地区和人口密度较低地区的中产阶级化研究要少得多。随着美国乡村面貌经历重大的社会和经济变革，了解这些变化背后的因素将变得越来越重要。在这个项目中，来自美国、英国和法国的学者将调查这三个国家的农村变化是否可以用农村中产阶级化的概念来解释。这一项目将研究的三个国家特别令人感兴趣，因为每个国家与另一个国家之间存在一些重要的差异，这将使研究人员能够测试关于农村环境中社会和经济变化的不同假说。在知识价值方面，这个项目将增加对中产阶级化的理论理解，因为它在不同的空间背景下上演，并在关于社会分层、城市中产阶级化和农村发展中的社会资本的基于资产的理论的文献中，从不同的国家背景对农村中产阶级化进行情景解释。在更广泛的影响方面，该项目将产生有利于农村发展专业人员和农村居民的关键谅解。鉴于许多发达经济体的人口老龄化，以及老龄化和向农村地区迁移之间的关系，未来几年农村中产阶级化的力量可能会加速。因此，了解全国范围内农村中产阶级化的程度及其背后的进程对今后的规划至关重要。研究人员将采用定性和定量相结合的方法，以更好地了解农村士绅化是否能够解释美国、英国和法国农村变化的形式和动态。这项工作将包括(1)内容和语篇分析，以了解这三个国家的文献如何使用中产阶级化的概念，(2)采访居民，以形成农村中产阶级化过程中所使用的社会资产的概念，以及(3)绘制和分析这三个国家的农村中产阶级化的地理位置。

The concept of gentrification -- where middle or high income residents displace poorer residents within a particular region -- is relatively well studied in cities and urban settings. It is commonly used to describe economic, demographic, and cultural change in such environments. Gentrification in rural areas and areas with lower population densities is much less well studied. As America's rural landscape undergoes significant social and economic transformations, it will become increasingly important to understand the factors underlying these changes. In this project, scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France will investigate whether rural changes in these three countries can be explained by the concept of rural gentrification. The three countries to be studied in this project are of particular interest because there are some important differences from one country to the next that will allow the researchers to test different hypotheses concerning social and economic change in rural settings. In terms of intellectual merit, this project will add to the theoretical understanding of gentrification as it plays out in different spatial contexts and situate interpretations of rural gentrification from different national contexts within the literatures on asset-based theorizations of social stratification, urban gentrification, and social capital in rural development. In terms of broader impacts, this project will produce key understandings that will be beneficial to rural development professionals and rural residents. Given the aging population in many advanced economies and the relationship between aging and migration to rural areas, forces of rural gentrification are likely to accelerate in the coming years. Therefore, knowledge of the extent of and processes behind rural gentrification across national contexts will be critical for future planning. The researchers will employ a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand whether rural gentrification is capable of explaining the form and dynamics of rural change across the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The work will consist of (1) content and discourse analyses to understand how the concept of gentrification is used in the literatures in the three countries, (2) interviews with residents to develop a conceptualization of social assets employed within processes of rural gentrification, and (3) mappings and analyses of the geographies of rural gentrification in the three countries.