Location: Home :: Books on Poverty :: Public Policy :: Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America

Need a quick gift? Try Amazon gift certificates.

Don't Forget To Visit:

The New Social Worker Online

SocialWorkJobBank

Online Continuing Education for Social Workers

Amazon.com Widgets

Related Categories

•	Public Policy

Political Science

Social Sciences

New Used Textbooks

•	General AAS

•

Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America

enlarge

Author: Cynthia M. Duncan
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$19.50~~
Buy Used: $1.91
You Save: $17.59 (90%)

New (21) Used (63) from $1.91

Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.7

ISBN: 0300084560
Dewey Decimal Number: 307
EAN: 9780300084566
ASIN: 0300084560

Publication Date: August 11, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: PREVIOUS OWNERS NAME AND OR INSCRIPTION WRITTEN IN FRONT OF BOOK used stickers on cover THE REST OF THE BOOK IS IN GOOD CONDITION Clean, nice condition. Expedited orders placed before 3 PM EST ship the SAME DAY. Automatic Upgrade to Priority Mail shipping on U.S. orders over $40. Multiple books ordered from Look at a Book in a single checkout will help you reach the $40 threshold for your free Priority Mail Upgrade! Satisfaction Guaranteed!

Similar Items:

•	Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty First Century (Rural Studies)
•	Rural Communities: Legacy and Change
•	Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform
•	Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare
•	A Shelter Is Not a Home...Or Is It? Lessons from Family Homelessness in New York City

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
In this compelling book, Cynthia Duncan examines the nature of poverty by listening to the stories of real people in remote rural areas of the United States. A persistent inequality characterizes two communities she describes, but in another a rich civic culture helps the poor escape poverty. Focusing on the implications of these differences, Duncan offers powerful insights into the dynamics of poverty, politics, and change.

Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Riveting November 23, 2004
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

I come from rural America, where jobs are few. Duncan presents portions of my voice and she reveals how structural limitations continue to stifle many upright citizens who want to work, but can't find work in rural America. I would have liked to have seen more content analysis of the local media in the towns that Duncan studied.

5 out of 5 stars

Extensive research gives voice to some rural poor September 30, 2004
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Dr. Cynthia Duncan, Sociologist at University of New Hampshire, spent over five years (with some assistance from graduate students) conducting in-depth, life history-producing, interviews with 350 residents of two impoverished rural communities (one in Appalachia and one in the Mississippi Delta) and a more prosperous rural New England community. Dr. Duncan does not explicitly recognize any theory in this text, but she seems to work from a grounded theory method: giving voice to the rural citizens and letting the citizens have some ownership in guiding the study. There are also shades of conflict theory, especially when Duncan points out the local rural elites, although she doesn't discuss the 'power elites' (a la C.W. Mills and W. Domhoff). In this text we meet only 40 of the 350 interviewed citizens, and I thirst to meet more citizens and know more about their lives. We meet citizens of varying: gender, age, race, SES, and occupations. The text also presents a rich historical background on each society. I found the text to be most helpful when comparing and contrasting Dahlia and Blackwell (Appalachia and the Delta). The information on Gray Mountain (New England) was informative and interesting, but I didn't find it to be an effective community to utilize to compare to the other two communities. I yearn for Duncan to find a rural southern society that is comparable to Gray Mountain. Gray Mountain seemed to be on the edge of great change, and I would like Dr. Duncan to re-visit Gray Mountain, in a future study, reporting on the change (or stability) of the community. br /br /Dr. Duncan spent nearly a decade in a tug-of-war as this text was edited down. There are necessarily (due to publishing matters) muted voices and hopefully these voices speak through Duncan's future works. Dr. Duncan is a devoted Appalachian scholar who has invested decades of her life trying to understand (and alleviate) poverty in Appalachia and the Delta. This text can serve as a beneficial introduction to her body of work on poverty. If this text inspires you, then also seek out Dr. Duncan's work in academic journals.

