Jennifer Sherman

Coping with Rural Poverty: Economic Survival and Moral Capital in Rural America

The experience of rural poverty is in many ways unique from that of urban poverty. In the rural setting, social cohesion creates pressure on the poor to behave in ways that are consistent with local values. This paper, based on qualitative research done in an isolated, rural Northern California community, argues that in this setting the survival strategies of the poor are chosen because they are socially rational rather than economically optimal. The choice of socially acceptable coping strategies is ultimately beneficial because it creates moral capital, which can be traded for both social capital in the form of community support, and economic capital in the form of job opportunities.

Concepts of Sustainability, Motivations for Pest Management Approaches, and Implications for Communicating Change

Impact and relevance are valued by both plant pathologists and the supporters of research and extension. Impact has been characterized as the So what? of research results, and in applied research in agriculture typically involves some change in human behavior. This might involve, for instance, avoidance of broad spectrum pesticides, use of economic thresholds, or adoption of a new cultural practice in disease management. Changes in human behavior often are slow and difficult, even when the potential benefits of change seem clear. Research and extension personnel working with farmers have discussed for decades the apparent slow pace of adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) and other less-pesticide-intensive management practices. The reasons why change is slow are numerous, but one aspect that warrants consideration is how changes in farm practices are communicated to farmers. Effectively communicating changes in pest management practices at the farm level requires a system of research and extension management that differs from that to which most biological scientists are accustomed. What is the motivation for farmers to deviate from historical practices? How persuasive are concepts of environmental sustainability, integrated pest management, risk management, and economic gain in communicating the needs for change? In addressing these questions, it is useful to understand some of the basic determinants of farmers decision processes and motivations to adopt practices. This article discusses these issues.

Moral Selves, Evil Selves: The Social Psychology of Conscience By Steven Hitlin Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. 284 pages.

use decisions, Halebsky emphasizes the dual importance of the local political opportunity structure and a democratic debate that addresses a broad conception of the public. Such controversies matter not just to those whose livelihoods may be affected by the construction of a Wal-Mart superstore, but to the larger community whose identity, rhythms of life and economic security will be altered in the process. SMOs that can successfully combine key aspects of democratic deliberation and local political opportunity can indeed prevail in these contests – an extraordinary feat considering the profound mismatch between small towns and superstores in terms of size, resources and economic clout. Ironically, the last successful challenge considered in the book is one in which Eureka, CA activists built a well-oiled machine of organized resistance, benefiting from the advice of outside consultants such as Al Norman, the founder of “SprawlBusters” and an activist who helps communities resist big box construction. In the decade since, other national organizations seeking to reform Wal-Mart have proliferated, such as the UFCW-backed Wake-Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch that has similarly close ties with the SEIU. How successful these groups will be in igniting an inclusive, national debate remains to be seen. But Halebsky reminds us that under the right conditions, small town Davids can topple big business Goliaths – and in these cases, it’s the local knowledge that matters.

85 cloth

Judging by their titles alone, a reader might expect that Abandoned Families: Social Isolation in the Twenty-First Century, by Kristin Seefeldt, and Surviving Poverty: Creating Sustainable Ties among the Poor, by Joan Maya Mazelis, focus on very similar subject matter. Both concern themselves with social ties among the poor, a topic that has long been of interest to scholars and has been debated intensely since Carol Stack first documented the necessity of kin and fictive-kin ties for poverty survival (Stack 1974). Since Stack’s work, however, poverty scholars have failed to consistently find evidence of such vital and enduring social ties, whether to kin or non-kin. Findings from qualitative and ethnographic work from the past forty years vary in the degree to which they find evidence of social network ties, social isolation, and/or transient or ‘‘disposable ties’’ (Desmond 2012) among the poor. Given the continuing confusion over exactly what role social support plays in poverty survival, particularly in the era since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, there is much room for the contributions of these two books. They approach these issues from such different angles and directions, however, that they are seldom in direct conversation with each other and instead prove to be complementary. Their contributions are perhaps stronger together than separately, and collectively the two books provide an important background for understanding modern U.S. urban poverty and the ways in which social support can—but often doesn’t—aid in poverty survival. Mazelis’s book looks directly at the social dimensions of non-kin support and ties, focusing on reasons for the decline in social-tie reliance, as well as attempting to answer how we might go about fostering the creation and long-term sustenance of such ties. The presentation of sustainable ties ‘‘as ties between nonkin that provide deep, meaningful support and have the potential to last over time’’ (p. 17) is helpful for understanding how the poor can come to rely on one another and utilize shared resources to survive. The book looks in depth at the case of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), a grassroots organization in Philadelphia whose aims include ‘‘building a collective response to poverty and demanding greater state aid for the poor’’ (p. 11). The research consists of qualitative interviews with female KWRU members and nonmembers in order Abandoned Families: Social Isolation in the Twenty-First Century, by Kristin Seefeldt. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2016. 263 pp.

