Prescription drug abuse claims a second generation of Appalachians

The New York Times Magazine reported nearly a decade ago on the scourge of OxyContin in Appalachia. Now, today's paper brings us a grim update under the headline "Ohio County Losing Its Young to Painkillers' Grip." Sabrina Tavernese reports from Portsmouth, Ohio, population 20,180. There, in Scioto County (population 76,310), nearly 1 in 10 babies born last year tested positive for drugs. By 2007, fatal overdoses had surpassed automobile accidents as the top cause of accidental deaths in Ohio. The number of such overdoses in the state quadrupled in the past decade.

Read more here.

Law and Order in the Ozarks (Part LXXVII): Co-defendants in assault cases get probation

That's a front-page headline in the April 6, 2011, issue of the Newton County Times. It reports that a father-daughter pair of defendants who were charged with assaulting a couple who allegedly failed to pay their rent at the Dogwood Campground, have been sentenced to a year of probation. The 57-year-old father, who owns the campground, was charged with aggravated assault, a Class D felony, battery in the second degree, a Class D felony, and battery in the third degree, a Class A misdemeanor. The man was accused of holding the victim to the ground while his 21-year-old daughter and co-defendant held a rifer at the victim's head. Indeed, this is apparently how law enforcement officers found the defendants when they arrived at the scene of the altercation. In exchange for reducing the assault and battery charges against the man and his daughter, the co-defendants entered guilty pleas. In addition to a year of probation, each will pay a $500 fine.

In other crime news:

• A 45-year-old man pleaded guilty to making and uttering hot checks and will serve a year's probation, in addition to paying a $100 fine and court costs.
  
• A 31-year-old man pleased guilty to a Class D felony charge of non-support. The man will serve six years probation and must make restitution of nearly $17,000.
  
• A 27-year-old man was charged with a Class B felony for agreeing to purchase and taking possession of "492 bales of hay valued at $9840 from Elvis Middleton" and having them delivered to Texas. Charges were dropped after the alleged thief made restitution.

In other news:

• The county received an $81,000 Historic Preservation Restoration Grant from the Department of Arkansas Heritage to replace the roof and upgrade the electrical service in the county courthouse. After taking bids, the roof work is proceeding.


• The county Quorum Court passed a resolution necessary for the application for a grant to complete the Marble Falls Waste Water System Rehabilitation Project. The local governing body also adopted an appropriation ordinance: "a $7,098 grant from the Dept. of Finance and Administration for an intoximeter for the sheriff's office; $1,527.27 transferred form the Office of Emergency Services budget for communication training ...; and $40,631 for Newton County Courthouse Historical Preservation. Regarding the status of converting the former nursing home to a county jail, the sheriff reported that the project architect has recommended that the county remove asbestos from the building at a cost of $35,000. A total cost estimate for the building's rehabilitation is pending.

"COAL" runs deep.

Coupled with inexpensive production and wild popularity, reality TV has become a mainstay for every television network. Shows ranging from "The Bachelor" to "Survivor" to "Big Fat Loser" attract millions of viewers every night. As other posts on this blog have explained, reality TV has fetishized the rural. Shows like "The Simple Life," "Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive," and "Farmer Wants a Wife" reinforce negative stereotypes about rurality to a national audience. Luckily, Spike TV's latest reality show, "COAL," does a better job than its predecessors.

"COAL," which premiered on March 30, focuses on the drama of running a small coal mine in West Virginia. Admittedly, I know nothing about coal mining other than that it has huge environmental and human costs. It was only a year ago when 29 out of 31 miners died in the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster. And there is no shortage of coverage about the environmental carnage wrought by coal mining. Just a couple days ago the New York Times reported on the wholesale disappearance of West Virginia towns because of mountaintop mining.

