Crisis? What Crisis?: Rethinking How We Talk about Rural America

Abstract

It has become conventional wisdom to say that rural America is (and rural Americans are) in “crisis,” and this has generated a cottage industry of commentary from journalists, academics, politicians, policy makers, and others. Sometimes the story of crisis is economic: jobs harder and harder to find in the rural pockets of the nation. Sometimes it is social: rural isolation and desperation that lead to drug addiction and suicide. Whatever its cause, the result has been that rural America has been “left behind,” to borrow from the title of sociologist Robert Wuthnow's recent book on the topic. And the sub-title of his book encapsulates the politics this crisis has generated: decline and rage. This article interrogates the narrative of crisis and decline by historicizing it more deeply, by examining how enduring rural mythologies continue to shape our discourse about rural places, and to argue that far from being “left behind” in the national parade, rural America has often been leading it.

Keywords

• rural america
• crisis discourse
• rural mythologies
• little house on the prairie
• nostalgia
• race
• anger
• space/place