The left behind : decline and rage in rural America

The left behind Decline and rage in rural America

Robert Wuthnow

Book - 2018

What is fueling rural America's outrage toward the federal government? Why did rural Americans vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump? And, beyond economic and demographic decline, is there a more nuanced explanation for the growing rural-urban divide? Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Robert Wuthnow brings us into America's small towns, farms, and rural communities to paint a rich portrait of the moral order--the interactions, loyalties, obligations, and identities--underpinning this critical segment of the nation. Wuthnow demonstrates that to truly understand rural Americans' anger, their culture must be explored more fully. We hear from farmers who want government out of their business, fa...ctory workers who believe in working hard to support their families, town managers who find the federal government unresponsive to their communities' needs, and clergy who say the moral climate is being undermined. Wuthnow argues that rural America's fury stems less from specific economic concerns than from the perception that Washington is distant from and yet threatening to the social fabric of small towns. Rural dwellers are especially troubled by Washington's seeming lack of empathy for such small-town norms as personal responsibility, frugality, cooperation, and common sense. Wuthnow also shows that while these communities may not be as discriminatory as critics claim, racism and misogyny remain embedded in rural patterns of life. Moving beyond simplistic depictions of the residents of America's heartland, The Left Behind offers a clearer picture of how this important population will influence the nation's political future.

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Subjects
Rural population > United States > Attitudes.
Sociology, Rural > United States.
Working class whites > United States > Attitudes.
United States > Rural conditions > 21st century.
United States > Politics and government > 21st century > Public opinion.
United States > Social conditions > 21st century > Public opinion.
Published
Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Robert Wuthnow (author)
Physical Description
192 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-182) and index.
ISBN
9780691177663
  • Introduction
  • 1. Communities
  • 2. Present Dangers
  • 3. Makeshift Solutions
  • 4. Washington's Broken
  • 5. Moral Decline
  • 6. Bigotry
  • Epilogue
  • Notes
  • Further Reading
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Sociologist Wuthnow (Inventing American Religion) condenses decades of research on rural America into a slim and accessible volume highlighting three pseudonymous rural communities from across America country whose members are tightly knit together by honesty, hard work, neighborliness, and Christian faith. Wuthnow argues that Donald Trump's campaign message resonated so strongly in rural America because of the moral order that defines these communities. He writes that issues related to economic grievances-few jobs, population decline, drug abuse-matter to rural towns only insofar as residents perceive them to be a threat to the shared cultural reality. Wuthnow finds in all three communities that residents share a stark sense of society's moral decline, in part because familiar, inward-looking solutions such as volunteerism and charity have come up short in a world of globalized problems. More than feeling ignored by the federal government, they don't see why what's good for a family or a town isn't good for the country at large (e.g., techniques for balancing the family's budget during tight times aren't scalable on a national level), and interpret ideological disagreement as condescending elitism. Meanwhile, local culture wars over abortion and homosexuality still rage. Wuthnow veers away from discussing the merits of his subjects' claims, some of which are racist (such as comments referring to President Obama as from another planet) or factually incorrect; readers seeking an analysis of such positions will want to look elsewhere. What makes this book valuable is that it provides a nuanced portrait of rural American voters from their own perspective. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review by Kirkus Book Review

A leading sociologist examines the "moral outrage" of rural America.Wuthnow (Social Sciences/Princeton Univ.; American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability, 2017, etc.) draws on more than 1,000 interviews conducted by his research team over the past decade to offer this absorbing, in-depth look at the lives of the 30 million Americans living in small towns with populations under 25,000. Such townsthe "centerpiece" of rural Americamust be seen as "moral communities" where people feel "an obligation to one another and to uphold the local ways of being." Although residents "realize the nation and the culture have moved on," they "believe that the heart of America still beats in small communities." Hence their moral outrage: "a mixture of fear and anger. The fear is that small-town ways of life are disappearing. The anger is that they are under siege." In the 2016 presidential election, rural voters expressed displeasure not over economic issues but rather "a perceived cultural threat that is often ill-defined even though it runs deep." For them, the federal government is not listening, intrusive, disrespectful, lacks common sense, and represents "an affront to their way of life." Writing with empathy (Wuthnow attended a small-town grade school), the author reflects on the factors shaping rural lifefrom the importance of faith to the stability and familiarity of life in town to the importance of ritual events (barn dances, etc.), stories, and symbolsas well as pressing problems (brain drain, teen pregnancy, drugs, lack of good jobs) and concerns over moral decline (abortion and homosexuality). Wuthnow finds nuances: the isolation-ending benefits of the internet, Walmart, and 24/7 cable news have made rural residents more aware that the world "was changing and leaving them behind." His interviews are consistently revealing: a 1960s Berkeley student told him, "I believe we have by and large substituted television for the church."A superb, authoritative sociology book. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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