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Title: Selling Which South? Economic Change in Rural and Small-Town North Carolina in an Era of Globalization, 1940-2007
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2007
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Abstract: Although most people do not realize it, it has been a long time now since agriculture dominated rural areas in the developed world. Most do know that farmers today constitute but a tiny proportion of the U.S. labor force—about 1.55 percent in 2005—yet few have bothered to ask just what rural folks are doing for a living.1 While the public at large appears to have missed the decoupling of "rural" from "agriculture," this development has shaken several academic disciplines to the core. Entire fields, rural sociology and rural geography, for example, were founded on the assumption that the relationship between rural and agriculture was nearly akin to a mathematical identity, remaining true regardless of the values either of these variables acquired. Even while fewer and fewer farmers were "out standing" in their fields, many so-called agricultural historians merely shifted their attention away from questions relating to agricultural production per se to other questions that had rural dimensions: gender relations, childhood, and rural leisure and consumption patterns, for example.
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Authors: Kyriakoudes, Louis M.; Coclanis, Peter A.
Periodical (Full): Southern Cultures
Issue: 4
Volume: 13
Pages: 86-102
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other
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