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Author Macgregor, Lyn Christine, 1973-

Title Habits of the heartland : small-town life in modern America / Lyn C. Macgregor
Published Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2010

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Description 1 online resource (x, 270 pages)
Series Cornell paperbacks
Cornell paperbacks
Contents The Cultures of Community -- Three Halloweens, three Viroquas -- The alternatives: a kinder, gentler counterculture -- The Main Streeters: the busiest people in town -- The regulars: keeping things simple -- Playing in the same sandbox? -- Commerce, Consumption, and Community in Viroqua --Beneficent enterprise and Viroquan exceptionalism -- Retail morality -- Consumption and belonging in Viroqua
Summary Although most Americans no longer live in small towns, images of small-town life, and particularly of the mutual support and neighborliness to be found in such places, remain powerful in our culture. In this work, the author investigates how the residents of Viroqua, Wisconsin, population 4,355, create a small town community together. She lived in Viroqua for nearly two years. During that time she gathered data in public places, attended meetings, volunteered for civic organizations, talked to residents in their workplaces and homes, and worked as a bartender at the local American Legion post. Viroqua has all the outward hallmarks of the idealized American town; the kind of place where local merchants still occupy the shops on Main Street and everyone knows everyone else. On closer examination, one finds that the town contains three largely separate social groups: Alternatives, Main Streeters, and Regulars. These categories are not based on race or ethnic origins. Rather, social distinctions in Viroqua are based ultimately on residents' ideas about what a community is and why it matters. These ideas both reflect and shape their choices as consumers, whether at the grocery store, as parents of school-age children, or in the voting booth. Living with, and listening to, the town's residents taught the author that while traditional ideas about "community," especially as it was connected with living in a small town, still provided an important organizing logic for peoples' lives, there were a variety of ways to understand and create community. -- From back cover
So, how do Americans in a small town make community today? This book argues that there is more than one answer, and that despite the continued importance of small-town stuff traditionally associated with face-to-face communities, it makes no sense to think that contemporary technological, economic, and cultural shifts have had no impact on the ways Americans practice community life. Instead, the author found that different Viroquans took different approaches to making community that reflected different confluences of moral logics, their senses of obligation to themselves, to their families, to Viroqua, and to the world beyond it, and about the importance of exercising personal agency. The biggest surprise was that these ideas about obligation and agency, and specifically about the degree to which it was necessary or good to try to bring one's life into precise conformance with a set of larger goals, turned out to have replaced more traditional markers of social belonging like occupation and ethnicity, in separating Viroquans into social groups. -- from Habits of the Heartland
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
English
digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Print version record
Subject Community life -- Wisconsin -- Viroqua
City and town life -- Wisconsin -- Viroqua
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Sociology -- Rural.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- General.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
City and town life
Commerce -- Social aspects
Community life
Manners and customs
SUBJECT Viroqua (Wis.) -- Social life and customs
Viroqua (Wis.) -- Commerce -- Social aspects
Subject Wisconsin -- Viroqua
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2009045343
ISBN 9780801458972
0801458978
0801457734
9780801457739