Development Sociology

Overview

Education

• Faculty in the field rely on a wide range of domestic and international funding to support research and graduate students. Some field members use New York State Agricultural Experiment Station funding to support studies of sustainable agricultural practices; small-town growth and decline; employment trends in non-metropolitan areas; the social organization of agriculture; multi-county and regional development; environmental problems; and the social impact of advanced agricultural techniques.

• Research abroad includes studies of small-farmer agriculture in the context of globalization, processes of village and regional development, political ecology, and social demography. Students and faculty members are actively conducting research in South America, Latin America, China, Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Many of these studies deal with the relationship of agricultural production to social organization, the conditions of growth (and marginalization) for communities and regions, and the relation of demographic trends to all of those.

For the Ph.D. degree, students are expected to demonstrate 

• a thorough knowledge of social theory, with special emphasis on theories in their major concentration, 
• knowledge of previous and current research pertinent to the concentration, 

• knowledge of multiple research methods, with special emphasis on research design, data collection, and analytical techniques relevant to study in the concentration.