A Photographic Essay: Rural Social Disorganization
By: Kenneth D. Tunnell
This photographic essay focuses on Kentucky specifically and central Appalachia generally. Informed by the rich tradition in anthropology, the visual images, as both data and illustration, indicate shifting economies and ways of life in geographic areas -- most notably farming communities and small towns -- that, until recently, were relatively insulated from the impact of globalization (see e.g., Ruby 2005).
Abandoned barn - Garrard County.
Family farming in the United States has been on the decline for decades with farmers’ numbers dropping by 16 million since1950 (Deavers and Hoppe 1992). Farms also decreased by over four million during the past century (USDA). Similar developments have occurred closer to home. In Kentucky alone, the number of farms decreased 67 percent across the past century (USDA). Tobacco farming has been a major income crop in Kentucky, but with the abolition of federal subsidies, tobacco farming and market prices remain unpredictable. The 2005 Burley tobacco crop, for example, dropped 30 percent from the 2004 levels – the lowest productivity since 1937. Meanwhile, rural land prices dramatically increase. With globalization an economic reality, and land and labor costs cheaper elsewhere, family farmers inhabit a weak competitive location. As farming declines, farmland is quickly being developed.
Dilapidated barn - Garrard County
Post-agrarian development is transforming rural countryside into Stepford Wives-like suburban housing and aesthetically unappealing retail markets. Rural and small town uniqueness is becoming homogenized with the importation of transnational retailers. Locally owned businesses within rural communities and small towns are being impacted. Country stores, seed and feed stores, mom and pop diners, and locally owned garages are disappearing from the rural landscape. The country store may well be the exemplar of changing rural life and locales. The country store, as a significant “third place” depends on a lively rural community that is becoming occupied by disparate strangers (Oldenburg 1989).
Barn in disrepair - Garrard County
As rural life and farming cultures are drastically altered and other activities (work and leisure) become more centralized in places some distance from rural settings and home, locally owned businesses decline. Some rural areas and small towns are witnessing once taken-for-granted institutions supplanted by franchises, pre-manufactured and mobile homes, fast food restaurants, and semi-skilled blue and white collar employment. More specifically, the Wal-Marting of rural America is a reality affecting both economy and culture as Wal-Mart averages about 200 store openings yearly with the majority of those occurring in small towns and rural areas. In Kentucky alone, there currently are 65 Wal-Mart Super Centers, 17 Discount Stores, two Neighborhood Markets, and seven Sam’s Clubs with the majority located in small towns.
One-time stately farmhouse abandoned and in disrepair - Garrard County.
Population and housing growth in rural areas and small towns contribute little to public coffers as newcomers work and shop elsewhere. Population growth strains existing public services; small towns and rural communities must manage more with diminishing revenue for education, trash pick-up, road repair, and other infrastructural necessities.
Abandoned farmhouse - Garrard County
One study specifically examined residential growth in once agricultural areas and concluded that although newcomers’ houses are quite expensive, public revenue generated from them failed to compensate for the increased demands they place on local governments responsible for providing public services (Esseks, Schmidt and Sullivan 1999). In fact, the study concluded that for every dollar of tax revenue generated by new suburban developments, $1.11 of public money was spent providing services to them (Weisheit, Falcone and Wells 2006).
Farm sales are common with the development of the countryside - Madison County
More than a century ago Emile Durkheim (1893/1933) described vast social change and its impact on community. With structural and organizational changes, peoples’ lives are impacted in myriad ways; social problems also likely increase in number and complexity. Societies are dynamic but their change is mostly characterized as moving from smaller, isolated communities with little migration and cultural differences toward larger, non-isolated communities with high levels of mobility and heterogeneous populations. As communities transform from rural or “mechanical” to more urban or “organic,” its members are confronted with vast changes to their ways of life (e.g., Weber 1947). For example, traditional institutions change greatly and some pass into oblivion, such as the country store. In the new society, people tend to become increasingly alienated from one another as they no longer have an established and recognized place for themselves or for places to congregate, shop, swap stories, or any number of things. This results in alienation and increases in social problems. Such change is especially relevant to crime and deviance, as consensus, that at one time existed in rather quaint and rural hamlets, is replaced by conflict; altruism is replaced with apathy towards others.
