Poverty, Family, and Kinship in a Heartland Community

Poverty, Family, and Kinship in a Heartland Community
Author: David L. Harvey
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2017-07-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351497553
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With a few notable exceptions, sociological studies of poor, native-born, non-ethnic whites in rural areas are rare. This book corrects this oversight with an ethnographic study of a small, poor, white, heartland community that the author calls "Potter Addition." The community consists of some 100 families and is located on the rural-urban fringe of a medium-sized Midwestern city. Poverty, Family, and Kinship in a Heartland Community is the story of three generations of rural families who, one after another, have been driven from the land during the last seventy-five years. Harvey argues against the grain of a number of recent studies that "Potter Addition's" poverty, like much modern poverty, has its origins in the productive contradictions of late capitalism. It is not the result of some moral or motivational defect of the poor themselves. At the same time he shows, even as they struggle to survive their uncertain niche and learn how to adapt, these families play an active role in reproducing the everyday material and cultural details of their poverty from the substance of their daily experiences. Working from this premise, Harvey provides a detailed ethnographic description of "Potter Addition" and its people. The volume focuses especially on the family and kinship structures that have developed in "Potter Addition" and shows how they fit into the overall response of the poor to their uncertain and unpredictable class situation. This is a unique effort by a knowledgeable researcher who, in this work, boldly steps outside conventional realms of discourse in sociology and geography.

Potter Addition

Potter Addition
Author: David L. Harvey
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780202368061
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With a few notable exceptions, studies of poor, native-born, non-ethnic whites are rare in the sociological literature. This book attempts to correct the oversight by presenting ethnography of an actual small, poor, white, heartland community that the author calls "Potter Addition." The community consists of some 100 families, and is located on the rural-urban fringe of a medium-sized Midwestern city. "Poverty, Family, and Kinship in a Heartland Community "is the story of three generations of rural families who, one after another, have been driven from the land during the last seventy-five years. Harvey argues (against the grain of a number of recent studies) that "Potter Addition's" poverty, like much of modern poverty, has its origins in the productive contradictions of late capitalism, and thus is not the result of some moral or motivational defect of the poor themselves. At the same time he argues that the families he studies-even as they struggle to survive their uncertain niche and learn how to adapt-play an active role in reproducing the everyday material and cultural details of their poverty from the substance of their daily experiences. Working from this premise, Harvey's work provides a detailed ethnographic description of "Potter Addition" and its people. The volume focuses especially on the family and kinship structures that have developed in "Potter Addition," and shows the logic and rationality of.such arrangements by revealing how they fit into the-overall response of the poor to their uncertain and unpredictable class situation. This is a unique effort by an outstanding researcher.

Potter Addition

Potter Addition
Author: D.L. Harvey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9783110139785
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Communities of Work

Communities of Work
Author: William W. Falk
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2003
Genre: Sociology, Rural
ISBN: 0896802345
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The image of rural America portrayed in this illuminating study is one that is vibrant, regionally varied, and sometimes heroic. Communities of Work focuses on the ways in which rural people and places are affected by political, social, and economic forces far outside their control and how they sustain themselves and their communities in response. Bringing together the two fundamental concepts of community--where the relationships and practices of daily life occur--and work, in which an elementary exchange occurs, Communities of Work bridges several fields of study. Presented here is the contextual and embedded nature of social relations and the complexity involved in understanding them. Through the use of multiple case studies, the authors apply diverse theories and methods in seeking an integrated outcome, one captured by "communities of work." Beginning with a description of the broad changes in work and economic activities across the United States, ranging from the Ohio River Valley to a western boomtown, the book shifts its focus to the interplay of work, family, and local networks in time and place. Activities range from fishing in the Mississippi Delta to farming and family life in the Midwest. The authors then highlight how rural people and places respond to extra-local, increasingly global forces in settings as diverse as rural South Carolina and Wisconsin. A certain communitarian theme runs through Communities of Work. It is about people and communities not merely reacting, but instead responding in ways that reflect their local culture, while being cognizant of the larger world within which they live.

Confronting Poverty

Confronting Poverty
Author: Mark Robert Rank
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2020-12-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1544358865
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Confronting Poverty is a text that introduces students to the dynamics of poverty and economic hardship in the U.S. It address four fundamental question: 1) What is the nature, prevalence, and characteristics of poverty; 2) Why does poverty exist; 3) What are the effects and consequences of poverty upon individuals and the wider society; and 4) How can poverty be reduced and alleviated? In clear and engaging writing, Confronting Poverty provides students with the most up-to-date research and thinking regarding American poverty and inequality. It includes the many insights of the author’s 30 years of writing and teaching on the subject. It is designed to be used as either a primary or secondary text in a wide range of courses across academic disciplines. In addition, Confronting Poverty makes use of an innovative companion website developed by the author. The focal point of the website is an interactive tool, called the Poverty Risk Calculator, that has been constructed with hundreds of thousands of case records extracted from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data set. The website also includes a discussion guide on various aspects of poverty along with many other interactive links and activities (short documentary films, video interviews and lectures, interactive data sources, research briefs, magazine and newspaper articles). Each chapter includes an on-line activity from the companion website for students to engage in, resulting in a dynamic learning experience.

