Rural Well-Being and Ingenuity
Claiming Our Rural Future
Rural America is facing rapid, disruptive change—from economic restructuring and hospital closures to climate pressures, technological advances, and threats to public health. Yet rural people are not simply accepting decline as inevitable. Across the country, they are drawing on creativity, resilience, and determination to claim a different future. Rural Well-Being and Ingenuity offers a way to understand economic, environmental, health, and community well-being. It examines how power, institutions, investment, and communities’ capacity to act on their own behalf shape rural outcomes. Rural ingenuity is the ability to recognize opportunities, mobilize local assets, solve problems, and build new forms of cooperation. Through examples of regional collaboration, conflict resolution, entrepreneurship and placemaking, and resilience, the book shows what rural communities can achieve—and what governments, philanthropy, and institutions must do to support them. This is a call to invest in rural people’s capacity to determine their own futures.
Rural America is facing rapid, disruptive change—from economic restructuring and hospital closures to climate pressures, technological advances, and threats to public health. Yet rural people are not simply accepting decline as inevitable. Across the country, they are drawing on creativity, resilience, and determination to claim a different future. Rural Well-Being and Ingenuity offers a way to understand economic, environmental, health, and community well-being. It examines how power, institutions, investment, and communities’ capacity to act on their own behalf shape rural outcomes. Rural ingenuity is the ability to recognize opportunities, mobilize local assets, solve problems, and build new forms of cooperation. Through examples of regional collaboration, conflict resolution, entrepreneurship and placemaking, and resilience, the book shows what rural communities can achieve—and what governments, philanthropy, and institutions must do to support them. This is a call to invest in rural people’s capacity to determine their own futures.
Available in paperback from Amazon.com or your independent bookseller, or download an eBook from Kindle.
Available in paperback from Amazon.com or your independent bookseller, or download an eBook from Kindle.
To schedule a call, meeting, or speaking engagementPhone/Text: (573) 673-1949Email: brian@briandabson.com
What's different about this book?
1. It reframes rural development around well-being, not simply economic growth.
The book argues that rural success cannot be measured primarily by jobs, income, population growth, or business attraction. Rural well-being has interconnected economic, environmental, health, and community dimensions. Development that produces jobs while degrading water, undermining health, concentrating ownership, or weakening community institutions is not necessarily successful development. This integrated framework lets you examine the trade-offs that conventional economic-development approaches often obscure.
2. Its central proposition is rural ingenuity: rural people are actors, not merely recipients of policy.
Much rural policy discourse begins with deficits—declining population, limited capacity, inadequate infrastructure, weak markets. The book acknowledges those constraints but starts elsewhere: What capacity do rural people and institutions have to shape their own futures? Rural ingenuity is the ability to recognize opportunities, mobilize assets, solve problems, form new collaborations, and adapt institutions to changing circumstances. Importantly, it is not romanticized self-reliance. Ingenuity works best when communities have access to capable institutions, outside expertise, capital, networks, and supportive public policy.
3. It puts power, institutions, and investment alongside markets and policy as determinants of rural outcomes.
The book argues that rural outcomes are not simply the result of impersonal demographic and market forces. They depend heavily on who controls land and resources, who makes decisions, which institutions have capacity and legitimacy, where public and private capital flows, and whether communities can influence those systems. That shifts the question from “Why are some rural places falling behind?” to “What structures are producing these outcomes, and where are the leverage points for changing them?”
4. It moves from diagnosis to an institutional agenda for action.
The book does not end with “rural communities need more resources.” It identifies capabilities that enable ingenuity to operate at scale, particularly regional collaboration, constructive conflict resolution, entrepreneurship and placemaking, and resilience. These are not four unrelated programs; they are ways to build the institutional capacity rural communities need to navigate economic restructuring, climate change, technological change, healthcare pressures, and other disruptions. This also helps connect local action with regional organizations, community colleges, health systems, Extension, philanthropy, CDFIs, governments, and other institutional allies.
