Download or read book Prairie Patrimony written by Sonya Salamon and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a decade-long ethnographic study of seven Illinois farming communities, Salamon demonstrates how family land transfers serve as the mechanism fro recreating the social relations fundamental to midwestern ethnic identities. She shows how, along with the land, families pass on a cultural patrimony that shapes practices of farm management, succession, and inheritance and that ultimately determines how land tenure and the personality of rural communities evolve.

Download or read book Children of the Land written by Glen H. Elder Jr. and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century ago, most Americans had ties to the land. Now only one in fifty is engaged in farming and little more than a fourth live in rural communities. Though not new, this exodus from the land represents one of the great social movements of our age and is also symptomatic of an unparalleled transformation of our society. In Children of the Land, the authors ask whether traditional observations about farm families—strong intergenerational ties, productive roles for youth in work and social leadership, dedicated parents and a network of positive engagement in church, school, and community life—apply to three hundred Iowa children who have grown up with some tie to the land. The answer, as this study shows, is a resounding yes. In spite of the hardships they faced during the agricultural crisis of the 1980s, these children, whose lives we follow from the seventh grade to after high school graduation, proved to be remarkably successful, both academically and socially. A moving testament to the distinctly positive lifestyle of Iowa families with connections to the land, this uplifting book also suggests important routes to success for youths in other high risk settings.

Download or read book All in the Family written by Patricia Strach and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All in the Family demonstrates how policymakers employ family across a host of policy areas to achieve their "non-family" goals and the consequences this has for policy stability over time.

Download or read book The Filleys written by Donald G. Southerton and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2005-06-10 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Filleys: 350 Years of American Entrepreneurial Spirit provides snapshots into American entrepreneurship history for a broad readership through a series of biographic essays. These stories, centering on the accomplishments of one family, provide vivid insights into entrepreneurialism in America, spatially across the country and temporally over three centuries. Author Don Southerton guides the reader through multiple generations of the Filley family beginning in 17th century Puritan New England. The saga includes the rise of the Yankee trader, land speculation, and the development of American manufacturing. The Filley business endeavors represent a slice of the American entrepreneurial experience. Moreover, this experience was shared by many thousands of other Americans whose families can be traced to colonial times. Together, they raised families, embraced capitalism, and built this country. The portraits of people and events in this saga provide us with a revealing and instructive glimpse into times long gone, and allow us to connect vicariously to a part of our collective past.

Download or read book Newcomers to Old Towns written by Sonya Salamon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-07-24 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2004 winner of the Robert E. Park Book Award from the Community and Urban Sociology Section (CUSS) of the American Sociological Association Although the death of the small town has been predicted for decades, during the 1990s the population of rural America actually increased by more than three million people. In this book, Sonya Salamon explores these rural newcomers and the impact they have on the social relationships, public spaces, and community resources of small town America. Salamon draws on richly detailed ethnographic studies of six small towns in central Illinois, including a town with upscale subdivisions that lured wealthy professionals as well as towns whose agribusinesses drew working-class Mexicano migrants and immigrants. She finds that regardless of the class or ethnicity of the newcomers, if their social status differs relative to that of oldtimers, their effect on a town has been the same: suburbanization that erodes the close-knit small town community, with especially severe consequences for small town youth. To successfully combat the homogenization of the heartland, Salamon argues, newcomers must work with oldtimers so that together they sustain the vital aspects of community life and identity that first drew them to small towns. An illustration of the recent revitalization of interest in the small town, Salamon's work provides a significant addition to the growing literature on the subject. Social scientists, sociologists, policymakers, and urban planners will appreciate this important contribution to the ongoing discussion of social capital and the transformation in the study and definition of communities.

