Posted to the Ethnos Project by on December 6th, 2013

The JRCD is published by the Rural Development Institute (RDI) at Brandon University. RDI was established in 1989 as an academic research centre and a leading source of information on issues affecting rural communities in western Canada and elsewhere. The JRCD benefitted with intitial funding from the Manitoba Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives.

Rationale for the Journal

There are a number of journals that exist in the area of rural (Journal of Rural Studies, Rural Sociology) and community (Community Development Journal, Journal of the Community Development Society, Small Town) studies. The purpose of the JRCD is to provide a venue for academics to publish findings in the field of development studies in either or both rural and community contexts.

Beyond the demographic trends toward urban, there are issues of remoteness, regional differences, resource dependency and restructuring, environmental degradation, unemployment and depopulation, urban influence/dominance, etc. that need to be addressed. Connections can be made to a variety of traditional (e.g. Geography, Sociology, Political Science, Economics) and non-traditional (e.g. Rural Development, Health Studies, Environmental Studies) disciplines, as well as research areas and perspectives (e.g. resource analysis, political economy, community action theory, community development).

Subject Areas of Interest

A range of subject areas have has been identified for publication in The JRCD:

  • economic restructuring and diversification
  • social capital, capacity and cohesion
  • resource development and environmental condition
  • community and regional development
  • doing development
  • social problems and community development
  • political economy of rural development
  • experiences with development activities/interventions
  • program and policy evaluation
  • local economic development
  • condition (health, well-being, quality of life, sustainability)
  • gender issues in development
  • land-use, environmental and community planning
  • rural governance and service provision
  • changing communications technology

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *