Abstract

The availability of appropriate social support is critical for social inclusion. This is most important under conditions of change and stress. In order to ensure such support, therefore, we need to understand the nature of social support in rural areas, how it is used, and the conditions that facilitate or inhibit its use. This paper provides theoretical and empirical contributions to understand those processes of social inclusion and exclusion as they are reflected in social support. Using a theoretical framework rooted in social relations and data from 1995 rural households in 20 field sites from across Canada, we examine various types of social support that are used under conditions of change, the characteristics of the households using them, and the community-level contexts that condition their use. Both policy and research implications are drawn from these results.