Download or read book Rural Development Perspectives written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Iowa History Reader written by Marvin Bergman and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2008-03-15 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1978 historian Joseph Wall wrote that Iowa was “still seeking to assert its own identity. . . . It has no real center where the elite of either power, wealth, or culture may congregate. Iowa, in short, is middle America.” In this collection of well-written and accessible essays, originally published in 1996, seventeen of the Hawkeye State’s most accomplished historians reflect upon the dramatic and not-so-dramatic shifts in the middle land’s history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Marvin Bergman has drawn upon his years of editing the Annals of Iowa to gather contributors who cross disciplines, model the craft of writing a historical essay, cover more than one significant topic, and above all interpret history rather than recite it. In his preface to this new printing, he calls attention to publications that begin to fill the gaps noted in the 1996 edition. Rather than survey the basic facts, the essayists engage readers in the actual making of Iowa’s history by trying to understand the meaning of its past. By providing comprehensive accounts of topics in Iowa history that embrace the broader historiographical issues in American history, such as the nature of Progressivism and Populism, the debate over whether women’s expanded roles in wartime carried over to postwar periods, and the place of quantification in history, the essayists contribute substantially to debates at the national level at the same time that they interpret Iowa’s distinctive culture.

Download or read book Handbook on Grandparenthood written by Maximiliane E. Szinovacz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1998-07-28 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on original contributions from leading scholars, this handbook offers critical reviews of variations in grandparenthood (historical, cultural, race, gender), contingencies (transitions, roles, influence, divorce surrogate parenting, adult grandchildren) and interventions (clinical, policies, programs). It also addresses research trends and needed conceptual and theoretical refinements. The introduction describes trends in grandparenting research since the middle of this century, and offers a brief synopsis of the book's contents as well as specific suggestions for further research. The first part addresses diversity in grandparenting experiences, including historical and demographic trends, racial and ethnic variations, contextual influences with special emphasis on grandparents in rural and farm environments, and gender differences in grandparents' and grandchildren's experiences. The second part focuses on the dynamics and contingencies of grandparenting. Chapters address transitions in grandparents' lives, grandparents' roles, the impact of grandparenting on grandchildren, and grandparenting under special circumstances, such as divorce and surrogate parenting. The third part deals with interventions in grandparenting. Specific issues addressed are clinical interventions and therapy with extended families, policies concerning grandparents' visitations and grandparents as surrogates parents and programs for grandparents. The book's concluding chapter offers suggestions for future research. The work has an extensive comprehensive bibliography and index. This work will be of interest to professionals and students in gerontology, family studies, social services, ethnic studies, gender studies, and sociology.

Download or read book Putting the Barn Before the House written by Grey Osterud and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Putting the Barn Before the House features the voices and viewpoints of women born before World War I who lived on family farms in south-central New York. As she did in her previous book, Bonds of Community, for an earlier period in history, Grey Osterud explores the flexible and varied ways that families shared labor and highlights the strategies of mutuality that women adopted to ensure they had a say in family decision making. Sharing and exchanging work also linked neighboring households and knit the community together. Indeed, the culture of cooperation that women espoused laid the basis for the formation of cooperatives that enabled these dairy farmers to contest the power of agribusiness and obtain better returns for their labor. Osterud recounts this story through the words of the women and men who lived it and carefully explores their views about gender, labor, and power, which offered an alternative to the ideas that prevailed in American society. Most women saw "putting the barn before the house"-investing capital and labor in productive operations rather than spending money on consumer goods or devoting time to mere housework-as a necessary and rational course for families who were determined to make a living on the land and, if possible, to pass on viable farms to the next generation. Some women preferred working outdoors to what seemed to them the thankless tasks of urban housewives, while others worked off the farm to support the family. Husbands and wives, as well as parents and children, debated what was best and negotiated over how to allocate their limited labor and capital and plan for an uncertain future. Osterud tells the story of an agricultural community in transition amid an industrializing age with care and skill.

