Reading Response 7: Concepts of Rural Communities
The main ideas and core concepts explored in the reading “Community Institutions in Rural Society” primarily discusses the examination of rural communities in American society. Rural communities are often defined by their differentiation from the populous urban areas. Thus, rural communities are defined as small populations with a primary agricultural setting. These communities are often farm lands and dwell outside of cities where they consist of few businesses and people. Essentially rural areas reflect the ideas of gemeinschaft (otherwise known as community) where their culture is interdependent as opposed to the individualistic culture of the urban areas. As in rural areas, …show more content…
Federalism is the mixed mode of government in a political system where the federal government is combined with regional governments. The main idea of federalism is essentially to maintain the rights of states and to represent territories at various levels all while preserving a strong union nationally. In the federalist system, the various levels of representation in the government operate at different levels where they are required to have a certain degree of capacity in order to essentially be able to secure the sufficient resources needed for the populations they serve. Moreover, the more government capacity a local government has the greater essential services they are able to provide for their populations such as institutional or community resources. Thus, posing a problem for rural communities as since they have such few occupants compared to urban centers and are usually non-metropolitan they ultimately lack the government capacity needed to secure sufficient resources. Therefore, rural areas tend to have lower levels of resources which leads to their sparser populations and thus fewer institutional resources. For instance, in most rural communities they tend to be very few institutions such as maybe one main hospital with very few physicians there to provide care for the small rural community. This is because it’s harder to attract health care workers within these rural areas as more opportunities and money lie in the urban centers. Essentially to say that it’s not that rural communities lack such institutions as schools, hospitals, churches, or libraries, but instead that rural communities are limited in their capacity to produce such public goods and choice of opportunities for their sparse