Abstract
The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is—And Isn’t, by Steven Conn, presents an important request to readers: throw out the conventional understanding of the rural and consider that it is not distinct from the urban, as suggested by the prevailing representation of the rural idyll. Instead, he proposes that rural and urban landscapes have been subject to the same processes of modernization, resulting in significant linkages. In fact, Conn suggests that by not considering how rural and urban landscapes are linked, we perpetuate the myth of the rural idyll and risk misunderstanding the powerful influences that shaped both rural and urban spaces and places over the last two centuries.
Conn’s analyses focus on four processes: militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and suburbanization. Using extensive archival data as well as research from across such disciplines as economics, sociology, geography, and anthropology, Conn weaves an overarching story of the changes in rural and urban spaces related to macro-level dynamics. Importantly, his macro-level story is supported with case studies that illustrate and offer additional dimensions. These include the experiences of and impacts on the populations of specific spaces and places. The combination of historical and social science sources provides both a timeline for understanding the key processes as well as a window through which readers can “see” some of their powerful effects on individuals, families, communities, and regions.
Conn begins his discussion of modernization processes with the militarization of spaces. Importantly, he notes that militarization began in rural spaces with the removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands to new locations. In fact, this early impact of rural military presence can be seen today in the remains of military posts established near Native American communities. Expansion of the military presence continued through the Cold War era, and as the number and size of military bases increased, the impact on rural spaces grew as well. To illustrate, Conn presents two case studies, Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos) in East Texas and the K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Not only did the impacts include population growth, but population dynamics changed as well. Although the rural communities benefited from new economic activities, they were challenged by the immense population explosions (e.g., 300,000 active-duty personnel at Sawyer Air Force Base) as well as the diversity of “newcomers.” While Fort Cavazos remains open, Sawyer illustrates the impacts of military installation closures, which often included dramatic income, employment, and population losses, leading to rural blight.
The second process, industrialization, involved the creation of new industries in both urban and rural spaces. For example, iron forges were located near rural iron mines, and rural mills were located near water sources needed for power. Additionally, since the Civil War agricultural industrialization resulted from the development of new technologies for mass production and food processing as well as the consolidation of farmland to increase production. The new railroad system supported expansion of these industrial developments. In the early decades of the 1900s the growing urban crisis brought new public- and private-sector efforts to “decentralize” industry and “revitalize” rural economies that offered a cheaper, more compliant labor force. To illustrate, Conn draws on two case studies in rural Ohio: the GM and Honda manufacturing plants. The community associated with the first case experienced a boom-and-bust cycle, while the second plant continues to operate today.
The corporatization process, closely linked to industrialization, involved first the development of farmer cooperatives and then family farm corporations intended to ensure intergenerational business transfers. Despite some gains in agricultural management, farm cooperatives gave way to new corporate structures that developed to control agricultural production on a much larger scale on land consolidated from the purchase of small farm operations. These shifts, supported by government policy incentives to increase production, contributed to the growth of agribusiness. Similarly, corporations such as Woolworth and J.C. Penney first developed retail sales in rural areas, eventually expanding to urban markets. Other retail corporations soon spread to rural areas, accelerating the displacement of local businesses and the decline of rural economies. Thus, corporatization contributed to the fourth process, suburbanization, which involved the migration of people from both rural and urban spaces to new settlement “rings” around urban centers. These movements were facilitated by the growth of the interstate highway system, the decentralization of manufacturing operations, and the construction of new housing settlements that brought together people with distinctive, but often anti-urban, orientations.
The importance of Conn’s work is in offering a new framework for understanding significant historical and social processes and the linkages among them. Of particular interest is Conn’s demonstration of the value of historical contexts in comprehending the evolving modernization dynamics and their social impacts. Despite his use of relevant sociological concepts and research, however, Conn’s framework could have benefited from incorporating boomtown literature that so clearly documents the effects of rapid population growth and its effects (e.g., Gulliford 2003). Additionally, the socio-spatial approach to urban change clarifies how investment and disinvestment profoundly change urban landscapes (e.g., Gottdiener et al. 2014). Recent sociological analyses also offer greater depth on many of the issues discussed (see Flora et al. 2018; Brown and Schafft 2017; Bailey et al. 2014; Sherman 2021; Hochschild 2016; Ashwood 2018; and Tickameyer et al. 2017).
Nevertheless, Conn’s powerful reconsideration of rurality points to the possible value of envisioning rural and urban as the end points on a continuum representing different degrees of population density and heterogeneity. However, his discussion also underscores the complexity of locating “rural” in the emerging points along such a continuum. An important question, then, involves the meaning of rurality (and rural lifestyles) in contexts that have become increasingly complex and removed from relations to the land. In sum, Steven Conn’s Lies of the Land is provocative, engaging, and beautifully written—well worth the read.