1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910838236303321

Autore

Ashwood Loka

Titolo

For-Profit Democracy : Why the Government Is Losing the Trust of Rural America / / Loka Ashwood

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, CT : , : Yale University Press, , [2018]

©2018

ISBN

0-300-23514-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (323 pages) : illustrations

Collana

Yale Agrarian Studies Series

Disciplina

320.9730905

Soggetti

Sociology, Rural - United States

Public opinion - United States

Rural population - United States - Attitudes

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Reaction -- 1. Welcome to Burke County -- 2. For-Profit Democracy -- Meltdown -- 3. The Moral Economy of Democracy -- 4. The Rule of Numbers -- Fallout -- 5. The Rural Rebel -- 6. The Transcendent People -- 7. Freedom under the Gun -- Recovery -- 8. The Moral Economy's Freedom -- Appendix 1: Methodology -- Appendix 2: A Summary of People and Concepts -- Notes -- Illustration Captions and Credits -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

A fascinating sociological assessment of the damaging effects of the for†'profit partnership between government and corporation on rural Americans Why is government distrust rampant, especially in the rural United States? This book offers a simple explanation: corporations and the government together dispossess rural people of their prosperity, and even their property. Based on four years of fieldwork, this eye†'opening assessment by sociologist Loka Ashwood plays out in a mixed†'race Georgia community that hosted the first nuclear power reactors sanctioned by the government in three decades. This work serves as an explanatory mirror of prominent trends in current American politics. Churches become havens for redemption, poaching a means of retribution, guns a tool of self†'defense, and nuclear power a



faltering solution to global warming as governance strays from democratic principles. In the absence of hope or trust in rulers, rural racial tensions fester and divide. The book tells of the rebellion that unfolds as the rights of corporations supersede the rights of humans.