5. It is fundamentally a book about claiming the future rather than preserving the past.
The title matters. The book rejects both the narrative of inevitable rural decline and the nostalgic notion that rural policy should restore an earlier rural America. Rural places are already being reshaped by technology, energy transitions, climate change, demographic shifts, the restructuring of agriculture and healthcare, and new forms of work and production. The real question is whether rural people will simply experience those changes or have meaningful influence over them. Hence, Claiming Our Rural Future: the future is not predetermined.
So what is the book really arguing?
Rural America’s future is not predetermined by markets, demographics, or national policy.
Rural outcomes reflect choices about power, institutions, investment, and community capacity.
The book argues that the goal should be rural well-being—not growth for its own sake—and that rural ingenuity gives communities agency to shape that future, provided they have the institutional relationships and resources to act.
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"At Wallowa Resources, we built our Stewardship Economy model out of necessity, after a mill closure cost our county over a fifth of its jobs. Brian Dabson's Rural Well-Being and Ingenuity shows that our story is one of many and gives it a shared language: ingenuity as the means, well-being as the goal. This book belongs on the desk of anyone working to help rural communities steward their own future." Nils ChristoffersenWallowa Resources
"The future of rural America is built on leadership, creativity, collaboration, and the determination to thrive. Rural Well-Being and Ingenuity is a celebration of the people and practices driving resilience, opportunity, and lasting prosperity in small communities across every corner of the country."Nathan OhleInternational Economic Development Council
"Rural Well Being and Ingenuity not only provides a clear understanding of what is happening in rural America today but also provides a policy roadmap for the future. Brian highlights the importance of developing a social contract between rural and urban areas, recognizing the value of rural ingenuity and the importance of local self-determination. A must-read for both local and national policy leaders alike."Alan MorganNational Rural Health Association
Dabson's attention to the contextual details, the nuances of history, and the human dynamics of rural places is apparent in his careful consideration of my home region of Western NC and Appalachia, before and after Helene...Rural Well-Being and Ingenuity represents a great place to start if you want to understand rural places, how we got here, and where we're going.Andrew CrossonInvest Appalachia
What Are They Saying?
Brian Dabson draws on his historical understanding of rural economic development, his love for rural people and places, and the lived experiences of rural practitioners to create a compelling response to an all-too-often negative narrative about rural America....For rural practitioners, policymakers, and advocates, this book offers guidance for navigating an increasingly uncertain future, while recognizing that rural ingenuity is present and flourishing in many places. For those who still need to be convinced that rural places matter and that our future depends on the ingenuity, stewardship, and leadership ethos of rural people, this book is a must-read.Deb Markley Locus
True to form, Brian Dabson has summoned the imagination on what is possible for the collective well-being of rural America while also naming the real, present-day challenges at hand. This ‘good read’ reflects the art of weaving together personal stories with in-depth research and analysis of the rural experience, offering us a window into a future where all rural people and places thrive and a call to take responsibility for our shared futures.Marjory GivensUniversity of Wisconsin, Population Health Institute
CONTENTS
