Smalltown Urban: Performing the City in Rural America
Autor Michael O. Johnstonen Limba Engleză Hardback – 18 feb 2027
Rather than frame rural towns as in decline or frozen in nostalgia, Smalltown Urban: Performing the City in Rural America draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Oskaloosa and Pella, Iowa to argue that urbanity is not solely a demographic or environmental condition of large metropolitan centers. Instead, urbanity emerges as a rhythmic, performative, and cultural accomplishment produced through collective participation, volunteer labor, and tourism.
Michael O. Johnston shows how ordinary rural spaces periodically become sites of heightened social interaction, symbolic spectacle, and shared attention. He takes the reader to Tulip Time, Sweet Corn Serenade, BBQ 4 Badges, Lake Red Rock BalloonFest, and others. The events, he argues, create collective effervescence, strengthen civic engagement, and challenge conventional distinctions between rural and urban life.
Through these symbolic arenas, communities undergo the crucial work to assert their relevance, build continuity, and negotiate their public identities. In a political moment shaped by polarized perceptions of rural America, this book offers an empirically rich, theoretically grounded, and emotionally resonant account of the performative vitality that shapes small towns.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9798216437451
Pagini: 192
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: Bloomsbury Publishing
Colecția Bloomsbury Academic
Locul publicării:New York, United States
Pagini: 192
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: Bloomsbury Publishing
Colecția Bloomsbury Academic
Locul publicării:New York, United States
Cuprins
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. Backstage Civic Life: Planning, Burnout, and Renewal
Chapter 2. Tulips, Tourists, and Town Identity
Chapter 3. Melted Butter and Rolling Smoke
Chapter 4. Fast Cars and Fire in the Sky
Chapter 5. Urban Performances: Distance and Disappearance
Conclusion
Appendix A: History of Smalltown Urban and Research Methods
References
Introduction
Chapter 1. Backstage Civic Life: Planning, Burnout, and Renewal
Chapter 2. Tulips, Tourists, and Town Identity
Chapter 3. Melted Butter and Rolling Smoke
Chapter 4. Fast Cars and Fire in the Sky
Chapter 5. Urban Performances: Distance and Disappearance
Conclusion
Appendix A: History of Smalltown Urban and Research Methods
References
Recenzii
A rare study of how small towns temporarily draw big city crowds through large events, Smalltown Urban challenges our ideas of what a city is and how "urbanity" is collectively produced.
In Smalltown Urban, Michael O. Johnston reveals how small communities transform to temporarily create the rhythms and experiences of big city life. Drawing on evocative fieldwork at flower festivals and car shows, he convincingly argues that urbanity is not just a matter of population size or built environment, but a type of ritual achievement and social performance. This important work will open exciting new areas of study at the intersection of culture, symbolic interaction, and urban and rural sociology.
The world is becoming more urban, and not just because of Tokyo, Lagos, or Mumbai. Michael O. Johnston's Smalltown Urban shows how urban life takes shape in places like Oskaloosa and Pella, where big-city culture shapes everyday civic life in surprising ways. Carefully researched and vividly told, Michael O. Johnston offers a fresh, valuable reframing of urban life.
Johnston's Smalltown Urban is a remarkable and necessary achievement. Not content to accept the assumed sharp division between cities and towns, Johnston makes the provocative and insightful claim that what characterizes 'urbanity' is found in locales both large and tiny.
Johnston pushes us to reimagine urbanity as a deliberate and collaborative social accomplishment of storytelling, ritual, and spectacle-something that can burst into a tiny community and disappear just as quickly.
What makes a city a city? Or, for that matter, when and how do small towns act like cities? These questions motivate Michael O. Johnston's in-depth analysis, pushing him to delve into the possibilities that an urban way of life is less about population density and high rises and more about the embodied performances and emotional intensity of those practicing it. Johnston adeptly shows us how this type of culture is produced and enacted through people's creative use of the built environment and other significant objects that are near and dear to them.
In Smalltown Urban, Michael O. Johnston reveals how small communities transform to temporarily create the rhythms and experiences of big city life. Drawing on evocative fieldwork at flower festivals and car shows, he convincingly argues that urbanity is not just a matter of population size or built environment, but a type of ritual achievement and social performance. This important work will open exciting new areas of study at the intersection of culture, symbolic interaction, and urban and rural sociology.
The world is becoming more urban, and not just because of Tokyo, Lagos, or Mumbai. Michael O. Johnston's Smalltown Urban shows how urban life takes shape in places like Oskaloosa and Pella, where big-city culture shapes everyday civic life in surprising ways. Carefully researched and vividly told, Michael O. Johnston offers a fresh, valuable reframing of urban life.
Johnston's Smalltown Urban is a remarkable and necessary achievement. Not content to accept the assumed sharp division between cities and towns, Johnston makes the provocative and insightful claim that what characterizes 'urbanity' is found in locales both large and tiny.
Johnston pushes us to reimagine urbanity as a deliberate and collaborative social accomplishment of storytelling, ritual, and spectacle-something that can burst into a tiny community and disappear just as quickly.
What makes a city a city? Or, for that matter, when and how do small towns act like cities? These questions motivate Michael O. Johnston's in-depth analysis, pushing him to delve into the possibilities that an urban way of life is less about population density and high rises and more about the embodied performances and emotional intensity of those practicing it. Johnston adeptly shows us how this type of culture is produced and enacted through people's creative use of the built environment and other significant objects that are near and dear to them.
Notă biografică
Michael O. Johnston is assistant professor of sociology at William Penn University, the author of Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest, and a host for New Books in Sociology (a channel on New Books Network).