The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State

The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State PDF Author: Catherine McNicol Stock
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501717731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
"However urban the nation has become," Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert D. Johnston write, "twenty percent of its citizens still live outside major metropolitan areas. Moreover, rural economic activity—agricultural, extractive, recreational, and industrial—has an enormous impact on the nation's overall economic well-being. The stories of contemporary rural people still have the power to move us.... They reflect the values, dreams, and ideals at the core of the economically, racially, and ethnically diverse American experience." The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State moves rural history into explorations of modern politics: diverse rural peoples and their complex relationships to the American state in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors examine African American progressive farm organizers; the experiences of Caribbean and Mexican farm laborers; agrarian intellectuals in the New Deal; the politics of land and landscape in the Rocky Mountain west; and the origins of today's rural political movements.

The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State

The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State PDF Author: Catherine McNicol Stock
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501717731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
"However urban the nation has become," Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert D. Johnston write, "twenty percent of its citizens still live outside major metropolitan areas. Moreover, rural economic activity—agricultural, extractive, recreational, and industrial—has an enormous impact on the nation's overall economic well-being. The stories of contemporary rural people still have the power to move us.... They reflect the values, dreams, and ideals at the core of the economically, racially, and ethnically diverse American experience." The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State moves rural history into explorations of modern politics: diverse rural peoples and their complex relationships to the American state in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors examine African American progressive farm organizers; the experiences of Caribbean and Mexican farm laborers; agrarian intellectuals in the New Deal; the politics of land and landscape in the Rocky Mountain west; and the origins of today's rural political movements.

Looking Forward

Looking Forward PDF Author: Jamie L. Pietruska
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022647500X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Introduction: crisis of certainty -- Cotton guesses -- The daily "probabilities"--Weather prophecies -- Economies of the future -- Promises of love and money -- Epilogue: specters of uncertainty

The Modern State

The Modern State PDF Author: Christopher Pierson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134331347
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
The modern state is hugely important in our everyday lives. It takes nearly half our income in taxes. It registers our births, marriages and deaths. It educates our children and pays our pensions. It has a unique power to compel, in some cases exercising the ultimate sanction of preserving life or ordering death. Yet most of us would struggle to say exactly what the state is. The Modern State offers a clear, comprehensive and provoking introduction to one of the most important phenomena of contemporary life. Topics covered include: * the nation state and its historical context * state and economy * state and societies * state and citizens * international relations * the future of the state

Social History of the United States [10 volumes]

Social History of the United States [10 volumes] PDF Author: Brian Greenberg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1598841289
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 4860

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Book Description
This ten-volume encyclopedia explores the social history of 20th-century America in rich, authoritative detail, decade by decade, through the eyes of its everyday citizens. Social History of the United States is a cornerstone reference that tells the story of 20th-century America, examining the interplay of policies, events, and everyday life in each decade of the 1900s with unmatched authority, clarity, and insight. Spanning ten volumes and featuring the work of some of the foremost social historians working today, Social History of the United States bridges the gap between 20th-century history as it played out on the grand stage and history as it affected—and was affected by—citizens at the grassroots level. Covering each decade in a separate volume, this exhaustive work draws on the most compelling scholarship to identify important themes and institutions, explore daily life and working conditions across the economic spectrum, and examine all aspects of the American experience from a citizen's-eye view. Casting the spotlight on those whom history often leaves in the dark, Social History of the United States is an essential addition to any library collection.

Making a Modern U.S. West

Making a Modern U.S. West PDF Author: Sarah Deutsch
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496229568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 666

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Book Description
To many Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the West was simultaneously the greatest symbol of American opportunity, the greatest story of its history, and the imagined blank slate on which the country’s future would be written. From the Spanish-American War in 1898 to the Great Depression’s end, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, policymakers at various levels and large-scale corporate investors, along with those living in the West and its borderlands, struggled over who would define modernity, who would participate in the modern American West, and who would be excluded. In Making a Modern U.S. West Sarah Deutsch surveys the history of the U.S. West from 1898 to 1940. Centering what is often relegated to the margins in histories of the region—the flows of people, capital, and ideas across borders—Deutsch attends to the region’s role in constructing U.S. racial formations and argues that the West as a region was as important as the South in constructing the United States as a “white man’s country.” While this racial formation was linked to claims of modernity and progress by powerful players, Deutsch shows that visions of what constituted modernity were deeply contested by others. This expansive volume presents the most thorough examination to date of the American West from the late 1890s to the eve of World War II.

