▪ Abstract  One of the most profound changes in the United States in the past century is the national abandonment of farming as a livelihood strategy. This change is evident both in the exodus of Americans from farming and in the conditions faced by the farmers remaining, most of whom are marginal producers in an increasingly concentrated industry. In this article, we provide a retrospective account of the empirical and sociological fate of family farmers. While sociologists have had longstanding interest in agrarian change, research on contemporary farmers is largely confined to speciality publications, with a loss to the discipline at large. We examine three distinct research traditions that continue to document farm transformation: research on macro-level transformation, community impacts, and household response. While these traditions evolved separately, we describe how they overlap and inform each other. Most notably, research on household and community responses delineates meso- and micro-level institutional factors that extend macro-level theory. Research on the contemporary farm population offers an alternative context in which to interrogate conventional accounts of economic development; such research yields insights about aspects of social life being rediscovered as part of the new economy and continues to pull sociologists into politically charged public policy debates.

Inglehart and Norris argue that the core clash between the Islamic world and the West is over issues concerning gender equality rather than democracy. However, a comparison between Arab and non-Arab Muslim societies is essential before drawing this conclusion. Here, we compared nations from each society and found significant differences in attitudes toward gender equality, democratic governance and religious identities. We analyzed models predicting support for democracy including views toward gender equality in each set of countries. In non-Arab Muslim countries, there were higher levels of support for women's rights, and those who supported gender equality were significantly more likely to support democracy.The reverse was true in the Arab Muslim countries. We argue that for a complete and unbiased form of democracy to emerge in the Arab Middle East, a rule of law that would protect gender equality, minority rights and citizen inclusion would need to be instituted. KEY WORDS democratization / gender equality / Muslim world 1151 Sociology

The groundswell of interest in Middle Eastern public opinion that arose from debates over the 'third wave' of democracy and the 'clash of civilizations' as well as from September 11 spawned numerous surveys from 2000 on. However, surveys from the Middle East, particularly longitudinal ones, are largely absent from earlier decades and limit ability to contextualize current findings. Drawing on three surveys from the 1990s, this article examines changes in Kuwaiti citizens' attitudes toward democracy and related issues in the years following the Gulf War of 1991. This serves as a baseline for current research not only in Kuwait but also in other nations, taking account of differences. Findings show that from 1994 to 1998, Kuwaitis increased their preference for democracy, but not for women's rights or western media. They developed more affinity for the Arab world, particularly the Gulf Coast countries. Regarding religious beliefs and practices, there was an increasing desire to separate religion from the public sphere while remaining religious privately. These trends were directional rather than cyclical or fluctuating, and they held across population subgroups.The 1990s was a decade of dramatic social change in Kuwait, a small but strategically important nation in the Middle East. It began with the 1990-1 invasion, occupation and then liberation from Iraqi military forces; it ended in 1999 with an Amiri decree granting women full political rights.

No abstract

No abstract