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Book SynopsisSo, 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...
Trade ReviewIn researching her book, the author lived and worked for nearly two years in Viroqua, a small town in southwestern Wisconsin, where she tended bar at the American Legion and even served as vice president of the historical society's museum. This kind of work stands or falls by the vigilance and precision of the ethnographer's observations. Macgregor acquits herself brilliantly; she draws subtle distinctions within and between social groups, yet her analysis lets readers generalize about what some idealize and others castigate as small-town American values. For all their differences, the longtime residents (who might drive ATVs and snowmobiles) and the progressives (who favor Subaru Outbacks, the local Waldorf school, and organic produce) share a belief that raising children in Viroqua helps protect them from the 'excesses of consumerism.' Indeed, readers from non-flyover places will be struck by the subdued and skeptical consumerism and the commitment to thrift that Macgregor finds among Viroquans. Here's an unintentional paean to midwestern modesty that's especially noteworthy in our post-crash era.
-- Benjamin Schwarz * The Atlantic Monthly *
MacGregor's work is a powerful reminder to rethink our assumptions about how community transpires in small towns... MacGregor’s ethnographic approach is a reminder about the value of letting people speak and act for themselves. Habits of the Heartland is an important contribution for scholarsstudentsand planners interested in community and/or rural and small town life in the twenty-first century.
-- Amanda Johnson Ashley * Journal of Planning Education and Research *
Table of ContentsIntroductionPart I: Cultures of Community1. Three Halloweens, Three Viroquas
2. The Alternatives: A Kinder, Gentler Counterculture
3. The Main Streeters: The Busiest People in Town
4. The Regulars: Keeping Things Simple
5. Playing in the Same Sandbox?Part II: Commerce, Consumption, and Community in Viroqua6. Beneficent Enterprise and Viroquan Exceptionalism
7. Retail Morality
8. Consumption and Belonging in ViroquaEpilogue and ConclusionAppendix: Study Methods
References
Index
