ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to discuss explanations of violence in rural communities. One of the studies of rural violence was conducted by W. B. Bankston and H. D. Allen and focused on variations in rural homicide within the state of Louisiana. Eschewing the subculture approach, but maintaining the distinctiveness of rural social structure and related cultural values, several multivariate studies adopted a social development/social capital framework. There are several theories associated with rural work on violence that point the way toward a sounder construction of theory for explaining violence in a rural context. Social disorganization theory itself is a theory that seeks to explain how places vary in their social control influences on the people who live there and their levels of conforming and deviant/criminal behavior based on various social structural, cultural, and economic characteristics. The social disorganization variables included population instability, race/ethnic heterogeneity, the percent of children in households with incomes below the poverty line, and the percent of single female-headed households.
