Pierce Greenberg publishes article on federal environmental crime prosecution patterns in Nature Sustainability
Pierce Greenberg publishes article on federal environmental crime prosecution patterns in Nature Sustainability
Pierce Greenberg from Clemson University recently published an article in Nature Sustainability titled “Social factors shape federal environmental crime prosecution patterns in the USA.” As he notes, enforcement of environmental laws and regulations is critical to achieving a cleaner environment and alleviating inequitable distributions of environmental harms. He and his coauthors examined the geographic patterning of US federal environmental crime prosecutions from 2011 to 2020, finding that counties with higher levels of socioeconomic status have more environmental criminal prosecutions, on average, while environmental conditions such as air and water quality have no effect on environmental crime prosecution patterns.
Joe Donnermeyer, a rural criminologist who is retired from the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University, recently published a book with Routledge titled “Farm Crime: An International Perspective.” It is billed as the first book to summarize the existing literature from across the globe about agricultural victimization and seeks to demonstrate the vulnerability of farms and farm families to both property and violent crime and how it threatens their livelihood and lifestyles. The book provides both a descriptive synthesis of agricultural victimization and a discussion of various criminological theories applied to its study and is useful for a variety of researchers and scientists.
Edith-Marie Green, a PhD candidate in the Population Health Sciences program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently published a policy comment in World Medical & Health Policy titled “Hospice and Palliative Care-Related Policy in the United States and Germany in the Context of Recent Governmental Changes.” Green draws on principles of demography, political science, and her own previous research to discuss the current policy landscape for hospice and palliative care in the United States and Germany, as well as the political complexities that impact these policies. This research is especially important, she posits, as the global population continues to age.
Dr. Casey Jakubowski, a faculty member at Mohawk Valley Community College, has an upcoming book with Bloomsbury titled “Settling Conflict in Rural New York Schools.” In the book, he examines the history of conflict in education through the lens of specific case studies from schools in rural areas of New York. He uses both historical and contemporary resources to both expand research on the history of educational reform post-World War II outside of the urban focus predominant in the field and challenge the traditional rural deficit narrative.
Michael Schulman from North Carolina State University, along with some colleagues, recently published in an article in the Rural Sociology journal titled “Agrarian Frames, Farm Financial Crisis, and Farmer Stress: A Qualitative Comparison of Small-Scale Farmers.” The team’s research uses qualitative methods to investigate the framing that small-scale farmers use to conceptualize of crises and stress, especially in terms of race. They note that interventions to alleviate the stress that farmers face should be culturally relevant.
Lisa Pruitt (University of California, Davis), Mara Casey Tieken (Bates College), and Sarah Walton (University of Maine) all contributed chapters to an upcoming edited volume from De Gruyter titled “Rethinking Rural Politics Place-Based Identity, Political Ideology, and Policy in Rural America.” Edited by Nicholas Jacobs, the book brings together a collection of leading experts in rural studies to offer a comprehensive framework for understanding rural America and expand the scope of existing research. Jacobs will be a plenary speaker at the 2026 RSS meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Rural Sociological Society member Dr. Florence Becot was recently quoted in a National Public Radio piece titled “Farmers are about to pay a lot more for health insurance.” Becot is a rural sociologist and associate professor in agricultural health and safety at the Pennsylvania State University. She spoke on how essential it is that farmers have adequate insurance; NPR specifically cited a 2022 study in which she found that more than 20% of U.S. farmers had medical debt exceeding $1,000, and more than half were not confident they could cover the costs of a major illness or injury. As Becot notes, farmers are incredibly vulnerable, especially as ongoing changes in tariffs and subsidies impact their ability to make a profit.
Shannon Monnat (Syracuse University) and Tim Slack (Louisiana State University) recently published an article in The Conversation titled “6 myths about rural America: How conventional wisdom gets it wrong.” Monnat and Slack are both rural demographers who study the causes and consequences of well-being in rural America who also recently published a book together titled “Rural and Small-Town America: Context, Composition, and Complexities.” Their article discusses myths related to depopulation, farming, race, health, “traditional family,” and the political idea of “rural revolt.” Their article is an eye-opening and accessible window into the realities that rural communities face.
Kautstubh Kumar and Douglas Jackson-Smith, both from the Ohio State University, along with their colleague Jeffrey M. Bielicki, recently published an article in the journal “Environmental Science & Policy.” The article, titled “Evaluating credibility, legitimacy, and salience in a participatory modeling project in the food, energy, water nexus,” assessed participatory modeling in the context of the credibility, legitimacy, and salience framework. This work helps societal actors and stakeholders make project decisions for development and ensure that goals of these different parties align when planning and executing these projects.
RSS member Hannah Haksgaard, a Professor at University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law, was recently award the Professional Scholarship Award (book) by the American Agricultural Law Association. Her book “The Rural Lawyer: How To Incentivize Rural Law Practice and Help Small Communities Thrive” was published in 2025 by Cambridge University Press. Focusing on South Dakota’s pioneering Rural Attorney Recruitment Program, this book demonstrates how targeted legislative interventions can help small communities thrive.