Download or read book Nature s Perfect Food written by E. Melanie Dupuis and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2002-02-01 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of how Americans came to drink milk For over a century, America's nutrition authorities have heralded milk as "nature's perfect food," as "indispensable" and "the most complete food." These milk "boosters" have ranged from consumer activists, to government nutritionists, to the American Dairy Council and its ubiquitous milk moustache ads. The image of milk as wholesome and body-building has a long history, but is it accurate? Recently, within the newest social movements around food, milk has lost favor. Vegan anti-milk rhetoric portrays the dairy industry as cruel to animals and milk as bad for humans. Recently, books with titles like, "Milk: The Deadly Poison," and "Don't Drink Your Milk" have portrayed milk as toxic and unhealthy. Controversies over genetically-engineered cows and questions about antibiotic residue have also prompted consumers to question whether the milk they drink each day is truly good for them. In Nature's Perfect Food Melanie Dupuis illuminates these questions by telling the story of how Americans came to drink milk. We learn how cow's milk, which was associated with bacteria and disease became a staple of the American diet. Along the way we encounter 19th century evangelists who were convinced that cow's milk was the perfect food with divine properties, brewers whose tainted cow feed poisoned the milk supply, and informal wetnursing networks that were destroyed with the onset of urbanization and industrialization. Informative and entertaining, Nature's Perfect Food will be the standard work on the history of milk.

Download or read book Bygone Utopias and Farm Protest in the Rural Midwest written by Daniel Jaster and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores those who long for “bygone utopias,” times before rapid, culturally destructive social change stripped individuals of their perceived agency. The case of the wave of foreclosure protests that swept through the rural American Midwest during the 1930s illustrates these themes. These actions embodied a utopian understanding of agrarian society that had largely disappeared by the late 19th century: hundreds to thousands of people fixed public auctions of foreclosed farms, returning owners’ property and giving them a second chance to save their farm. Comparisons to later movements, including the National Farmers’ Organization and the protests surrounding the 1980s Farm Crisis highlight the importance of culturally catastrophic social change occurring at a breakneck pace in fomenting these types of bygone utopian actions. These activists and movements should cause scholars to re-think what it means to be conservative and how we view conservatism, helping us better understand why we’re seeing a contemporary resurgence in nationalist and reactionary movements across the globe.

Download or read book The Rural Midwest Since World War II written by J. L. Anderson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.L. Anderson seeks to change the belief that the Midwest lacks the kind of geographic coherence, historical issues, and cultural touchstones that have informed regional identity in the American South, West, and Northeast. The goal of this illuminating volume is to demonstrate uniqueness in a region that has always been amorphous and is increasingly so. Midwesterners are a dynamic people who shaped the physical and social landscapes of the great midsection of the nation, and they are presented as such in this volume that offers a general yet informed overview of the region after World War II. The contributors—most of whom are Midwesterners by birth or residence—seek to better understand a particular piece of rural America, a place too often caricatured, misunderstood, and ignored. However, the rural landscape has experienced agricultural diversity and major shifts in land use. Farmers in the region have successfully raised new commodities from dairy and cherries to mint and sugar beets. The region has also been a place where community leaders fought to improve their economic and social well-being, women redefined their roles on the farm, and minorities asserted their own version of the American Dream. The rural Midwest is a regional melting pot, and contributors to this volume do not set out to sing its praises or, by contrast, assume the position of Midwestern modesty and self-deprecation. The essays herein rewrite the narrative of rural decline and crisis, and show through solid research and impeccable scholarship that rural Midwesterners have confronted and created challenges uniquely their own.

Download or read book Beyond the Rural Urban Divide written by Kjell Andersson and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2009-02-11 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rural-urban dichotomy is one of the most influential figures of thought in history, laying the foundation for academic disciplines such as rural and urban sociology. The dichotomy rests on the assumption that rural and urban areas differ fundamentally. This book deals with this topic.

