February 4 & 5, 2024, Atlanta, Georgia
Rural Livelihood Stories: Past, Present, and Future
Annual meeting is held concurrently with the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists
Submit abstract & Register: https://www.southernruralsociology.org/annual-meeting
From the SRSA President, Eleanor M. Green
Rural communities are often characterized on the bases of their struggles, but rural residents also generate innovations that contribute to resilience. Sharing these insights and building partnerships across traditional boundaries may contribute to broader rural prosperity. The theme for the Southern Rural Sociological Association’s (SRSA) 2024 conference is “Rural Livelihood Stories: Past, Present, and Future.” Practitioners, scholars, students, and storytellers of all types are invited to bring together these narratives in an effort to elevate and learn from each other.
Individually and collectively, people employ livelihoods strategies in the daily pursuit of a particular standard of living, facing shocks and stressors along the way. They seek to find and implement strategies to overcome barriers, create new channels to build success, and collaborate with others to craft new pictures of sustainability. How do the human, social, and material dimensions of livelihoods interconnect to shape the well-being of individuals, households, and their communities? What strategies, techniques, and institutional arrangements are utilized in pursuing livelihood pathways, what barriers are faced, and what can we learn from each other in order to imagine a more sustainable future?
The 2024 Annual Meeting calls for all forms of scholarly work to share these stories, particularly those that address theoretical frameworks, collaborations between scholars, practitioners, and communities, and diverse voices that provide accounts of livelihoods that inform future rural development. We invite the submission of papers, posters, and panels to discuss the importance of rural livelihoods stories across time, capturing snapshots of communities, struggles, and actions to pursue pathways to resilience that taken together will form a gallery exhibiting rural lives and landscapes.