The 2013 Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society was held at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel from 6-9 August. The theme was ‘An Injury to One is an Injury to All: Resistance and Resilience in an Age of Retrenchment’. This theme calls attention to the rural roots of solidarity and change in the context of global restructuring and political retrenchment. What can we learn from the struggles of rural peoples? How can we assist in the construction of local alternatives to the global that revitalize networks and enhance community and social well-being? Looking forward, how can the field of rural sociology continue to make contributions to public policy and civil society? Papers and sessions will deal with past and present rural social movements and with what we can learn from their successes and failures. Interest groups will be encouraged to develop sessions on the social bases of resistance and resiliency across place and space. The injuries endured by rural peoples across the globe—physical, social psychological, and socioeconomic—will be explored as a cross-cutting theme for scholarship and action.

The XXV Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology was held in Florence, Italy, from 29 July – 1 August 2013. For more information please visit the website: http://www.florenceesrs2013.com/.

XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology will be held in Yokohama Japan in July 2014.

For details of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Agriculture and Food (RC 40) program please visit the congress website.

On-line abstract submission will be open in the period June 3, 2013- September 30, 2013.

The ‘making alternative food networks work: hitching the horse of critique to the wagon of improvement’ conference was held in Los Angeles, California, 9-13 April 2013.

This was the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers and the organisers received papers on how alternative food networks are making a difference locally and globally.

More information is available at the AAG Annual Meeting website.

Early conference information: The next IRSA Congress is to be held in Toronto, Canada, in August 2016 (dates are still tentative). Read more

A very successful XIII World Congress of Rural Sociology was held in Lisbon, Portugal, between 29 July and 4 August 2012 with over 1000 participants delivering close to 1500 papers. The President congratulates the organizers and Program Committee for an excellent outcome.The final program – along with a number of on-line papers – can be found at the congress website: http://irsa2012.com/event/wcrs-2012/