Download or read book Beyond The Amber Waves Of Grain written by Paul Lasley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-11-28 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the large-scale impacts of economic restructuring in the Midwest in response to the 1980s farm crisis. Drawing upon detailed surveys from twelve north-central states, the authors offer a comprehensive view of farm restructuring and its social, economic, and political consequences. The study goes beyond the farm gate to look at the broader implications of those changes for agriculture policy, related industries, and areas still dependent upon farming, contributing to the literature on economic restructuring. Like the factory closings in the Rust Belt, the dramatic failure of agricultural industries in the Farm Belt has caused fundamental changes in the organization and control of production. The impact of job losses and economic depression and the shattering of a way of life have shaken public complacency about the stability of many fundamental American myths. Beyond the Amber Waves of Grain looks at the farm crisis not as a purely agricultural, nonurban issue but as one that adds to our understanding of the overall social impacts of economic change. The book takes up the story of Midwestern farm enterprises in the wake of the farm crisis of the 1980s. Using data drawn from detailed surveys of 3,940 farm households in twelve north-central states, the authors offer a comprehensive view of the social and economic restructuring of agriculture and explore the consequences for farm enterprises, farm households, and farming communities. The study goes beyond the farm gate to look at the broader implications for related industries and communities dependent upon farming, for agricultural and rural policies, and for farm women and men, contributing to the literature on economic restructuring and its outcomes.

Download or read book Working the Garden written by William Conlogue and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-01-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1860 farmers accounted for 60 percent of the American workforce; in 1910, 30.5 percent; by 1994, there were too few to warrant a separate census category. The changes wrought by the decline of family farming and the rise of industrial agribusiness typically have been viewed through historical, economic, and political lenses. But as William Conlogue demonstrates, some of the most vital and incisive debates on the subject have occurred in a site that is perhaps less obvious--literature. Conlogue refutes the critical tendency to treat farm-centered texts as pastorals, arguing that such an approach overlooks the diverse ways these works explore human relationships to the land. His readings of works by Willa Cather, Ruth Comfort Mitchell, John Steinbeck, Luis Valdez, Ernest Gaines, Jane Smiley, Wendell Berry, and others reveal that, through agricultural narratives, authors have addressed such wide-ranging subjects as the impact of technology on people and land, changing gender roles, environmental destruction, and the exploitation of migrant workers. In short, Conlogue offers fresh perspectives on how writers confront issues whose site is the farm but whose impact reaches every corner of American society.

Download or read book Human Adaptive Strategies written by Daniel Bates and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces students to cultural anthropology with an emphasis on environmental and evolutionary approaches, focusing on how humans adapt to their environment and how the environment shapes culture. It shows how cultures evolve within the context of people’s strategies for surviving and thriving in their environments.This approach is widely used among scholars as a cross-disciplinary tool that rewards students with valuable insights into contemporary developments. Drawing on anthropological case studies, the authors address immediate human concerns such as the costs and consequences of human energy requirements, environmental change and degradation, population pressure, social and economic equity, and planned and unplanned change. Impacts of increasingly rapid climatic change on equitable access to resources and issues of human rights are discussed throughout. Towards the end of the book the student is drawn into a challenging thought experiment addressing the possible impacts of climatic warming on Middle America in the year 2040. All chapters conclude with "Summary," "Key Terms," and "Suggested Readings." This book is an ideal text for students of introductory anthropology and archaeology, environmental studies, world history, and human and cultural ecology courses.

Download or read book There Goes the Neighborhood written by David R. Reynolds and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2002-04-25 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite being the centerpiece of rural educational reform for most of the twentieth century, rural school consolidation has received remarkably little scholarly attention. The social history and geography of the movement, the widespread resistance it provoked, and the cultural landscapes its proponents sought to transform have remained largely unexplored. Now in There Goes the Neighborhood David Reynolds remedies this situation by examining the rural school consolidation movement in that most midwestern of midwestern states, Iowa. From 1912 to 1921, Iowa was the center of national attention as state and local education leaders attempted to implement a new model of rural education, intended to be emulated throughout the rest of the Midwest. As part of the Country Life movement—whose leaders sought to create a more modern future for farm families, an alternative form of rural community that combined the advantages of both city and country—the initially successful model collapsed in the early twenties, not to be revived until after World War II. Reynolds focuses on how and why rural school consolidation was so vigorously resisted in most of Iowa, why it failed in the twenties, and what its lasting consequences have been. Combining social and oral history, modern social theory, historical geography, and ethnography, There Goes the Neighborhood is the most authoritative analysis to date of the politics, geography, and social history of rural school consolidation in any state.