The Populist Vision

The Populist Vision PDF Author: Charles Postel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199758468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, monumental technological innovations like the telegraph and steam power made America and the world a much smaller place. New technologies also made possible large-scale organization and centralization. Corporations grew exponentially and the rich amassed great fortunes. Those on the short end of these wrenching changes responded in the Populist revolt, one of the most effective challenges to corporate power in American history. But what did Populism represent? Half a century ago, scholars such as Richard Hofstadter portrayed the Populist movement as an irrational response of backward-looking farmers to the challenges of modernity. Since then, the romantic notion of Populism as the resistance movement of tradition-based and pre-modern communities to a modern and commercial society has prevailed. In a broad, innovative reassessment, based on a deep reading of archival sources, The Populist Vision argues that the Populists understood themselves as--and were in fact--modern people, who pursued an alternate vision for modern America. Taking into account both the leaders and the led, The Populist Vision uses a wide lens, focusing on the farmers, both black and white, men and women, while also looking at wager workers and bohemian urbanites. From Texas to the Dakotas, from Georgia to California, farmer Populists strove to use the new innovations for their own ends. They sought scientific and technical knowledge, formed highly centralized organizations, launched large-scale cooperative businesses, and pressed for reforms on the model of the nation's most elaborate bureaucracy - the Postal Service. Hundreds of thousands of Populist farm women sought education, employment in schools and offices, and a more modern life. Miners, railroad workers, and other labor Populists joined with farmers to give impetus to the regulatory state. Activists from Chicago, San Francisco, and other new cities provided Populism with a dynamic urban dimension This major reassessment of the Populist experience is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics, society, and culture of modern America.

The 4-H Harvest

The 4-H Harvest PDF Author: Gabriel N. Rosenberg
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812247531
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Gabriel N. Rosenberg argues that public acceptance of the political economy of agribusiness hinged on federal efforts to normalize rural heterosexuality.

Hard Living in America's Heartland

Hard Living in America's Heartland PDF Author: Paula vW. Dáil
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476618380
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Despite living hard, endlessly challenging lives, the rural poor remain tirelessly optimistic, believing things will get better next year. As one struggling farmer explained, "Sometimes I feel like a jackass in a hailstorm--I just have to stand here and take it...but what the hell--it'll stop hailing sooner or later." The struggle to survive on the richest farmland in America has produced some of the nation's poorest people. However, rural poverty is not the same as urban poverty: the usual definitions and criteria do not always apply, the known predictors do not necessarily hold up, and again and again the rural poor save themselves because they know no one else will. This book refutes the common image of the poor as lazy slackers averse to work. In reality, fiercely independent, politically astute, hard-working men and women who possess a wide array of useful skills populate the rural heartland--and they struggle to stay afloat in small-town economies that rise and fall on the whims of remote farm policy decisions, a volatile world marketplace and Mother Nature, who is a fickle, wildly unpredictable business partner.

Rural Transformations and Rural Policies in the US and UK

Rural Transformations and Rural Policies in the US and UK PDF Author: Mark Shucksmith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136502742
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
This book examines the transformations of rural society and economy in the UK and US during the last half-century, and explores the significance of these trends and changes for community sustainability, quality of life and the environment. While both the UK and US are highly urbanised, rural people and communities continue to contribute to national identity, economic development and social solidarity, as well as to environmental quality. Contributors explore the degree to which rural people exhibit agency and autonomy, rather than being merely passive in the face of exogenous forces of change in a globalised world. They also illuminate very different policy approaches to rural policy in two advanced capitalist societies often thought to be similar, and show how fundamental differences in rural policy approaches of the US and the UK are based on different social ideologies and values that shape policies relating to rural areas. This book will help to stimulate transatlantic dialogue on rural scholarship and rural policy analysis, while also contributing to theory and policy development. It will be of interest to researchers, students and everyone involved in the policy and practice of rural development.

Reopening the Frontier

Reopening the Frontier PDF Author: Brian Q. Cannon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The first ever history of the post-World War II homesteading program that provided frontier land to returning veterans. Reveals the many challenges they faced--and how they helped change our perceptions of the modern American West.