As "research" for this post, I watched the first two episodes of the program and was absolutely riveted. Reality TV is notorious for its lack of anything "real," but from what I can tell, "COAL" does a pretty good job of explaining the mechanics of mining while it focuses on the human drama inherent in such a dangerous enterprise. The New York Times' review can be found here, but I recommend watching the show over reading anything about it. To whet your appetite, here's the trailer:

What struck me most about "COAL" was the recurring theme of the gamble. The show juxtaposes the story of two investors betting $4 million on a mountain with the story of 35 employees risking their lives every day to help those investors extract as much value out of that mountain as quickly as possible. The show tells us of the symbiotic relationship between the investors and the miners of Cobalt Coal, but it is obvious that the risks are inherently unequal. In one episode, while the CEO stressed out about the mine's inability to turn a profit in four weeks, miners were literally being smoked out of the mine and injured by equipment. Every episode I watched featured some near-accident. One miner admitted that "you have to be a little crazy" to have his job title, and the show's narrator pointed out that some positions in the mine are akin to "being a marked man." In fact, just a week ago the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) cited the mine featured in "COAL" for safety violations that federal officials noticed when they watched the show. Cobalt's CEO acknowledged the citations and admitted fault. He even went so far as to say that "COAL" could be used as an instructive tool for mine safety courses.

While other reality shows have exploited the rural in the past, perhaps "COAL" is an exception and can serve as an example to other TV networks looking to make entertaining TV without relying on stereotypes and oversimplifications.

The Gray Lady observes rural America

Regular followers of Legal Ruralism will know I am an avid New York Times reader. Of course, I don't just read it for the rural news--or to see what person or place the paper may be willy nilly labeling "rural" today. (Followers will also know I'm a bit sensitive about the use of this term for places with populations in excess of, oh, say, 50,000!). No, for me the Times is the newspaper of record, a daily "must read," or at least "must scan," even on vacation.

Sometimes, it seems that weeks pass with nary a mention of the rural. At other times, I find a surfeit of rural stories. This week has been one of the latter. Here are some of my finds from the past week or so:

As the Mountaintops Fall, a Coal Town Vanishes, dateline Lindytown, West Virginia, not a Census Designated Place, but in Boone County, population 25,000.

An Appalachian Radio Voice Threatened from Afar, dateline Whitesburg, Kentucky, population 1,649.

Indians Join Fight for an Oklahoma Lake's Flow, dateline Tuskahoma, Oklahoma, not a Census Designated Place

High Prices Sow Seeds of Erosion, out of Portsmouth, Iowa, population 192

Recognition to the Specks on the Map, from near Hobbs, New Mexico, population 29,777 (discussed in this post)

Moving to the City, but Clinging to Native Ways, from Anchorage and Kongiganak, Alaska, population 399.

Kudos to the New York Times for this coverage ... or maybe we should just attribute it to a slow news week.

Census naïveté

I have to admit my considerable naïveté when it comes to the U.S. Census. I filled out my first Census within a year from moving to the United States, and was puzzled by several of its questions. We filled out my husband's ethnicity as Spanish-Mayan-Aztec Hispanic Non-White, and mine as Caucasian-Jewish (making plenty of use of the write-in space for "Other").  Even the word Caucasian caused me some serious head-scratching, as without Wikipedia back then, I could not easily understand how the term became associated with the (relatively) light-skinned people populating Europe (because, honestly, our connection to the people of Georgia and other truly Caucasian nations is at best attenuated).  It turns out, the term is now largely disfavored, and justly so... now we use terms that are more descriptive of people geographic origins, than their perceived "race."

And now, I have to further educate myself to understand what the New York Times means when it says that Nadine, N.M. is now a "Census Designated Place." It means that they will be counted as a separate place, even though unincorporated, and not as an extension of another place, the nearby town of Hobbs.  Great.  Does this mean they were not really counted before?

It does mean that, precisely.  The New York Times writes:

With only a few hundred souls, it was counted, if at all, as an extension of Hobbs, the nearest real city of about 34,000 people just to the north. (emphasis added)

New, more sophisticated Census rules now allow smaller places, or "hamlets" as the Times says, to be counted on their own right.  The Times argues that this speaks volumes about "ethnic and economic identity in post-recession America" and I tend to agree with this summation.  But it does speak volumes about the whole Census process, as it was at least viewed until now.

