Rural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain

by Catherine McNicol Stock

Outlines the history of radicalism in rural America from colonial times to the present day

Genres: History, Religion, Politics, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1996

Reviews

[Zach · Rating 1 out of 5]

“To write this sort of book, I had to decide first what I meant by the term ‘radical.’ Obviously, I did not choose to limit my definition of radical to those who took action on the left, who advocated the rights of the working-class or poor, or who joined socialist or communist causes. Some rural people have done all those things. But only a tiny fraction of white farmers have ever wanted to forsake their dream (however unattainable) of independent production and land ownership. Moreover, for years, white farmers have been chronically ambivalent about linking their problems to those of wage workers. These aspirations and ambivalences identify most (though not all) rural whites as petit bourgeois rather than peasant or working-class. But just because white farmers were petit bourgeois did not mean that they could not be radical. Members of the rural ‘old middle class’ have been radical because they have defied the trajectory of ‘bigness’ in emerging liberal, industrial, and postindustrial capitalism. Most have agreed with the basic tenets of capitalist production, but they have disagreed with one another, within families and communities, and over time, about how best to negotiate a small but important place for themselves within it. Finally, I also think that militant conservatives can act radically. Their radicalism stems from both their willingness to use violence and their willingness to defy state and federal authorities to carry out their acts of hatred.”


Can anybody tell me what's wrong with this paragraph?

Or how about this:

“Five contexts of rural life help to explain the nature of rural radicalism and, in particular, its contradictory position in conventional American politics. These are: frontier life, class, race, gender, and evangelism... Only in the countryside, however, do all five factors appear together, reflecting, reinforcing, and transforming one another over time.”

[Jon]

Limited but worth-reading overview of American agricultural movements and the rebellions they have engendered throughout US history. Stock's style is sometimes awkward but the information she provides is essential for anyone wishing to understand the seeming contradiction of rural residents rising up against the government that "helps" them. In other words, this book comes closer than Thomas Frank's WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? to answering the question Frank posed in that book's title.

[Lady · Rating 3 out of 5]

written by an un-radical who didn't pick up on as much as she should have.

[Syd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. There are so many political movements in this country that folks are unaware of. Coming from a family of farmers, I found this book riveting.

[Jessica DeWitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written over 20 years ago in response to such events as the Oklahoma City Bombing, but much of this volume is just as relevant today, which demonstrates that rural, white culture and the politics and violence often associated with it is deep-seated in American history and part of an ongoing process. And thus, I think that most people will benefit from reading this short work.

This passage illustrates how Stock's writing still resonates today in the so-called 'Trump Era': "Rural Radicals explains the origins of the rural movements that have become an important part of American politics -again. In essence, it asks where all these angry rural white men have suddenly come from and why their views seem to defy easy political categorization. In doing so, it also defines aspects of the rural experience which have drawn rural people together over time and which have made their experiences stand apart from those of urban people from colonial times to the present day."

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written very directly in response to the Oklahoma City bombing and positioned as a historical account of some of the influences that merged in Timothy McVeigh. As with many books written to explain to political and academic elites the shocking and "irrational" beliefs and actions of the white lower middle class, this book works so hard to place contemporary problems into a "tradition" of rural or populist protest that it steamrolls any individual example and ends up explaining very little of either the past or the present. But perhaps explanation is not the true purpose, but assuagement: see, it's happened before, and things worked out okay.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book, initially stoking my idealism with populist producerism, then dashing it with accounts of violence committed.