1 out of 5 stars

Ideology overrides reality April 26, 2004
6 out of 16 found this review helpful

Duncan creates caricatures of the three communities she studied to promote a paternalistic liberalism that can only fail to resolve the very real social inequities she observes. Her portrayal of Dalhia, a semi-fictive town in the Mississippi Delta, is rooted in widely popular prejudice: all the whites are rich, almost all the blacks are poor. In fact, half of the white families earn below $25,000 a year, and a significant proportion of white families earn below $10,000. Her small sample of upper and upper middle class whites shoved these people from view. A far higher proportion of African Americans are poor and very poor, but her characterization of whites as uniformly wealthy and privileged is a canard. In 2004, virtually all political offices in the region -- and specifically in these two counties -- are held by African Americans. Further, she views an old New England town as a model for democracy -- conveniently overlooking that it was founded as a company town, and that it has a still-dynamic economy. The economies of the Delta and the Appalachian coal fields relied on extractive industries. When those industries played out, no matter their prior civic culture, they were stranded. She could have gone to any farming or coal region and found similar distress -- and, even in Kansas, deep class divisions -- the residue of prolonged economic decline. The book is an easy read and addresses important issues, but is so deeply flawed it should not be used in the classroom.

1 out of 5 stars

another basis for false stereotypes! January 28, 2003
3 out of 16 found this review helpful

This book once again takes a great minority of the Mississippi Delta and makes it look like it is stuck in slavery days! This couldn't be more untrue. I agree that the Mississippi delta is a poverty srticken area, but it is not as backwards as this book makes it seem! Duncan took a look at ONE small community here in the delta when the Delta is home to at least 4 of the largest towns in the state of Mississippi! If the book was better researched then it might be good but this book inaccurately portrays Mississippi!

4 out of 5 stars

Social Insurance Economic Insecurity October 25, 2002
5 out of 8 found this review helpful

The book Worlds Apart describes what life is like for people of different social classes in three different places in the United States. Blackwell* in the Appalachia, and Dahlia* on the Mississippi are two of these places where inequality is constant. Another place where Cynthia M. Duncan studies is Grey Mountain*, New England, where the opposite happens. Citizens are involved in local government; this helps to reduce class inequalities. brDuncan gets very in depth in discovering the roots of the problems of social inequality. Her research consists of visiting everyplace for an extended period of time, with dialogue from 40 of the 350 local people she interviewed in the book.brIn Blackwell, she describes the everyday contempt the rich and poor hold for one another, and how neither side has any desire to meet in the middle. People in Blackwell are also distinguished by the job they hold. If you are lucky enough to hold a job, you become a "have", if you don't you become a "have not".brAs the author describes, poverty and inequality situation is so drastic in Blackwell that a local pastor is forced to start weeding out candidates for Christian charity. He says everyday people come in and ask the church to pay for their groceries, gas, and other bills. Word has spread around the impoverished community about his good charity and he finds the numbers of his congregation rapidly rising. Duncan finds that experiences like this undermine community trust and reinforce community held opinions that the poor citizens scheme and manipulate the system.brDahlia in the Mississippi Delta has similar class separation to Blackwell and contempt for one another. The book continues through Dahlia and Grey Mountain, New England. The New England section focuses on equality and civic involvement. Something unheard of in the previous two sections of the book.brThe section after Grey Mountain, Northern New England is titled "social change and social policy". This section makes suggestions for solutions on how to combat the problems seen in Blackwell and Dahlia. The main point that Duncan is trying to make is that in order for real change to happen, a complete outside source is needed. One with no local ties or biases. Her suggestion is that federal aid come from the outside, where locals are unable to take advantage of aid, and aid is based on need rather than first come first served.brI suggest that before reading Worlds Apart, the reader look in the appendix and study the various trends. This will allow the reader to paint a more realistic picture of the three circumstances that Duncan describes.p* Real names have been changed

Copyright 2007 White Hat Communications.
Disclaimer: The products referenced on this site are manufactured and sold by parties other than The New Social Worker/White Hat Communications. We make no representations regarding either the products or any information vendors offer about their products.

Visit our poster store for unique social issues posters.

Amazon.com Widgets