In a nutshell, the revised Census rules uncover a greater truth about the bias in Law and Government: we (as a society) were not counting small places because they seemed not to matter to us.  The absence of law and state in rural places is frequently mentioned on this blog, for example here, and here.  That the government turns around and changes policy to include places with lesser population is surely a positive sign, is it not?

Oh, wishful thinking.  It wasn't the Government who changed its mind spontaneously and said: "Forgive our ignorance, we want to learn about your predicament, small hamlets."  The Times article reveals that the change in Census counting rules was the result of relentless lobbying by the "hamlets" throughout the country.

The region made a concentrated effort to get everyone counted, hoping to make the case that the area was ripe for business investment. Given the ferocious competition among small communities for chain stores, restaurants and manufacturers, “everyone got involved in pushing,” said Bob Reid, a board member at the Lea County Community Improvement Corporation.

Encouraging residents to fill out their census forms included a door-to-door campaign and a parade to the post office in Hobbs organized by the Hobbs Hispano Chamber of Commerce, followed by a cookout.

The drumbeat for participation worked: Hobbs’s population, in the new count, grew nearly 17 percent, as did the county’s as a whole. And fingers are crossed: A new farm equipment supply store opened in Hobbs last month.

An inspiring story about grassroots organizations standing up to Big Government! As a result of their lobbying, I am able to correct my naming of the town, per our blogging conventions: Nadine, N.M. (population 376).

Where do you want to be when the world ends?

There are thousands of predictions swirling around the Mayan Calendar and its end date in December 2012. Likewise, I have recently seen a lot of billboards by Christians who are predicting that the rapture is coming on May 21st of this year. Now, I am not saying that I buy into any of this, but how about some food for thought…Where do you want to be If anything remotely close to the apocalypse does occur? Would you rather be living in the middle of skyscrapers and sewers, or perhaps would you rather be holed up at your grandparents’ summer cabin in the remote mountains of Northern California?

During the winter of 2005/06 I was living in Humboldt County when we experienced one of the worst storms I can remember. As a result, my house, along with the rest of the town was without electricity for 10 days. After the initial shock, an interesting thing happened… after day two, we realized that the electricity may not return for some time, so we all just went on as if nothing was wrong. I spent New Year’s Eve in a rustic bar lit by candles. We had a transistor radio to dance to, and the drinks flowed. It was like being back in time. I was amazed at how the people up there really came together and made the best of their situation.

Flash ahead one year, and I was living in the middle of San Francisco on the third floor of a four story apartment building. It had nice windows which allowed me to survey the streets below. Sometimes I would try to imagine what would happen if the electricity went out for even 5 days. What if an earthquake hit and both bridges were inoperable? It surely would not have turned into the hippy commune-Koom-by-yah that it did when I lived in the hills of Humboldt County. How long before the dredges crawled up Knob Hill to take a piece out of every well-to-do yuppie’s ass, I thought? I gave it about 72 hours. Needless to say, I always kept a rifle and a coffee can full of .22 rounds in my closet. I figured I could hold them off until the National Guard came in and really made a mess of the place.

Ever since I saw the movie Red Dawn at the age of 8, I have had an apocalypse/WWIII plan in the back of my head. I have a spot picked out, and a fair amount of survival gear at my disposal. My father being a decorated Vietnam vet instilled his survival skill set into our family. In the mountains you can fish and hunt, and hide much like the Indians did before the gold miners came. I imagine that if something did happen in 2012, those in the mountains may not even be affected for months. Those in the city would already have been turned into zombies and killed each other by then. Let’s hope that nothing at all happens on May 21, 2011 or December 2012, however, I am thinking harder about asking for some vacation time around the end of the Mayan Calendar, just to be on the safe side.

Farmers and Fish

Last week in my blog post I mentioned a debate in my hometown between farmers and fishermen/environmentalists. As I was skimming the articles for my next rural law blog post idea, I ran across a Field and Stream blog post, “Big Salmon Run Reignites Farmers v. Fish Debate in California.” So, I felt called on to revisit this debate in more detail.

