Continuity and change in place stratification: Spatial inequality and middle-range territorial units

Sociologists have produced large, well-known literatures on inequality across geographic territory at two ends of the spatial scale continuum, within the city and across nation-states. In this paper, I discuss a different scale of focus, subnational stratification processes across middle-range spatial units, those between the city and nation-state. While characterizing much contemporary rural sociological research, this approach to spatial inequality does not tend to be seen as a coherent tradition that cross-cuts substantive areas. First, I discuss why attention to subnational inequality, rural regions, and middle-range spatial units are important to social science understanding of stratification processes. Second, I provide an overview of contemporary research traditions in rural sociology which, taken together, form a distinct and innovative approach to spatial inequality. Third, I draw from my own work to explain how factors affecting socioeconomic inequalities across middle-range territorial units may be conceptualized and provide two sets of empirical examples. Finally, I discuss what should be done in terms of furthering rural sociology's regional approach to spatial inequality.