A human interest story out of rural South Korea

This story by Choe Sang-Hun in today's New York Times describes various aspects of rural society in the Republic of South Africa, where many foreign brides have migrated in recent years to wed farmers. The focus of the story, though, is 39-year-old Lee Si-Kap, described as a "shy farmer" whose hobby is collecting and erecting satellite dishes, which he uses to watch television broadcasts fom all over the world. The dateline for the story is Yeongju, which is described repeatedly as a "rural" area in central Korea. Here are some excerpts:

Since late last year, he and thousands of fellow satellite enthusiasts — including the husbands of foreign brides and a few dedicated souls searching for signals from extraterrestrial life forms — have started a campaign to install free satellite dishes for poor foreign brides living in rural South Korea, so they can receive broadcasts from their home countries.

* * *

In recent years, the South Korean countryside has had an influx of brides from poorer countries like Vietnam, China and the Philippines. Like Ms. Bui, they marry South Korean farmers who have difficulty finding a spouse because so many young Korean women have rejected rural life and migrated to cities.

* * *

In South Korea, which had once prided itself on being a homogeneous society, 4 out of 10 women who married in rural communities last year were foreign born.

In Yeongju, for example, the number of foreign brides increased by nearly 30% in the past 18 months. Half of the women are from Vietnam, and like those from other countries, they are happy for the opportunity to be connected to their homelands by watching television via the satellite dishes Mr. Lee helps to install.

The headline reminds me of an issue of import to the rural United States. It is "Rural South Koreans' Global Links Grow, Nourished by a Satellite Crop." If only the U.S. government were so interested in linking its rural communities to the rest of the world by subsidizing broadband service ... .

An illustration that urban places can be lawless, too

"Constant Fear and Mob Rule in South African Slum" is the headline of a story by Barry Bearak in today's New York Times. Here's an excerpt describing the urban slum of Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg, and what is happening there.

Crime in South Africa is commonly portrayed as an onslaught against the wealthy, but it is the poor who are most vulnerable: poor people conveniently accessible to poor criminals.

* * *

To spend time in Diepsloot over three weeks is to observe the unrelenting fear so common among the urban poor.

* * *

In Diepsloot, people usually bear their losses in silence, their misfortune unreported and their offenders unknown. If a suspect is identified, victims usually inform quasi-legal vigilante groups or hire their own thugs to recover their property.

Remarkably, while Diepsloot's population is estimated at 150,000, the nearest police station is 10 miles away. As in rural places, then, physical spatiality separates people from police protection, fueling the need to resort to self help. (Is this why the NRA is associated with rural America?)

I am reminded of a comment by Aravind Adiga in an NPR interview. Speaking about India--which like South Africa features a vast gulf between the impoverished rural and the sophisticated urban, with the latter also marked by slums--Adiga observed that vast differences in wealth are more common in cities than in rural areas. These differences are also more apparent in cites, which may be why crime rates are higher in places like Diepsloot than in the nation's pockets of rural poverty and squalor.

Westerners bristle at federal tracking of cattle

The headline in yesterday's New York Times was "Rebellion on the Range Over a Cattle ID Plan," and the dateline for Erik Eckholm's story was Horse Springs, New Mexico, an unincorporated community in Catron County, New Mexico, population 3,543 and population density of 1 person for every two square miles. (Horse Springs itself is not a Census Designated Place).

Eckholm's story features the 22,000-acre Platt Ranch where every hundred acres supports just one cow. There, third-generation proprietor Jay Platt is refusing to abide by a new federally mandated livestock identification and tracking plan. Here's an excerpt from Eckholm's story:

“This plan is expensive, it’s intrusive, and there’s no need for it,” Mr. Platt said.

* * *

“They can’t comprehend the vastness of a ranch like this,” he said of federal officials. “They don’t appreciate what is involved logistically.”

Ranchers like Mr. Platt have been joined by small-scale family farmers and other agrarian advocates to oppose the national animal identification system, a plan first broached five years ago by the Bush administration.

Eckholm notes that government officials underestimated the "visceral opposition" to the plan. I'm not sure why. The reaction seems rather predictable to me, especially in the region that gave us the sagebrush rebellion.

Banishing casinos to the Russian hinterlands

The headline in today's New York Times is "Exiled by Russia: Casinos and Jobs," and in it Clifford J. Levy reports that the Kremlin has ordered all casinos in the country closed on Wednesday, July 1. The rural angle comes in where they may reopen. Levy reports:

[T]he Kremlin has offered the gambling industry only one option for survival: relocate to four regions in remote areas of Russia, as many as 4,000 miles from the capital. The potential marketing slogans — Come to the Las Vegas of Siberia! Have a Ball near the North Korean Border! — may not sound inviting, but that is in part what the government envisions.