In Search of Social Ties amid Abandonment: A Review of Abandoned Families and Surviving PovertyAbandoned Families: Social Isolation in the’Twenty-First Century, by SeefeldtKristin. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2016. 263 pp.

32.50 paper. ISBN: 9780871547835.

32.50 paper. ISBN: 9780871547835.Surviving Poverty: Creating Sustainable Ties among the Poor, by MazelisJoan Maya. New York: New York University Press, 2017. 283 pp.

the groups. By contrast, the Canadian National railway company succeeded in its campaign to secure regulatory approval by the federal Surface Transportation Board of its purchase of another railway company in the Chicago area. First, it was open about its sponsorship and allowed the activated citizens’ groups considerable autonomy. Second, the PAC it worked with focused on activating Chicago residents who were threatened by rail congestion, many of whom later became fervent advocates of the rail purchase as a way to reduce hazardous rail congestion. Walker’s book provides a thorough picture of this new type of privatized citizen mobilization. He makes an excellent case that PACs’ efforts reinforce preexisting inequalities by giving corporations and large associations the ability to mobilize allies. At the same time, he argues that few of these fit the classic model of an astroturf. Many PACs focus on activating citizens around genuinely held beliefs and concerns. For the sake of legitimacy, these campaigns often include minorities and disadvantaged groups. Corporate sponsors and PACs are aware that transparency and devolution of control at the tactical level are necessary to create the appearance of genuine citizen concern. For students of political advocacy, citizen participation, and corporate public relations, this is a must-read book.

28.00 paper. ISBN: 9781479870080.

The Spectacular State explores the production of national identity in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. The main protagonists are the cultural elites involved in the elaboration of new state-sponsored mass-spectacle national holidays: Navro’z (Zoroastrian New Year) and Independence Day. The overall argument is that despite their aspirations to reinvigorate national identity, mass spectacle creators in Uzbekistan have reproduced much of the Soviet cultural production. National identity has been one of the most fraught questions in Central Asia, where nationality was a contradictory and complicated product of the Soviet rule. Although the category of nationality was initiated, produced, and imposed by the Soviet state in the 1920s, it eventually became a source of power and authority for local elites, including cultural producers. The collapse of the Soviet Union opened up possibilities for revising and reversing many understandings manufactured by the socialist regime. Yet, upon her arrival in Tashkent to conduct her research on the renegotiation of national identity in 1995, Laura Adams discovered that instead of embracing newly-found freedom to recover a more authentic history, most Uzbek intellectuals, especially cultural producers working with the state, avoided probing too far in this direction. Rather than entirely discarding the Soviet colonial legacies, they revised their history selectively. Whereas the ideological content of their cultural production shifted from socialism to nationalism, many of the previous cultural ‘‘forms’’ have remained. Similarly, the Uzbek government continued to employ cultural elites to implement the task of reinforcing its nation-building program, thus following the Soviet model of cultural production. The book consists of four chapters. The first chapter delineates the broad themes of national identity building, and the remaining chapters explore mass spectacle creation by distinguishing between three elements: form (Chapter Two), content (Chapter Three), and the mode of production (Chapter Four). The study is based on content analysis of two Olympic Games-style national holidays, interviews with cultural producers, and participation observation of festivals and behind-the-scenes preparation meetings. Although Adams provides a few references to viewers and their attitude toward the public holiday performances, her book does not offer an extended engagement with reception and consumption of these holidays. The comprehensive and multi-layered overview of the process of revising national identity in Uzbekistan is one of the book’s major accomplishments. For Adams, the production of national identity is not a selfevident and seamless production forced by the state but instead a dynamic, complex, and dialogical process of negotiation between various parties (intellectual factions, state officials, mass spectacle producers, etc.). Her account reveals the messy and often contradictory nature of national identity production and thus moves away from the tendency to reify the state and its policies. The book makes a significant contribution to studies of nationalism by suggesting that the production of national identity in Uzbekistan was centrally constituted by the consideration of the ‘‘international audience.’’ Although public holidays, studied by Adams, aimed at fostering national identification, the forms in which these celebrations are performed (including national dances and music) indicate the aspiration of cultural producers to be part of the international community. This kind of national production self-consciously oriented toward the international viewer has been the legacy of the Soviet nationalities policy where all cultural producers had to produce art ‘‘socialist in content, national in form.’’ Notwithstanding the difference in generations or genres,