According to the April 8th article, the Sacramento River basin has become the center of renewed debate because, due to increased environmental controls over the last several years, salmon are returning to the riverbeds. When I asked local fisherman, Andrew J. Booth, about this bit of fishy news, he said he is excited about the salmon comeback and prospects for the local ecology and increased sporting prospects. He also noted that the recent rains flooding the Sacramento causeways and expected high volume snow melt coming from the mountains laden with winter weather this year will aid in the fish recovery. The increased water volume should allow immature salmon or “fry” to develop in safe freshwater habitats before swimming to the sea for their transformation into salmon. This all bodes well for future sport on the river.

Farmers in the Sacramento valley, on the other hand, express concerns about the increased sporting enthusiasm. Field and Stream writes:

“…advocates of the farming industry contend that curtailed water exports have done little besides put thousands of farmhands out of work and slash the number of acres planted. Instead, they blame pollution, overfishing and invasive species for the collapse of the fishery three years ago. "For years, the left has used the environment as an excuse to take more and more of this precious resource away from the people," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Alpaugh (Tulare County). "It is time for Congress to give it back so that our economy, our farms and our rural communities can thrive."

Mr. Nunes’ statement, however, seems disingenuous and ignores some of the more accurate realities. Water issues, at least in rural California, can be bipartisan rather than the sole purview of left-leaning environmentalists. This particular disagreement arises out of the disparate interests in and between rural communities. On the one hand, many people in rural areas rely on their rivers and lakes as both a community resource for leisure time activities and to bring in revenues from environmental and outdoor sporting tourists. These communities have more than an ideological interest in environmental preservation. On the other hand, farmers, often rural, make their profits from draining precious water resources into their fields. My hometown of Dunsmuir is in the former camp, with almost all of its local businesses reliant on summer visitors who come to enjoy the mountain air, lakes and streams for both sporting and sightseeing purposes. In fact, Dunsmuir advertises itself as the "home of the best water on earth." However, the surrounding communities associate with environmentalist views or farmer views depending on their income sources.

Tulare County would seem similarly situated. While farming, fishing and forestry jointly employ 14 percent of the county, 17 percent find work in the service industry. The portion of that 14 percent employed in fishing no doubt prefer fish to farms. Also, east Tulare is primarily national park and wilderness (including Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks) visited by hikers, fishers and other outdoor enthusiasts. Towns located near these areas no doubt rely on this tourist activity for survival. Consequently, Rep. Nunes is only addressing one element of his community at the expense of others.

False Dichotomies of Class (Part I): Mobility versus Mobilization

Martha McCluskey wrote a couple of weeks ago on the ClassCrits Blog about some questions regarding class that arose at Martha Fineman’s recent workshop, Masking and Manipulating Vulnerabilities, at Emory Law School. To summarize, McCluskey asked whether it is “problematic to analyze class as a category of inequality without directly engaging questions of labor rights?”

The genesis of that conversation at Emory was my speculation regarding the reasons for resistance to class analysis regarding whites and, by extension, resistance to the vulnerability paradigm. Like my other recent work on class, my comments at Emory focused on class mobility and did not engage issues of collective mobilization. I thus believe the clear answer to McCluskey’s question is “no.” Class mobility (think class ascension, although the sad trend these days is downward mobility) and class mobilization (as through unionizing and labor rights) seem to me different paths to empowerment of the working class and poor. I see these as able to reside comfortably, side-by-side, on parallel tracks. Indeed, now that McCluskey (echoing others at the Emory workshop) has voiced this issue, I find myself surprised that we do not see more law professors writing about class (im)mobility in a way that separates the issue from racism. That is, I am concerned that socially conscious progressives see challenges to upward mobility as stemming primarily, even solely, from bias against minorities. If this is the case, we are failing to see that whites, too, are increasingly victims of the inequality gap and its attendant barriers to upward class migration.

