Worldwide, communities face disruptions driven by phenomena such as climate change and globalization. Socio-ecological resilience theorists have called for greater attention to the social dynamics that inform whether and how communities are reorganized and sustained in response to such challenges. Scholars increasingly stress that social heterogeneities provide resources that communities can mobilize to adapt and sustain themselves in response to disruptions. Utilizing the sociological literature that emphasizes that social solidarities and collective identities are centrally important to community responses to socio-ecological disruptions, we argue that solidarities grounded in collective identities can act as important mediators between social heterogeneity and resilience. Drawing on qualitative data from rural communities in the central United States and southwestern Uruguay, we explore how group solidarity enabled individuals to more effectively draw on their diverse knowledges, skills, and resources to sustain their communities. Linked by a collective identity grounded in rurality, in each setting, individuals effectively worked together to adapt to emerging socio-ecological disruptions. These results suggest that we can better understand how social heterogeneities inform resilience by considering how solidarities grounded in collective identities influence whether and how individuals can successfully cooperate to rearrange and sustain their communities. When working with rural communities, specifically, it will be especially important to account for solidarities and collective identities tied to rurality.

The natural and built environment of rural communities in southwestern Uruguay have been recently impacted by the intensification and expansion of agriculture. A large body of sociological and resilience literature highlights the importance of collective and community responses to stresses created by anthropogenic and/or natural changes. However, what has been less understood is how structural changes and sociopolitical contexts of rural communities impact their responses. Based on semi-structured interviews with key informants, participant observation at local public meetings during 2012 and 2013, and digital spatial analysis (between 2003 and 2016), we use the Community Capitals Framework to explore community resilience and collective agency, in response to multiple stresses in two communities of southwestern Uruguay. Results show multiple stresses affecting community well-being and the nature of sociopolitical contexts (social and political capitals), influenced local responses and access to resources. The analysis centers on structural changes of communities and critical aspects of social and political capitals as well as the needs for scholars and/or practitioners working on community resilience, to incorporate socio-spatial dimensions of inequality to better understand whether, why, and how communities respond to salient disruptions in specific rural settings.

Oktibbeha County (Mississippi) is among the highest food cost and food insecure counties in the nation. In 2016, a group of scholars from a land-grant university held periodic meetings to address food insecurity, food access, and local food systems development, creating the Oktibbeha Food Policy Council (OFPC). A large body of literature on food justice, intersectionality, food policy councils, and agri-environmental assemblage highlights the importance of these types of collaborative initiatives to facilitate better availability and access to fresh and healthy food among historically marginalized groups. However, little has been studied on how food policy councils can be generated and evolve in historically marginalized rural communities of the South. By analyzing the OFPC, this paper aims to contribute to this gap in the existing literature, exploring what factors led to its creation and development. Results of this study show how food justice and the intersection of race and socioeconomic status with local agri-food problems influenced the assemblage and work of this group, creating new opportunities, for low-income families and limited resource Black farmers. Discussions and conclusions center on the lessons, opportunities, and challenges learned from this experience and critical aspects that may be contemplated by similar initiatives and contexts.

Since the beginning of the 21^st century, rural communities in southwestern Uruguay have responded differently to agri-environmental challenges created by increases in the production of genetically modified crops. Resilience literature highlights the importance of community identity on local responses, but little has been explored about how economic and political aspects that characterize community identity influence community governance to address local environmental challenges. Based on historical texts, interviews with key informants, participant observation and analysis of reports from public meetings in two communities of southwestern Uruguay, this article explores how community identities were related to whether and/or how communities responded. Results from this comparative study highlight how economic and political aspects influencing community identity could either constraint or facilitate community governance and resilience.

Latinx immigrant workers on U.S. dairy farms experience multiple challenges. During recent decades, a myriad of stakeholders from the civil society and the food system have worked together to address struggles experienced by immigrant farmworkers and other marginalized groups. Meanwhile, assemblage and governance perspectives have gained the attention of scholars and practitioners addressing power relations and social challenges in the food system. Based on interviews with members of an immigrant organization in Vermont, this study examines how Latinx immigrant farmworkers and their allies created and leveraged opportunities to transform relations of power and address needs and problems through the creation of new assemblages. Results show how members of this organization were able to exercise and transform different forms of power. The construction of new social relationships and assemblages enabled Latinx immigrant farmworkers to transform invisible power into hidden and visible power, leading to structural changes, such as the creation of the first fair food program in the U.S. dairy industry.