In the Blood: Understanding America’s Farm FamiliesIn the Blood: Understanding America’s Farm Families, by WuthnowRobert. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. 227 pp.

This book has a catchy title and nice cover art, adding to the reader’s anticipation that it will be an absorbing—and entertaining— read. The price is reasonable, making it potentially attractive as a text. And the book is, in fact, generally quite well written. America’s romance with technology is complicated, contradictory, and confusing, and it certainly deserves more scholarly attention. However, much has already been written on this subject, not enough of which finds its way into the pages of this book. The introduction suggests that its author, fiction writer and English professor Glen Scott Allen, imagines an audience largely unfamiliar with social and cultural studies of science and technology, and tends to leave the impression that he is unfamiliar with much of this work himself. Allen concentrates on what he sees as Americans’ suspicion of the purely scientific, as opposed to the technological, a suspicion that he correctly surmises may have roots in social class distinctions. He reports that in researching this book, he ‘‘began to wonder to what extent . . . American culture [has] shaped American scientific practice’’ (p. 5), as though this were an entirely original question. In Chapter One, he marvels that in 1848 the American Association for the Advancement of Science adopted promotion of the ‘‘purer’’ sciences as its goal (p. 17), and in general implies surprise at his discovery of the social, political, and class-based character of science (although it is not exactly clear how the AAAS vision is an argument that Americans distrust science, instead of an argument that at least some of us approve of it). He discusses the ‘‘selling’’ of American science in Chapter Three without any apparent reference either to the work of sociologist Dorothy Nelkin or to that of media historian Marcel Lafollette, two scholars especially well-known for their careful documentation of how media representations of science and technology have historically served this purpose. Then, in Chapter Four, Allen presents American Pragmatism without reference to John Dewey, who makes only a cameo appearance a few pages later. Surely Dewey’s contribution to Pragmatism would have been an excellent pillar on which to build any argument about American perspectives on practical knowledge. Finally, as a postscript about two pages from the end of the entire work, Allen confesses that two issues ‘‘not specifically addressed in this book are race and gender’’ (p. 260). Struggling to express my reaction to this latter statement in particularly appropriate scholarly language, the phrase that seems to sum it up best is : ‘‘Well, duh!’’ While some of Allen’s insights into American culture are intriguing—for example, our preference for the practical and our obsession with efficiency certainly ring true—they are not ideally persuasive as presented because of the book’s tendency to ignore too many important issues and scholars. Allen may have read more broadly in the sociology and history of science – as well as in media studies and philosophy—than this presentation of his subject matter implies; if so, he ought to have reflected this reading in what he has written here. A dose of empiricism may be helpful in this context. While it seems to be true (on the basis of most relevant opinion polls) that today’s Americans prefer science that has economic or social benefits (for example, science that creates jobs, health, and wealth), it is also true that Americans continue to like and trust science as well as technology (even while some segments are doubtful about specific points, such as evolution and climate change). If, as Allen apparently takes as his premise, suspicion of all things purely scientific is a peculiarly American cultural