We socially conscious progressives are attuned to the need to achieve higher educational attainment for racial and ethnic minorities. We understand the need to facilitate their class ascension, to integrate more of them into the professional/managerial class, to bring them to the big table of law- and policy-making, in part so that we can benefit from what they know from personal experience. Affirmative action programs have long been aimed at this outcome—and rightfully so. We don’t just talk about unionizing minority populations, which presumes that they will stay working class, albeit in a materially more comfortable way. We talk about diversifying the pipeline into the upper middle class, a/k/a the professional/managerial class. We grieve the fate of minority children who could have become our political and business leaders—if only they had enjoyed something approaching equal opportunity.

Why, then, do we pay so little attention to class mobility among poor and working class whites? Why would we limit ourselves to working for their mobilization—as in unions—rather than their upward mobility? Perhaps we have taken for granted white folks’ ability to transcend class boundaries because whites are not the victims of racism. To quote Joe Bageant’s Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, we’ve been snookered by the “myth of the power of white skin.” That is, we may buy into the “unspoken belief that if a white person does not succeed, his or her lack of success can be due only to laziness.” We recognize racism as among the many factors that impede class mobility for racial minorities, but we don’t credit the structural barriers—or cultural bias against poor whites (see here and here)—when assessing the prospects of working class whites. Yet many poor and working class whites face the same sorts of structural and cultural obstacles that burden minorities: crummy schools, inadequate health care, a dearth of educated role models in their communities, and low expectations.

Yes, tragically, racism is alive and well in this country. But minority status is not the only force that holds back working class young people who have the sheer native ability and ambition to get a college degree—or even go well beyond it. Socially conscious progressives are smart enough to know this, but I see very few acknowledging it. Which brings us to the State, hardly an innocent bystander of the “class war” to which so many insist on turning a blind eye. To pick up Martha McCluskey’s metaphor, of course the different classes are not just layers in a cake with as much do with one another as with the cake pan (a/k/a the State). No, the inferior education, health care and other dwindling supports to which the working class have access directly implicate the State and its grossly uneven distribution of resources. Relying on local funding (as opposed to state and federal funding) of myriad services is just one component of this. As President Obama recognized in his 2010 State of the Union address, “the success of our children cannot depend more on where they live than on their potential.” Yet sadly it often does. Read more here and here.

I admit that I’m interested in class (im)mobility in part because I’m a “class migrant,” one “born and raised working class, who join the upper-middle class through access to ... education” (quoting the definition from Joan Williams’ recent book). But the struggle for class ascension isn’t only supported by anecdote. Data indicate that upward mobility for the working class is declining—at least as measured by higher education attainment. In 1970, 61% of college students were the children of parents whose highest education level was a high school diploma or less—that is, they were “first-generation college.” By 1990, that figure had fallen to 41%, and in 2000, only 22% of those who attended college were the first generation in their family to do so. Even taking into account the role played by the rising percentage of people (parents) with college degrees over those three decades (though it remains less than 30%), the data suggest that the working class kid who gets to (let alone through!) college is increasingly rare. Structural impediments bear a significant part of the blame. Most obviously and recently, these include dramatically higher tuition for tertiary education, even at state colleges and universities.

In any event, I don’t see how this focus on class (im)mobility—which has both material and cultural aspects (as I shall discuss further in a future post)—precludes attention to organized labor. I’m all for unionizing those who will remain in the working class, and I would hope that nothing I say be used to naturalize constraints on workers’ power to act collectively. However much we increase mobility for some, we will always have workers with us, but they need not be poor. Clearly, collective action is necessary to improve their material circumstances.

But focusing only on organizing the working class is arguably an insult to the extent that it objectifies and distances “them” from “us,” compartmentalizing them below us in the class hierarchy. To focus exclusively on unionizing the working class overlooks the potential and desire of some to transcend class boundaries (as through higher education) and join the upper middle class.

Surely we want white class migrants among our ranks—just as we want class migrants from minority groups—sitting at the “big table” at which social progressive brainstorm problems, set priorities, and formulate solutions. I am convinced that they (we) could teach us (you) a few things. Class migrants can remind those in power what generations of them have known: like the racial privilege enjoyed by those of us who are white, our class privilege causes us to take too much for granted—and it tempts us to take too much individual credit for our own professional and material success.

