• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
A
lthough nearly a quarter of Americans still live innonmetro areas, the United States is mainly anurban society. Urban lifestyles and economicforms extend to increasingly remote areas, drawing allparts of the country together. The system is integrated bythe transportation and distribution technologies that placeWalMarts within reach of rural shoppers and by themedia technologies that bring 200 channels to a satellitedish and move data at lightning speed through fiber opticcable. Few rural residents are farmers, and fewer still livein families whose livelihood comes only from the land.We value “rural America” no less today and perhaps evenmore than in the past. Its disappearance gives it a nostal-gic quality. It also allows us to exercise a good deal of selectivity in what we remember about it and what weexperience when we visit it. Rural America is taking onthe character of a historical site, like Iowa’s AmanaColonies—once a working farm community but mostlynow a tourist attraction. And, just as Diane Barthel (1984)notes about Amana, our treatment of rural areas is more areflection of ourselves than of the areas’ real character.As an urban sociologist, my natural inclination is tounderstand what we value in rural America in the contextof our views of the urban scene. I will develop this pointin the following sequence. First, I will argue thatAmerican culture has long held an antiurban bias, andthat to a great extent what we value in rural settings isdefined by what we suspect we have lost in the city.Second, some aspects of urban life are also appealing tous, and in some respects, they reflect the same values thatwe cherish in the countryside. But rural America has agreater appeal precisely because we know it only at a dis-tance. I will also draw some tentative conclusions abouthow these ways of constructing meanings affect publicpolicy.
Antiurban Bias
An antiurban tradition extending out of the 17th and 18thcenturies regarded the city as a defilement of nature and amoral scourge. From the Hudson River School’s depic-tions of unspoiled valleys and public fascination with thediscovery of the Grand Canyon and Yosemite Valley tothe radical mobilization of agrarian populists, Americansdisplayed a romantic attachment to rural values and mis-trust of the city. Thomas Jefferson himself believed thatdemocracy depended on the sort of personal freedomand independent work that could only be found in thecountryside.Sociologists, as institutionalized in the Chicago School tra-dition of the 1920’s and 1930’s, formalized these suspi-cions. The defining elements of the city—for Louis Wirth,size, density, heterogeneity—generated an “urban way of life” in which people were released from social controlsand alienated from their neighbors. The city offered per-sonal freedom, too. But in the ensuing “community of 
 Rural Development Perspectives
, vol. 12, no. 119John R. Logan
Rural America as a Symbolof American Values
 American culture has long held an antiurban bias. To a great extent,what we value in rural settings is defined by what we suspect we havelost in the city. Some aspects of urban life are also appealing to us, and in some respects, they reflect the same values that we cherish in thecountryside—community, family, work. But rural America has agreater appeal precisely because we know it only at a distance. Themeanings that we have constructed for urban and rural areas help tolegitimate an antiurban bias in American public policy.
John Logan is professor of urban sociology at the State University of New York, Albany.
 
limited liability,” people’s freedom to choose their socialpartners and to withdraw their commitments at willspelled the end of family and community as the buildingblocks of society.These images of the city in public discourse of the 20thcentury have been reviewed by Bob Beauregard (1993).Beauregard points out an ambivalence that also leads usto regret the decline of cities. Cities, after all, were alwaysthe focal points of civilization and progress (the EmpireState Building, Carnegie Hall). In the last 20 years, howev-er, he detects a shift in public sentiment, coinciding withthe racial transformation of cities. There is progress with-out the city; investment flows to the suburbs and the cen-terless metropoles of the Sunbelt. Most salient now is thatthe city is Black and Hispanic, it is dangerous, and it can-not be controlled.The racial component of antiurban bias is perplexing.Historically, America’s Black population was predomi-nantly southern and rural. But Black Americans played nopart in Jefferson’s vision of rural values (it was rather thefree landholder on whom he relied). Nor are Black share-croppers (or their contemporary counterparts in theMississippi Delta and elsewhere) featured in today’s ruralfolklore, which tends more to “Lake Wobegon” or Kansaswheat farmers or Wyoming cowboys. We are surprised tohear that there were also Black cowboys. Whatever thefacts of the past or the present, we now associate racialminorities with the big city, and our racial prejudices andfears have much to do with our antiurban bias and ideal-ization of the countryside.
Rural (and Urban) Values
We attribute to rural America those values that we mostfear have been lost in our city and suburban way of life.In both the popular media and in our own imaginations,these values are encapsulated in powerful visual images:•
 Hard work
. The image of the productive farmer, upbefore dawn and earning an honest living through hardand independent work.•
 Family
. The image of the farm family, raising manychildren, still interdependent as a production unit andoffering a secure role for every generation.•
Community.
The image of the smalltown gatheringplaces where social relationships are face to face and per-sonal and where everyone knows your name—barn rais-ings, church picnics, the general store.•
 Nature.
The image of the self-sufficient farm, whereeverything is recycled and no scrap can afford to be wast-ed; the clean air and water; the open spaces; the big sky.•
Safety.
The image of children wandering freely throughfields and streams, of unlocked doors, of encounters withpeople whom you know as friends and neighbors.Rural America is not the sole repository of such images,nor does the reality of rural life conform more closely inall respects to our values than does urban life.Urban sociologists and ethnographers have rediscovereddense and supportive social networks in the city. HerbertGans (1962) was among the first to describe the mixedworking and middle class ethnic neighborhoods of oldercities in the 1950’s. Manhattan’s Little Italy and Jewishtenements have nearly passed into history. Few Italiansand Jews live there, but they remain as tourist attractionsbecause we so appreciate the form of social life that theyrepresent to us. Television’s
 Brooklyn Bridge
achieved atemporary success extolling the immigrant family: theworking father and full-time mother, grandparents livingnearby, children playing without fear in the streets of asafe neighborhood. These urban images reinforce thesame values that Americans extoll in the countryside.
 Brooklyn Bridge
’s short run, by comparison with
TheWaltons
, suggests that they do not have the same reso-nance as the rural version.The modern version of the European immigrant neighbor-hood is the entrepreneurial immigrant enclave—theChinatowns and Little Havanas, where people managethrough hard work, strong families, belief in education,and reliance on neighbors. Surprising numbers of thesepeople manage to set up a small business and buy a homeby saving carefully and pooling family resources. In thesenew urban enclaves echo the values of earlier groups withwhom we identify. However we have perhaps less empa-thy with groups who continue to speak their own lan-guages. And immigrants seem to be more acceptable afew decades after they have ceased to arrive in large num-bers. Arecent visit to New York’s Ellis Island, where mil-lions of Europeans arrived in the United States around theturn of the century, reminded me that the dominant cul-ture was not so enchanted with Italian neighborhoodsthen as it is now. In the early 1920’s, in fact, it was com-mon for politicians to denounce Italian and Slavic immi-grants as debasing the White race.Some academics, always willing to venture a little fartherthan the popular press, find these same values in theunderclass neighborhoods in which Blacks and a newwave of Hispanic refugees are concentrated. Carol Stack (1974) describes loving and sharing bonds, frugality andmutual support among these city residents, based on kin-ship and neighborhood. This interpretation of the cityghetto is not widely accepted, of course. More consistentwith popular imagery, most sociologists (such as WilliamJ. Wilson (1987)) emphasize the stark statistics of highcrime rates, high unemployment, and teenage singlemothers living on welfare.20
 Rural Development Perspectives
, vol. 12, no. 1
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...