Independently owned businesses decline with changes to economy and culture - Whitley County
Today, a social disorganization thesis is typically used to describe such changes. Although usually applied to urban space, it theoretically offers rich description of areas experiencing worsening conditions (as is the case in some inner cities experiencing the concentrated effects of poverty and rural areas experiencing vast disruption with new and increasing social problems). These social developments may be relevant to changing crime trends, rural drug use and a general loss of community. Social disorganization, as explanation for crime and deviance, seems useful to these rural dynamics.
A one-time family owned and operated country store now sits idle and abandoned - Garrard County
Today when explaining the loss of rural and small town community and community places of importance (e.g., the country store), the theoretical literature focuses on the concept -- civic community. A civic community perspective “focuses on social and economic structures and institutions that buffer communities from external, usually global, forces.” These buffering structures include community organizations, locally owned businesses, and civic and religious organizations. For civic community to thrive, there must exist a collective “sense of place.” But, “place,” in the rural context, is in the process of fundamental transformation. As the urban fringe encroaches on the rural and once-rural, those communities are being transformed into places with less traditional meaning. As big-box stores and franchise operations invade rural communities and small towns, change to retail and service sectors are effecting those areas spatially, socially, and economically. Carried to the extreme, such changes likely “undermine entirely the social fabric of communities” (Tolbert 2005: 1313).
Large and small-scale littering plague rural communities - Garrard County
Recent empirical research reports that a decline of rural civic community often leads to the loss of “economically productive residents, a decline in local businesses, fewer civic spaces for interaction, and an erosion of local physical and social infrastructure.” Communities undergoing such changes exhibit “a reduced capacity for local problem solving and are increasingly vulnerable to the social disruptions of globalization. Once-meaningful rural places become commodified, yet hollow space” (Tolbert 2005: 1313). These changes in rural lifestyles and the decline in locally owned businesses further undermine civic community. They are empirically associated with social problems – for example, lower wages and higher poverty rates. Furthermore, they usually are correlated with increasing indications of crime and deviance.
Limited public revenue disallows creek and river clean-up operations - Garrard County
Rural communities are facing worsening social problems. Poverty, crime, drug manufacturing and trafficking are increasing (see e.g., Mangum, Mangum and Sum 2003). Research has documented that areas experiencing rapid growth also experience a disproportionately large increase in crime. One meta-analysis of published research reported that 21 of 23 studies found that rural communities and small towns experiencing rapid population growth witnessed increases in crime at a rate of three to four times that of population increases (William Freudenburg and Robert Jones 1991: 619). Research speculates that changes in community social structure that accompany rapid growth results in adverse impacts on informal social controls and civic community. Social capital and collective efficacy are implied important components for civic community and social disorganization theses.
One-time agricultural areas are developed and sold, lot by lot - Harrison County
The news is not entirely dire. Not all small towns and rural areas are in decline. Those that are thriving or holding their own have a “civic community that enables them to weather internal and external ups and downs.” Under leadership of local stakeholders, an enlightened and flexible problem-solving capacity develops and serves to buttress these communities through episodes of economic prosperity and decline. In this case, local stakeholders rarely consider a “multinational or corporate perspective. The worldview is local” (Tolbert 2005: 1311). Threats to community from global social and economic forces have reshaped some small communities but have had less impact on those with a strong civic community.
A former farm today is cluttered with homogenized housing - Madison County
References
Durkheim, Emile. 1893/1933. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Macmillan.
Esseks, J. Dixon, Harvey E. Schmidt and Kimberly L. Sullivan. 1999. Living on the Edge: Fiscal Costs and Public Safety Risks of Low-Density Residential Development on Farmland. Center for Agriculture in the Environment.
Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Emmett Jones. 1991. “Criminal behavior and rapid community growth: Examining the evidence.” Rural Sociology 56 (4): 619-645.
Mangum, Garth L., Stephen L. Mangum and Andrew W. Sum. 2003. The Persistence of Poverty in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Oldenburg, Ray. 1989. The Great Good Place. New York: Paragon House.
Ruby, Jay. 2005. “The last 20 years of visual anthropology – a critical review.” Visual Studies 20 (2): 159-170.
Tolbert II, Charles M. 2005. “Minding our own business: Local retail establishments and the future of southern civic community.” Social Forces 83 (4): 1309-1328.
Weber, Max. 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: Oxford University Press.
Weisheit, Ralph A., David N. Falcone and L. Edward Wells. 2006. Crime and Policing in Rural and Small-Town America (3rd ed). Long Grove, IL: Waveland.
Note: The images that accompany this essay are the property of the author and are under copyright. Please contact the author (at ken.tunnell@eku.edu) for permission to use them.