Families in Troubled Times

Families in Troubled Times
Author: Glen Holl Elder
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 324
Release:
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780202366050
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The turbulent decade of the 1980s began with financial calamity in several sectors of the United States economy, from automaking to agriculture. The rural Midwest experienced its worst economic decline since the Depression years. Thousands of farmers lost their operations, and the small rural communities that serve agriculture often changed from prosperous business centers to struggling villages with many empty buildings and boarded-up storefronts along their main streets. Families in Troubled Times examines the plight of several hundred rural families who have lived through these difficult years. The participants in the Iowa Youth and Families Project, the subjects of the present study, include farmers, people from small towns, and those who lost farms and other businesses as a result of the "farm crisis." The book traces the influence of economic hardship on the emotions, behavior, and relationships of parents, children, siblings, husbands, and wives. The results of the study show that although economic stress has a powerful adverse effect on individuals and families, countervailing social influence can help to blunt these negative processes and to assist in the repair of the personal and interpersonal damage they produce.

The SAGE Handbook of Case-Based Methods

The SAGE Handbook of Case-Based Methods
Author: David Byrne
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 562
Release: 2009-06-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1446206661
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Case-based methods have a long history in the social sciences. They are extensively used and raise many practical and theoretical questions. This book provides a comprehensive, critical examination of case-oriented research. It offers concrete proposals about the best research methods and provides an unparalleled guide to the emergence and complexity of the field. The Handbook: - Situates the reader in the essential theoretical and practical issues; - Demonstrates the unity and diversity of case-oriented research through an examination of case-based methods; - Distinguishes between case-based and case study research; - Elucidates the philosophical issues around case based methods; - Examines case-based work in the context of both social theory and theories of research methods.

The Greatest of Evils

The Greatest of Evils
Author: Joel A. Devine
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 268
Release:
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780202369716
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The debate on persisting poverty in the United States, somewhat dampened for the past decade, has now been fully rekindled. Devine and Wright have entered that debate with an analysis that is both quantitative and qualitative, informed on the one side by urban ethnography and steeped in official statistics and relevant data on the other. The result is an incisive and cogently documented narrative account leading to policy recommendations for a new president and a new era. In The Greatest of Evils, Devine and Wright develop three principal themes. First they argue that poverty is by no means monolithic: each subgroup within the population in poverty tends to have different problems. Secondly, the so-called "underclass" within the poverty population represents a new and especially corrosive development, one that cannot be analyzed in traditional terms nor dealt with in traditions ways. Thirdly, the War on Poverty of the Sixties was not the unmitigated disaster that so many have come to believe, and offered a boldness of vision that today's poverty policies tend to lack. In exploring these themes, the authors show how the social and economic costs of poverty-related problems exceed what it will cost to find remedies that address the underlying causes of residual poverty.

Newcomers to Old Towns

Newcomers to Old Towns
Author: Sonya Salamon
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2007-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226734137
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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.

Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century

Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century
Author: David L. Brown
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2015-08-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0271031433
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The twentieth century was one of profound transformation in rural America. Demographic shifts and economic restructuring have conspired to alter dramatically the lives of rural people and their communities. Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century defines these changes and interprets their implications for the future of rural America. The volume follows in the tradition of "decennial volumes" co-edited by presidents of the Rural Sociological Society and published in the Society's Rural Studies Series. Essays have been specially commissioned to examine key aspects of public policy relevant to rural America in the new century. Contributors include:Lionel Beaulieu, Alessandro Bonnano, David Brown, Ralph Brown, Frederick Buttel, Ted Bradshaw, Douglas Constance, Steve Daniels, Lynn England, William Falk, Cornelia Flora, Jan Flora, Glenn Fuguitt, Nina Glasgow, Leland Glenna, Angela Gonzales, Gary Green, Rosalind Harris, Tom Hirschl, Douglas Jackson-Smith, Leif Jensen, Ken Johnson, Richard Krannich, Daniel Lichter, Linda Lobao, Al Luloff, Tom Lyson, Kate MacTavish, David McGranahan, Diane McLaughlin, Philip McMichael, Lois Wright Morton, Domenico Parisi, Peggy Petrzelka, Kenneth Pigg, Rogelio Saenz, Sonya Salamon, Jeff Sharp, Curtis Stofferahn, Louis Swanson, Ann Tickameyer, Leanne Tigges, Cruz Torres, Mildred Warner, Ronald Wimberley, Dreamal Worthen, and Julie Zimmerman.