Some of the most intense effects of globalization can be seen in rural communities. Despite a booming world economy, rural communities-and the people who work in natural-resource industries like farming, forestry, mining or fishing-have been hard hit by recent international trade agreements. This collection looks at changing rural life, across the country and around the globe.

Roger Epp is Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta. He served as founding Dean of the University's Augustana Campus in Camrose from 2004 to 2011. Much of his recent writing has explored what it means to live in the prairie West with a sense of memory, inheritance and care. He is author of We Are All Treaty People: Prairie Essays (2008), contributing co-editor of Writing Off the Rural West (2001) and co-producer of the documentary "The Canadian Clearances" for CBC Radio Ideas.

Roger Epp's profile page

Dave Whitson is Professor of Political Science and Canadian Studies at the University of Alberta. Originally from Ontario, he has lived and taught in Western Canada for the last fifteen years. His research interests for much of his career focused on sports and leisure, especially the place of sports in Canadian popular culture, and he is co-author of Hockey Night in Canada: Sports, Identities, and Cultural Politics. His more recent research has focused on tourism, and the transformation of urban and rural places alike in order to satisfy tourists` expectations. He is currently engaged in research that examines the transformation of rural communities across Canada by golf, skiing, and recreational property developments. www.arts.ualberta.ca/~polisci/faculty/whitson.html

Dave Whitson's profile page

"Here, thankfully, is a collection of essays that recognizes life in the rural West is multi-layered, variegated and even surprising." Mark Lisac, Edmonton Journal

" one of the most important contributions in recent years to the study of rural Western Canada." Jeffery Taylor, the Post

".great value to anyone who wants to truly understand the reasons behind a major tearing of the very fabric of the nation." Verne Clemence, The StarPhoenix

"Liberal, market societies so value individualism and exchange relations that the tolls taken by liberal practices on self-worth and honour-based societies figure poorly in policy calculations. Authors here directly or otherwise challenge the costs of concentration and globalization, raising basic questions of what our politics and policy ought to be for. Writing Off the Rural West is an able, often stimulating tour of the prairie provinces' rural settlements, hanging on due to the slender hopes and enduring habits of those who remain eager to live in, not write off, their places. The transformation of Canada's rural life continues at a rapid pace, with too little public debate, too little consideration for the future of the landscape, the social and personal consequences of these new, sometimes more harsh arrangements. This collection should help promote clear thinking on ways of life and places now unfamiliar to many." Michael Treleaven, The American Review of Canadian Studies, Winter 2005.

"In Writing Off the Rural West, Roger Epp and Dave Whitson, two Alberta political scientists, have gathered together a collection of essays that either directly examine the exodus from the rural West or put it into the wider context of globalization. The result is a thought-provoking look at the past, present, and futures of Western Canada's heartland." Alberta Views

"This informative book is, sadly, an eloquently written lament. It accounts for the former greatness of the rural west, the importance of rural communities to a younger nation, and the work community leaders face in order to revitalize the grandeur that was once Canada's rural west...It looks like the rural west will have to revitalize itself from with the community level, bottom-up. This book is a start." Matthew Majkut, AMM Policy Analyst (Full review at: www.amm.mb.ca/Magazine/April 2002/bookreview.htm)

"Dave Whitson...feels that it becomes a question of what rural societies can do to stem the outflow of people and social capital that will help keep people on the land....All of this requires the rebirth of political activism outside party politics, according to Roger Epp." Jane Ross, Legacy, Spring 2002

"This edited volume by Roger Epp and Dave Whitson on the transformation of community in the rural west presents an interesting picture of the effects of globalization on rural places....This book would be perfectly appropriate for an upper-level undergraduate class in geography, rural sociology, or a course on globalization." The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology Revue

"Twenty-four learned authors have contributed to this analysis of the fast change from rural to urban that rivals the exodus of the Dirty Thirties....Highlights are the dispute between Ranchers and the Sour Gas Industry, and the White-Aboriginal Relations. Useful to litigators in these fields." The Barrister, Alberta Civil Trial Lawyers Association

"Writing Off the Rural West is to be strongly recommended as reading for anyone interested in learning more about how communities in rural Canada are responding to the powerful external forces buffeting them. It is rendered more valuable by the breadth of expertise of its contributors and the wealth of case studies it incorporates. I have no doubt that I shall be dipping into this book frequently over the coming months for illustrations of the modern rural transformations throughout western Canada." Guy M. Robinson, British Journal of Canadian Studies