All the same, none of the four regions are prepared for the transfer, and no casino is expected to reopen for several years.

Levy does not explain why the Russian government has decided to re-locate casinos to four particular regions, all of which are spatially removed from Russia's major cities, and three of which are in some ways rural: the Altai region of Siberia; the coastal area of the Far East, near the border with North Korea and China; and the Azov Sea region in the south. The fourth, more populous region, is Kaliningrad, a pocket of Russian territory between Poland and Lithuania, on the Baltic Sea. See a map here (note that the coastal area in Russia's Far East is so far away that it is not even shown on this map!) . Perhaps this reflects a rural development strategy by the Kremlin, but one half-baked and ill-conceived in terms of timing (and arguably in other ways, too).

Another consequence of (relative) rural lawlessness?

Today's story in the New York Times is headlined, "New Border Fear: Violence by a Rogue Militia," and the dateline is Arivaca, Arizona. The story reports on the murder of a 29-year-old Latino and his 10-year-old daughter by a rogue militia called the Minuteman American Militia. The mother of the child survived; she pulled a gun and shot one of the intruders. Jesse McKinley and Malia Wollan report: "The authorities say that the three suspects were after money and drugs that they intended to use to finance vigilantism, and that members of the group may have been involved in at least one other home invasion, in California."

Arivaca's population is not available because it is not even a Census Designated Place, but it is in the far southern reaches of metropolitan Pima County, not far from the Mexican border. One thing that is striking, especially from the photo of the trailer home where the murders occurred, is the spatial isolation of the family whose home was invaded. These rogue militia are clearly picking on a population who are vulnerable in several ways, including spatially. Another excerpt of the story illustrates this point. A former associate of the Minuteman American Militia "said that in October, he took an excursion with [the group's leader] into the desert north of here, where, wearing camouflage and carrying handguns and rifles, they searched for illegal immigrants. 'It’s just like hunting,' Mr. Stonex said, describing the tracking skills the group used. 'If you’re going out hunting deer, you want to scout around and get an idea what their pattern is, what trails they use.'" This description, too, points up the spatial isolation that marks the places where this activity is occurring, which heightens the difficulty legitimate law enforcement face in policing and deterring this vigilantism.

Law and Order in the Ozarks (Part XXIX): Meth lab fugitive arrested

The lead story in the June 18, 2009 issue of the Newton County Times reports that David Middleton, 53, who had been sought for several weeks on charges of related to a methamphetamine lab, was arrested at his home on June 12, 2009. The report indicates that another man was also arrested at the time and was facing charges of hindering apprehension. The 14th Judicial Drug Task Force, Arkansas State Police, and neighboring Boone County Sheriff's Office assisted the Newton County Sheriff with the arrest.

In other news:

• The mayor of Jasper, the county seat, has announced that the town will seek a grant from the USDA Rural Development grant to rehabilitate the sewer plan that serves the City of Jasper.

• The 2009 Farm Family of the Year was named. The Cook-Campbells farm almost 1,400 acres near the community of Mt. Judea, where they raise hay and cattle.

• A local high school student has been named to the Youth Leadership Initiative and Tobacco Control Youth Board.

Rural school closures all too common in this economic climate

School districts everywhere are being pressed to find efficiencies and ways to economize, and rural schools are rarely seen as efficient or economical. (Some would argue, with good basis, that these small schools are quite efficient in the long run, in terms of educational results achieved, but that's another story).

Here is the story of a closure in Yolo County, California. The elementary school in tiny Knights Landing closed this week. Knights Landing is not even a Census Designated Place, though the story reports a population of 1,100. Here's an excerpt from Hudson Sangree's report:

The school's closure will take away one of the town's few bright spots and leave a vacant space at its center, supporters say.

"It's heartbreaking," said Roberto Barajas, school principal, who grew up in Knights Landing as a child of farmworkers. He attended Grafton and returned years later as an educator.

In February, officials with the Woodland Joint Unified School District decided to shut down Grafton to help close a $7 million budget gap.

About two-thirds of the students will be bused 16 miles to a school just outside of Woodland, the county seat, and the other third will attend a school just five miles away, but over the county line in Sutter County.

