Small Town America

Author : Robert Wuthnow
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691165823
Total Pages : 518 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Small-Town America written by Robert Wuthnow and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing examination of small-town life More than thirty million Americans live in small, out-of-the-way places. Many of them could have joined the vast majority of Americans who live in cities and suburbs. They could live closer to more lucrative careers and convenient shopping, a wider range of educational opportunities, and more robust health care. But they have opted to live differently. In Small-Town America, we meet factory workers, shop owners, retirees, teachers, clergy, and mayors—residents who show neighborliness in small ways, but who also worry about everything from school closings and their children's futures to the ups and downs of the local economy. Drawing on more than seven hundred in-depth interviews in hundreds of towns across America and three decades of census data, Robert Wuthnow shows the fragility of community in small towns. He covers a host of topics, including the symbols and rituals of small-town life, the roles of formal and informal leaders, the social role of religious congregations, the perception of moral and economic decline, and the myriad ways residents in small towns make sense of their own lives. Wuthnow also tackles difficult issues such as class and race, abortion, homosexuality, and substance abuse. Small-Town America paints a rich panorama of individuals who reside in small communities, finding that, for many people, living in a small town is an important part of self-identity.

Author :
Publisher : ABRAMS
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Small Town America written by and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 1994 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: And his poignant, engaging text, grounded in his memories of his own small town upbringing and populated by characters he has met in the course of his work, brings to life the essence of the small town experience.

Author : Richard R. Lingeman
Publisher : Putnam Publishing Group
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 560 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Small Town America written by Richard R. Lingeman and published by Putnam Publishing Group. This book was released on 1980 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The history of America is the history of its small towns. For better or worse, small town values, convictions, and attitudes have shaped the psyche of this nation...[This book] chronicles the rise and fall of small towns from the Atlantic to the Pacific and interweaves the story of their development with the main strands of American history..."--inside flap.

Author : Glenn V. Fuguitt
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN 13 : 1610442326
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rural and Small Town America written by Glenn V. Fuguitt and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1989-11-21 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Important differences persist between rural and urban America, despite profound economic changes and the notorious homogenizing influence of the media. As Glenn V. Fuguitt, David L. Brown, and Calvin L. Beale show in Rural and Small Town America, the much-heralded disappearance of small town life has not come to pass, and the nonmetropolitan population still constitutes a significant dimension of our nation's social structure. Based on census and other recent survey data, this impressive study provides a detailed and comparative picture of rural America. The authors find that size of place is a critical demographic factor, affecting population composition (rural populations are older and more predominantly male than urban populations), the distribution of poverty (urban poverty tends to be concentrated in neighborhoods; rural poverty may extend over large blocks of counties), and employment opportunities (job quality and income are lower in rural areas, though rural occupational patterns are converging with those of urban areas). In general, rural and small town America still lags behind urban America on many indicators of social well-being. Pointing out that rural life is no longer synonymous with farming, the authors explore variations among nonmetropolitan populations. They also trace the impact of major national trends—the nonmetropolitan growth spurt of the 1970s and its current reversal, for example, or changing fertility rates—on rural life and on the relationship between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan communities. By describing the special characteristics and needs of rural populations as well as the features they share with urban America, this book clearly demonstrates that a more accurate picture of nonmetropolitan life is essential to understanding the larger dynamics of our society. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series

Author : Lyn C. Macgregor
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801458978
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Habits of the Heartland written by Lyn C. Macgregor and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-15 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although most Americans no longer live in small towns, images of small-town life, and particularly of the mutual support and neighborliness to be found in such places, remain powerful in our culture. In Habits of the Heartland, Lyn C. Macgregor investigates how the residents of Viroqua, Wisconsin, population 4,355, create a small-town community together. Macgregor lived in Viroqua for nearly two years. During that time she gathered data in public places, attended meetings, volunteered for civic organizations, talked to residents in their workplaces and homes, and worked as a bartender at the local American Legion post. Viroqua has all the outward hallmarks of the idealized American town; the kind of place where local merchants still occupy the shops on Main Street and everyone knows everyone else. On closer examination, one finds that the town contains three largely separate social groups: Alternatives, Main Streeters, and Regulars. These categories are not based on race or ethnic origins. Rather, social distinctions in Viroqua are based ultimately on residents' ideas about what a community is and why it matters. These ideas both reflect and shape their choices as consumers, whether at the grocery store, as parents of school-age children, or in the voting booth. Living with-and listening to-the town's residents taught Macgregor that while traditional ideas about "community," especially as it was connected with living in a small town, still provided an important organizing logic for peoples' lives, there were a variety of ways to understand and create community.

Author : Emanuel Levy
Publisher : Burns & Oates
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Small-town America in Film written by Emanuel Levy and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1991 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Miles Orvell
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807837563
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Death and Life of Main Street written by Miles Orvell and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a century, the term "Main Street" has conjured up nostalgic images of American small-town life. Representations exist all around us, from fiction and film to the architecture of shopping malls and Disneyland. All the while, the nation has become increasingly diverse, exposing tensions within this ideal. In The Death and Life of Main Street, Miles Orvell wrestles with the mythic allure of the small town in all its forms, illustrating how Americans continue to reinscribe these images on real places in order to forge consensus about inclusion and civic identity, especially in times of crisis. Orvell underscores the fact that Main Street was never what it seemed; it has always been much more complex than it appears, as he shows in his discussions of figures like Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Frank Capra, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans. He argues that translating the overly tidy cultural metaphor into real spaces--as has been done in recent decades, especially in the new urbanist planned communities of Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany--actually diminishes the communitarian ideals at the center of this nostalgic construct. Orvell investigates the way these tensions play out in a variety of cultural realms and explores the rise of literary and artistic traditions that deliberately challenge the tropes and assumptions of small-town ideology and life.

Author : Robert Wuthnow
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 498 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Small-town America written by Robert Wuthnow and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Ima Honaker Herron
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 504 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Small Town in American Literature written by Ima Honaker Herron and published by . This book was released on 1939 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Nathanael T. Booth
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476672741
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Small-Town Fiction, 1940-1960 written by Nathanael T. Booth and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In literature and popular culture, small town America is often idealized as distilling the national spirit. Does the myth of the small town conceal deep-seated reactionary tendencies or does it contain the basis of a national re-imagining? During the period between 1940 and 1960, America underwent a great shift in self-mythologizing that can be charted through representations of small towns. Authors like Henry Bellamann and Grace Metalious continued the tradition of Sherwood Anderson in showing the small town--by extension, America itself--profoundly warping the souls of its citizens. Meanwhile, Ray Bradbury, Toshio Mori and Ross Lockridge, Jr., sought to identify the small town's potential for growth, away from the shadows cast by World War II toward a more inclusive, democratic future. Examined together, these works are key to understanding how mid-20th century America refashioned itself in light of a new postwar order, and how the literary small town both obscures and reveals contradictions at the heart of the American experience.