Cross-posted to ClassCrits, SALTLaw.blog, and UC Davis Faculty Blog.

My Rural Travelogue (Part XIII): Australia's Great Ocean Road

I try to keep up with this series, "My Rural Travelogue," which I started several years ago as a forum for writing about rural places I visit. Doing so, however, seems to take a lot of time, so I often fall behind. Indeed, my last post in the series was last July, a full two months after the trip to rural Arkansas that was the topic of the post. So after I traveled Australia's Great Ocean Road last November to give a key note address at the Rural and Regional Law and Justice Conference sponsored by Deakin University, I wrote about the conference here, but never got around to describing my rural journey to and from Warrnambool, the conference site in western Victoria.

Now, however, I have the perfect excuse to do this short post about that trip because today's New York Times travel feature is about the Great Ocean Road, which I traversed en route to the Warrnambool conference. Since travel writer Ethan Todras-Whitehill has provided the basics about this bucket list-type journey, I can simply add a few photos and additional reminiscences. Here's how Todras-Whitehill describes the route he took, which spans 600 miles between the nation's two closest cities, Adelaide and Melbourne. For the record, Todras-Whitehill points out, that's the same distance as between Washington, DC, and Boston:

The Great Ocean Road itself is merely a small portion of the coast, the 151 miles between Torquay and Warrnambool built between 1919 and 1932 by soldiers who had returned from World War I, and dedicated to those who did not make it back. But it has an older name, too: the Shipwreck Coast.

Here's how Todras-Whitehill describes Warrnambool's highlight, which pays homage to that Shipwreck Coast and the nation's maritime history:

Flagstaff Hill [Maritime Village] has a replica village from the 1870s that, during the summer tourist season, includes volunteers in period costumes à la Colonial Williamsburg.

The professional photos accompanying Todras-Whitehill's story are stunning, including images of the dramatic limestone coast. Our journey from Port Fairy onto Adelaide was via the quicker inland route and thus featured more agricultural scenes, like the farmstead shown at the top of the page. Indeed, the area just inland from Warrnambool is also highly agricultural. I noticed several veterinarian clinics in sparsely populated locales as we approached this small city. Plus, a visit to the posh food halls of Melbourne's Queen Victoria market had apprised us of Warrnambool butter's status as a premium product.

So, my photos are mostly related to the rural livelihoods in these parts of Victoria and South Australia, less the type you find in a coffee table photo book. At top right, a photo of my son and me in Lorne, along the Great Ocean Road (a windy, rainy, cool day in November); middle left, an Elders Office in Kingston, S.A.--Elders being a provider of "rural services," e.g., real estate, financial services, commodity pricing, throughout Australia; lower right, a road sign suggesting the great distances between Melbourne and Adelaide; and bottom, a school bus stop on the Great Ocean Road (a/k/a the B 100) that runs just yards from Loch Ard Gorge (pictured in the lead photo for the NYT travel story and on wikipedia). Yes, people live and go to school, too, along this dramatic coast. The nearest town to Loch Ard Gorge is Port Campbell, which bills itself as a surfer's paradise (indeed, the eastern part of the Great Ocean Road near Torquay lies in the local government unit of Surf Coast Shire--seriously). Not sure, though, if Port Campbell is large enough to have a school, but Peterborough a bit farther down the road might.

Unfair, and a little off balance?

While this story may be several weeks old, it is one that I find – in light of the recent debate about budget cuts – both relevant and an interesting query. Are there really places where NPR is the only news source?

Specifically, the article in question referred to NPR’s Michele Norris’ statement that “if public broadcasting went away, there are people in small towns…that would not have access to news.” The article goes on to state that NPR is the only available broadcast source. This is based on a statistic that counts 12 broadcasters within a 50–mile radius, and that nine of these stations are in Alaska, two in West Virginia, and one in Texas. While additional limiting factors exist, the fact remains that in some rural areas – those without access to print newspapers and those without computers or dial up access – perhaps NPR really is the only broadcast source.

