None.

No abstract

No abstract

To revisit the rural‐urban contrast, we use data from non‐metropolitan and metropolitan subsamples of the 1985 General Social Survey to test whether, compared to personal networks in urban settings, personal networks in rural settings contain ties of greater intensity and role multiplexity, are based more on kinship and neighborhood solidarities rather than on friendship, are smaller, are denser, and have greater educational, race‐ethnic, and religious homogeneity, but less age and gender homogeneity. Our results are generally consistent with these predictions. We then present evidence for rural diversity by comparing data from residents of a two‐parish nonmetropolitan area in southwestern Louisiana to the nonmetropolitan subsample of the GSS. After discussing possible mechanisms for this covariation of spatial and aspatial communities, we conclude by commenting on the potential of network analysis to contribute to the resolution of these and other substantively important problems in rural sociology.

As they examine the complex issues currently facing rural America, rural sociologists draw increasingly on studies of community attachment. Because this research tradition has established the superiority of the systemic model, recent studies in rural and urban settings have focused on the conceptualization and operationalization of its components. We introduce four operational refinements to this model, and we test our refined model with data from one geographic area in south‐west Louisiana. We find that, although our operational refinements improve our understanding of community attachment, additional refinements are necessary. We conclude by exploring the implications of community attachment studies for attempts to revitalize community in rural settings.