Just as sad as the prospect of young children being bused long distances are the consequences of school closures for the communities they serve. It's a cycle in which the local economy supports the school, which in turn supports the local economy. In places like Knights Landing, the cycle becomes a proverbial vicious one.

Leaving out the rural, again

A top story in tomorrow's Sacramento Bee discusses the growing problem of child poverty in Sacramento County. The problem is that the map accompanying it only shows the rate of children receiving free and reduced price lunches (a measure of child poverty) in schools in the city of Sacramento. The more rural parts of the county are not depicted. I'm not sure why. I'd like to know how they compare to the more urban schools.

Redefining "minority" in some rural places (and urban ones, too)

A story in USA Today last week reported on a demographic trend reflected in 2008 Census Bureau data. The headline is "Minority kids grow to majority in some counties," and here are an overview paragraph and the paragraph most relevant to rural places:

An analysis of the under-20 population shows that minority youths are the majority in 505 counties and that 60 counties have reached that milestone in this decade.

* * *

Black, Hispanic and Asian families are moving to suburbia. Some have come for jobs created by population growth. Others leave urban areas in search of more space, better schools and less crime. Most counties where the minority youth population surged past 50% from 2000 to 2008 are suburban or rural counties. Three are around Atlanta.

Looking at the map accompanying the story, I would guess that many of the rural counties where people of color are a majority of children are largely Native American counties, such as Big Horn, Glacier and Roosevelt counties in Montana. In Arizona and New Mexico, where the majority of virtually the entire states' child populations are children of color, both Latina/os and American Indians are part of the "minority" mix that has become the majority. In most of these counties, however, so-called minorities have long constituted a majority, so this is not really news. In other parts of the country, however, according to the USA Today report, Blacks and Asians--along with Latina/os, represent a more significant aspect of this demographic shift. My guess is that most of the 60 counties that have shifted in the past decade are outside the mountain West, the Great Plains, and the Southwest.

Tragedy in remote southeast Utah

Read the New York Times report here of a physician in Blanding Utah, population 3,162, who committed suicide last week, a day after he was one of 22 people named in a federal indictment for "stealing, selling and trading Indian artifacts."

The story drew my interest in part because I have driven through Blanding twice in the last five years, both times on vacations in the Southwest. Last fall, my family and I spent several days just south of there in Bluff, population 320, which served as a base for visiting Hovenweep National Monument, Natural Bridges National Monument, Monument Valley, and Goosenecks State Park. All of San Juan County --which is truly vast--has only about 15,000 residents, and a population density of 1.8 per square mile. I blogged about my trip here. As William Yardley's report indicates, Blanding is indeed a place from whence Indian "ancestral lands ... stretch out ... in every direction."

Given that Dr. Redd is reported to have been so generous in providing his services to American Indians, passing judgment and calling the rights and wrongs of these events is difficult. One aspect of loss is clear: physicians serving remote rural communities are in short supply, and now there is one fewer in southeast Utah.

Springdale, Arkansas a "small community"? I don't think so

When I heard the promo into an NPR story this morning say that many Marshallese Islanders have settled in a "small community" in the Arkansas Ozarks, my ears perked up. I'm from the Arkansas Ozarks, and I waited with great anticipation so I could learn which small community it was. Turns out, what reporter Jacqueline Froelich calls a "small community" is Springdale, Arkansas, population 63,837, and part of the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers Metropolitan Statistical Area. Maybe Froelich thought that any place in the Arkansas Ozarks must be a "small community" since it is hardly a place known for cities or cosmopolitanism.

Of course, "small" and "large" are relative. Similarly, "rural" and "urban" are not a dichotomy, but rather represent points on a continuum. Still, I think NPR can do better than this. The real story here regarding the Marshallese migration to Springdale is one about multi-ethnicity. Until a few decades ago, Springdale and environs were almost entirely non-Hispanic White. As with the Marshallese, many Latina/os have migrated to the Springdale area in recent years. Also like the Marshallese, many Latina/os have come to work in the thriving poultry processing industry, and they have spread out into service industries and attend local educational institutions. Of greater interest to me would be information about how the Marshallese and Latina/os have transformed a previously homogeneous (and dare I say, provincial) metropolitan area into a multi-ethnic one. To what extent have they truly integrated into the community? How have they transformed it?

See my article on a related topics, "Latina/os, Locality and Law in the Rural South" here. It is forthcoming in the Harvard Latino Law Review (2009). In it, I consider the difference that rurality (as reflected in nonmetropolitan places--those smaller than Springdale) makes to the integration of Latina/os into these previously ethnically homogeneous places.