Of course, this then begs the question: do those in rural areas choose to listen to NPR? If not, are we as a society putting them at a worse position in understanding the issues that affect them and the world around them? And then finally, does this further create a class divide?

One clear connection to these questions is rural access to broadband internet service. The initial debate about funding rural access to broadband generated some controversy. First, FCC Chairman Katz derided President Obama’s $7.2 billion to expand the service to rural areas. Furthermore, the New York Times argued that such funding was a “cyber bridge to nowhere.” 

The  problem with such language, and such an attitude towards rural access to news, is that it perpetuates the stereotype that (1) rural individuals do not matter; (2) that rural areas have no need for news; and (3) that their access to knowledge does not impact our society as a whole. All three assumptions are false, especially when considering that rural areas encompass around 90% of the country.

Television news is also a mechanism for rural areas to garner their news, and the statistics in this case fair much better. Today, 98.9% of Americans have a television, and at least get one station – whether that station provides them with accurate news is a whole other question.

Perhaps ultimately, NPR may not be the only way for rural communities to have access to broadcast news – but if we consider it in this way – it becomes all the more pressing that they have some access at all. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to install post offices and post roads, where one of the rationales was to ensure that news travelled between the different colonies and states when there was no access to television, internet, or radio and everything was rural. Furthermore, the Communications Act of 1934 included a provision to allow for radio and telephone services into rural communities. If we consider the intent of our Founders and the intent of Congress in the past, denying these services would only be a disservice to our history.

Wrestling with rural identity

One of the most fundamental elements of the academic discussion on “ruralism” includes the struggle to define “rural,” and the stereotyping of the rural that goes along with the its various definitions. In Professor Pruitt’s Gender, Geography and Rural Justice, she compares some of the standard definitions of the rural (some are by population, others are by geographic region or industry), yet notes that rurality is rarely “the sole dimension of identification,” and should be defined broadly.

However, city dwellers may think defining the rural is an easier feat from their “outsider perspective.” If you ask urbanites what they think about when imagining the rural, a common response might be to link the rural with farming and agriculture. While much of rural America does thrive on the agricultural industry, farming is not always a complete picture of the rural. Many rural towns are heavily dependent on extraction or other industries, and farming may seem like a world away. Perhaps the “rural farmer” is the more prominent image to come to mind (rather than “the miner” or “the driller”) because it is the traditional definition. Or, perhaps the farmer model fits more easily within the stereotype of the rural idyll, conjuring an image of purity and tranquility.

Stephanie Larsen, the Assistant Director for the Center for Rural Affairs in northeastern Nebraska, would oppose this automatic linkage of the rural with farming. Although she identifies as a “rural person” who has recently taken up farming as a hobby, she wrestles with whether she is, in fact, a farmer. In her recent article for Grist Magazine “I’m Coming Out—As a Farmer," Stephanie grapples with what exactly being a “legitimate” farmer depends on: Is it the percentage of your income that comes from working the land? Is it the number of hours you devote to the land? Is it how much you know about gardening and livestock?

It’s fascinating to look at some of the reader comments on Larsen's article. One reader says it depends on whether Larsen conducts herself as a business, taking stock of the market prices for products and responding accordingly. Another reader says it simply depends on her state of mind—does she intend to be a farmer? Like the definition of “rural,” it seems “farmer” is also a broader term than one might think.

Even though scholars tend to agree that the meaning of “rural” is multi-dimensional, it appears that narrowing the definition to account for particular characteristics of the rural, such as the occupational identity of “farmer” and the like, may not be sufficient. While a singular definition of “rural” might never be possible, it does seem important to strive for at least a range of widely-recognized meanings. For one thing, an accurate portrayal of the rural might make it easier for Larsen to identify her own role in her community. Additionally, and importantly, defining the rural accurately could have various social implications. By raising awareness of the realities of the rural, an accurate definition could increase social visibility of rural areas, and perhaps even contribute to a more equitable distribution of resources.