Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Sociology - Rural

In this classic memoir, a young man facing a future he doesn't want to claim has an inspiration--Go West. Tom Groneberg leaves behind friends and family, follows his heart, and heads to a resort town in the Colorado Rockies, where he earns his spurs as a wrangler leading tourists on horseback. Later, Groneberg moves to Montana, where he works for wages at a number of ranches before buying his own ranch. Demystifying the image of cowboys as celluloid heroes, "The Secret Life of Cowboys" is a coming-of-age story as stunning as the land itself and a revealing look at America's last frontier.

The debate over the source of Appalachia's economic problems has been going strong since Harry Caudill's Night Comes to the Cumberlands appeared in 1963. Now a new study illuminates the region's plight, making a vital contribution to the understanding of this area's critical economic dilemma.

In Appalachia's Path to Dependency, Paul Salstrom examines the evolution of economic life over time in southern Appalachia. Moving away from the colonial model to an analysis based on dependency, he exposes the complex web of factors -- regulation of credit, industrialization,...

The image of the family farm as storehouse of the traditional values that built this nation -- self-reliance, resourcefulness, civic pride, family strength, concern for neighbors and community, honesty, and friendliness -- persists, as many recent surveys show. But the reality of this rich tradition is rapidly changing, eroding the security once represented by these nostalgic images of rural America.

Although the United States is still by far the world's leading overall producer of agricultural products, the number of American families making their livelihood through farming is much...

For subsistence farmers in eastern Kentucky, wealthy horse owners in the central Bluegrass, and tobacco growers in Western Kentucky, land was, and continues to be, one of the commonwealth's greatest sources of economic growth. It is also a source of nostalgia for a people devoted to tradition, a characteristic that has significantly influenced Kentucky's culture, sometimes to the detriment of education and development.

As timely now as when it was first published, Thomas D. Clark's classic history of agrarianism prepares readers for a new era that promises to bring rapid change to...

" In 1908 John C. Campbell was commissioned by the Russell Sage Foundation to conduct a survey of conditions in Appalachia and the aid work being done in these areas to create "the central repository of data concerning conditions in the mountains to which workers in the field might turn." Originally published in 1921, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland details Campbell's experiences and findings during his travels in the region, observing unique aspects of mountain communities such as their religion, family life, and forms of entertainment. Campbell's landmark work paved the way for...

You can drive out of Charlottesville, Virginia, in any direction and within ten minutes find yourself in third-world rural poverty. In 1988, University of Virginia academics began pondering how the institution's vast resources could be used to improve the lives of these rural poor. The result was the Rural Elder Outreach Project, an innovative experiment that for five years evaluated and provided in-home nursing care for rural elder poor in five Virginia counties.

As volunteer and observer, Susan Garrett traveled with the project's nurses, doctors, and social workers. Based on her...

Although the urban setting in film has received much critical attention, little has been written about the use of land, or the rural, in the cinema-despite its equally prolific and consistent history as a backdrop to both fiction and documentary work. This collection demonstrates the viability of rural cinema as a benchmark of national identity by bringing into critical focus the space the rural occupies, both on cinema screens and in the national imagination. Whether rural space is figured as idyllic or troubled, mythological or historical, obsolete or perennial, this collection argues...

This model county history chronicles one hundred years in the life of a representative Deep South county.

The history of Bibb County between 1818 and 1918 is in many ways representative of the experience of central Alabama during that period. Bibb County shares physical characteristics with the areas both to its north and to its south. In its northern section is a mineral district and in its southern valleys fertile farming country; therefore, its citizens have sometimes allied themselves with the hill counties and sometimes with their Black Belt neighbors.

Both sections of the county...