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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 ...
The rural Midwest is undergoing fundamental changes with increased competition from foreign agriculture; employment shifts from higher-paying manufacturing to lower-paying service industries; the displacement of local small town business by large discount stores and shopping malls; overall population declines that threaten the viability of schools, hospitals, and other public institutions, along with an influx of minority groups that has led to strife in some communities. Using data from the 2000 Census, this collection examines the major demographic and employment trends in the rural Midwestern states with special attention to the issues that state and local policy makers must address in the near future. The contributors are well known experts in their fields, and in these original, previously unpublished materials they offer suggestions on how the Internet and other technological advances offer new opportunities for rural economies that local leaders can build on.
The intense circulation of people, contents and goods that characterises the current process of globalisation has led to unprecedented cultural encounters, which can be perceived either as the source of conflicts or opportunities for dialogue. This volume adopts a multidisciplinary approach to address issues that emerge at the confluence of “identity” and “culture”; and in their articulation, with the involvement of distinct geographic factors, by means of analyses of the notions and discourses involving such concepts, and the examination of specific intersectional contexts. From the macro- to the micro-level, from the collective to the individual, and the real to the constructed, then to the imagined and back to the real; from ideology to utopia, isolation to integration, and from “belonging” to “possessing”, the book discusses the role of shared spatialities in the forging of commonalities, and the multiple aspects that influence the formation of identity and the legitimation of cultural practices, as well as introducing conceptual tools like “dialogue zones” and “homely landscapes”.