In Ranching, Mining, and the Human Impact of Natural Resource Development, Raymond L. Gold observes and reports on people whose lives have been significantly affected by the industrialization of rural communities in the American West. Such community change research is rarely done, so this classic study is invaluable for its real world groundings applicable to a variety of social science theories. The study evolved out of ethnographic research on Western communities done over a full decade.

This was the first work of its kind to examine and account for the rise of local...