Southern Rural Development Center Seeks Proposals for Poverty Conference

The Southern Rural Development Center seeks individuals to submit paper proposals for a poverty conference that the Center is organizing in collaboration with the RUPRI Rural Poverty Research Center. The conference, “In the Shadows of Poverty: Strengthening the Rural Poverty Research Capacity of the South,” is scheduled for July 21-23, 2004 in Memphis, TN. Information about the conference can be accessed on the SRDC website at: http://srdc.msstate.edu/poverty/index.html

Please consider submitting a paper proposal for the conference. If you are not engaged in any work directly related to poverty, but know of others who are doing innovative research on this subject, please send this email to them, or let us know and we will contact them directly. We want to particularly try to attract a group of new assistant professors who may be interested in devoting part of their careers to poverty-related research.

As noted in the conference website, the Center is seeking papers on issues related to poverty in the rural South, with some focusing on the following thematic areas:

• The Demographics of Poverty in the Rural South.
  Characteristics of the region’s poor and how they have changed over time


• Pockets of Impoverishment in the Region
  Focused attention on the regions most persistent poverty areas, including Appalachia, the Delta, the Black Belt and the Southwest Border Area


• Economic Restructuring in the Rural South: Alleviating or Accelerating Poverty Rates?
  Examining how economic shifts, globalization, outsourcing and other factors are impacting the economic health of rural people and places in the region


• Policies for Addressing Poverty: Past, Current and Future Strategies
  Exploring the successes and failures of past and current policies for reducing poverty, and examining new poverty fighting strategies for the rural South

However . . .

The Southern Rural Development Center is open to other poverty-related papers that give attention to other related areas of poverty research. These would include such topics as:

• The relevance of current theories and concepts in understanding rural poverty in the South


• New theories and methodologies for examining rural poverty in the region


• Efforts to tackle poverty through grassroots organizations/coalitions


• The effects of poverty on children


• The interplay of persistent poverty with factors such as region, gender, race and class

The Center encourages you to submit your paper abstract using the electronic submission form found on the website noted above. We thank you for your valuable assistance and look forward to hearing from you.

Please note that the deadline date for paper abstracts is April 23.