Preface 1. INTRODUCTION Part I: REIMAGINING RURAL AMERICA 2. POSITIVE RURAL FUTURES • Visioning Rural Well-being • Catalyzing Action Through Rural Ingenuity • Accepting Responsibility for Future Generations • Managing Competing Imperatives • Searching for Fresh Perspectives • Four Dimensions of Rural Ingenuity • The Task Ahead 3. SHIFTING NARRATIVES • Rural Stories • Shifting Narratives • So, What is Wrong with Rural America? • Rage and Politics • Shifting the Narrative 4. FEDERAL ENGAGEMENT WITH RURAL AMERICA • Massive Investment in Rural America... • ...Or Disinvestment in Rural America? • External Shocks and the Rural Economy • Looking Forward, Not Back 5. POWER AND POSSIBILITIES • Power, Ownership, and Control of Rural Assets • Exploitation and Extraction of Natural Resources • Artificial Intelligence • The Climate Crisis • Three Scenarios Part II: PRACTICING RURAL INGENUITY 6. ECONOMIC WELL-BEING • Economic Well-Being and Rural Ingenuity • Challenges and Trends • Rural Economic Development Strategies • Investment as a Tool for Rural Well-Being • Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses • Rural Workforce Development
Preface 1. INTRODUCTION Part I: REIMAGINING RURAL AMERICA 2. POSITIVE RURAL FUTURES • Visioning Rural Well-being • Catalyzing Action Through Rural Ingenuity • Accepting Responsibility for Future Generations • Managing Competing Imperatives • Searching for Fresh Perspectives • Four Dimensions of Rural Ingenuity • The Task Ahead 3. SHIFTING NARRATIVES • Rural Stories • Shifting Narratives • So, What is Wrong with Rural America? • Rage and Politics • Shifting the Narrative 4. FEDERAL ENGAGEMENT WITH RURAL AMERICA • Massive Investment in Rural America... • ...Or Disinvestment in Rural America? • External Shocks and the Rural Economy • Looking Forward, Not Back 5. POWER AND POSSIBILITIES • Power, Ownership, and Control of Rural Assets • Exploitation and Extraction of Natural Resources • Artificial Intelligence • The Climate Crisis • Three Scenarios Part II: PRACTICING RURAL INGENUITY 6. ECONOMIC WELL-BEING • Economic Well-Being and Rural Ingenuity • Challenges and Trends • Rural Economic Development Strategies • Investment as a Tool for Rural Well-Being • Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses • Rural Workforce Development
7. ENVIRONMENTAL WELL-BEING • Environmental Well-Being and Rural Ingenuity • The Climate Crisis and Rural America • The Stewardship Ethic • The Stewardship Economy • Divergent Farming Futures 8. HEALTH & COMMUNITY WELL-BEING • Health & Community Well-Being and Rural Ingenuity • Why Rural Health Matters • Three Rural Health Challenges • What is Driving Positive Change? • The Importance of Community Trust 9. COMPETING DEMANDS AND TRADE-OFFS • Battle Lines • Capturing Revenues, Offsetting Costs • Implications for Rural Well-being Part III: CLAIMING OUR RURAL FUTURE 10. ENABLING FACTORS • Regional Collaboration • Conflict Resolution • Entrepreneurship and Place-Making • Resilience • Enabling Factors: Diagnosis to Action 11. MAKING RURAL WELL-BEING A REALITY • The Promise and Limits of Rural Ingenuity • Lessons from the Past • It’s Time for a New Social Contract • Intermediary Infrastructure for Rural Ingenuity • A Broader Institutional Context for Rural Ingenuity • Rural Investment Architecture • Putting the Pieces Together 12. A SHARED RESPONSIBILITY • A Shared Responsibility • Building Momentum • Early Priorities • Finally… POSTSCRIPT
7. ENVIRONMENTAL WELL-BEING • Environmental Well-Being and Rural Ingenuity • The Climate Crisis and Rural America • The Stewardship Ethic • The Stewardship Economy • Divergent Farming Futures 8. HEALTH & COMMUNITY WELL-BEING • Health & Community Well-Being and Rural Ingenuity • Why Rural Health Matters • Three Rural Health Challenges • What is Driving Positive Change? • The Importance of Community Trust 9. COMPETING DEMANDS AND TRADE-OFFS • Battle Lines • Capturing Revenues, Offsetting Costs • Implications for Rural Well-being Part III: CLAIMING OUR RURAL FUTURE 10. ENABLING FACTORS • Regional Collaboration • Conflict Resolution • Entrepreneurship and Place-Making • Resilience • Enabling Factors: Diagnosis to Action 11. MAKING RURAL WELL-BEING A REALITY • The Promise and Limits of Rural Ingenuity • Lessons from the Past • It’s Time for a New Social Contract • Intermediary Infrastructure for Rural Ingenuity • A Broader Institutional Context for Rural Ingenuity • Rural Investment Architecture • Putting the Pieces Together 12. A SHARED RESPONSIBILITY • A Shared Responsibility • Building Momentum • Early Priorities • Finally… POSTSCRIPT
What's In The Book?