The New Rural History: Defining the Arp Ameters
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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Fall 1981 The New Rural History: Defining The arP ameters Robert P. Swierenga Kent State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Swierenga, Robert P., "The New Rural History: Defining The Parameters" (1981). Great Plains Quarterly. 1872. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1872 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. THE NEW RURAL HISTORY: DEFINING THE PARAMETERS ROBERT P. SWIERENGA In the last ten years the "new social history" Rurality as a distinct way of life is on the and its stepchild the "new urban history" decline and may well disappear in our lifetime. have become the dominant sub field s within Nevertheless, until the late nineteenth century, the history discipline; but the "new rural his most Americans lived in rural communities. tory" remains an orphan child with little recog To study the development and subsequent nized place as yet in academic curricula or history of these communities is vital to an historical writings.! Unlike urban history, understanding of American history. Urban his which is studied as a coherent whole, aspects torians and geographers certainly recognize of rural history are usually discussed under the importance of the rural environs in which such rubrics as the westward movement, agri their cities emerged and acknowledge the inter cultural history, land history, frontier develop dependence of cities and hinterland. Even at ment, Indian history, and so forth. the present time, nonmetropolitan communi The implicit assumption behind this dis ties, which contain one-third of the total jointed scholarly perception is that rural his United States population and 90 percent of the tory is an incongruity in the last decades of the land area, remain an important national force, twentieth century. It is true that electricity politically and socially. 2 and the automobile have virtually wiped out the boundary line between rural and urban REASONS FOR NEGLECT commumtles, and the rural economy is inter twined with urban industry and commerce. There are cultural, historiographical, and methodological reasons for the scholarly neglect of rural life. The cultural reason is that Robert P. Swierenga is professor of history at most professional historians since World War II Kent State University. A managing editor of are urban-oriented. They live and teach in ur Social Science History, he is the author or edi ban universities and naturally respond to urban tor of several books in American frontier his issues and problems. Eugen Weber, professor tory and methodology, including Pioneers and of history at the University of California at Prophets (1968) and Acres for Cents (1976). Los Angeles and a leading historian of rural 211 212 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1981 France, frankly admitted to this bias in a 1976 literary) sources, which are inherently elitist. book: Few rural Americans kept diaries, letters, or personal memorabilia. Manuscript collections The history I thought and taught and wrote dealing with the everyday activities of ordinary about went on chiefly in cities; the country people were almost nonexistent for rural side and little towns were a mere appendage people, who comprised the inarticulate "bot of that history, following, echoing, or simply standing by to watch what was going on, but tom half" of society. The records that do exist scarcely relevant on their own account.3 are the work of outsiders-bureaucrats, parish priests, local police, teachers-who recorded There is also a historiographical bias. The con what they observed as directed by law for civil sensus school of American history, which administrative purposes. Fortunately, with the gained dominance in the profession in the aid of computer technology and quantitative 1950s under the leadership of Richard Hof methods, and with the use of behavioral stadter, lauded the liberal reform tradition, theories borrowed from sociology, demog especially the urban progressives and New Deal raphy, and ethnology, we have recently found ers. Urbanites were reformers by tradition, in that the illiterate were not, in fact, inarticulate. this view, whereas rural Americans were reac The interpretation of behavioral data, cultural tionaries, seeking to restore the lost world of artifacts, and folk traditions (songs, dances, Thomas Jefferson. They were wounded yeomen tales, limericks, and pictures) reveals that the who espoused anti-Semitism and used con fund of facts is much richer than we supposed spiracy theories to explain their suffering in the even a generation ago. Of course, public docu new international economic order. Rural Amer ments have always been replete with systematic icans were also anti-intellectual book burners, data on rural Americans, but until the intro religious fundamentalists, prudish Victorians, duction of quantitative methods, historians and teetotaling moralists who foisted their life were incapable of mining the rich lodes of serial style on hapless urbanites with the Prohibition records in county courthouses-census manu Amendment. At the same time, Hofstadter's scripts, land and tax records, and civil registries. demeani~g portrayal of rural Americans is puzzling, given his insightful and often quoted DEFINITION OF RURAL HISTORY statement that "the United States was born in the country and moved to the city. ,,4 I define the new rural history as the system While the liberal tradition has denigrated atic study of human behavior over time in the farmers at the expense of urbanites, scholars rural environment. This definition has four of agricultural history and the westward move parts. ment remain captive to an older tradition of The first phrase is systematic study. Sys frontier individualism and democracy. This tematic methods in history include the use legacy from the towering figure of Frederick of theory to determine the questions to be Jackson Turner stresses environmental forces addressed, the analysis of quantitative data as in the early evolutionary stages of the frontier well as descriptive sources, and a comparative process but neglects the more important story and interdisciplinary focus. The goal is to the rise and decline of rural communities as explain social behavior in a variety of rural they cope with the disintegrating forces of historical settings on the basis of a broad modern mass society. Thus, rural historians interdisciplinary body of data, analytic meth have suffered from a distorted perspective of ods, and social science theories. the meaning of rural life. The second phrase is human behavior. The Finally, rural historians have been stymied emphasis is on historical experience "as it was by an inadequate methodology. Historians actually lived" by people in the past. Rural traditionally relied heavily on narrative (or history centers on the life-style and activities THE NEW RURAL HISTORY 213 of farmers and villagers, their family patterns, limiting himself to the traditional institutional farming practices, social structures, and com and legal aspects, he sought to understand the munity institutions. The effects of economic, totality of French rural history. No Paris arm political, and environmental forces on human chair scholar, he roamed over rural France to behavior are considered as part of the larger penetrate the peasant mentality, learn the daily picture. The end is a unified conception of rural routine of farming, and capture the smell of life, a holistic history in which human behavior hogs, hay, and manure. His ideal was to unite is the key variable. historical perspective with local knowledge and The third phrase-over time-distinguishes experience. He immersed himself in the litera rural history from rural sociology. Historians ture of all disciplines relating to land and are primarily concerned with change; they agrarian communities-agronomy, cartography, study social behavioral change from one genera economics, geography, philology, psychology, tion or historical era to the next. sociology, and folklore-and he asked "why" The last phrase in the definition is rural questions. Why did hamlets develop in one environment. What is rural? In common usage, place and nucleated villages in another? Why rural means simply "outside the large cities" were some farmers innovators? Why did crop or outside "urban areas. ,,5 It is difficult, of patterns differ from one area to another? course, to delineate urban-rural geographic Bloch's innovative approach revolutionized the boundaries or cultural borders, or even to study of agrarian history in Europe and capti specify simple statistical categories. In quantita vated countless young scholars who continued tive studies, many scholars use the arbitrary his work when World War II cut short his bril census definition-rural Americans are those liant career. living in towns of 2,500 inhabitants or less or The Kansas agricultural historian James C. engaged in agriculture as their chief source of Malin is perhaps the closest American counter income. This definition rests on two criteria: part to Bloch.