Consumers in the Country

Technology and Social Change in Rural America
Erscheinungsjahr 2002
ISBN: 978-0-8018-7115-3
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 384 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 628 g

Reihe: Revisiting Rural America

From 1900 to 1960, the introduction and development of four so-called urbanizing technologies–the telephone, automobile, radio, and electric light and power–transformed the rural United States. But did these new technologies revolutionize rural life in the ways modernizers predicted? And how exactly–and with what levels of resistance and acceptance–did this change take place? In Consumers in the Country Ronald R. Kline, avoiding the trap of technological determinism, explores the changing relationships among the Country Life professionals, government agencies, sales people, and others who promoted these technologies and the farm families who largely succeeded in adapting them to rural culture.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kline, Ronald R.

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technikgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Agrarsoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Urban Technology and Rural Reform
Chapter 1. (Re)inventing the Telephone
Chapter 2. Taming the Devil Wagon
Chapter 3. Defining Modernity in the Home
Chapter 4. Tuning In The Country
Part II: A New Deal In Rural Electrification
Chapter 5. Creating the REA
Chapter 6. Struggling for Local Autonomy
Chapter 7. Lights in the Country
Part III: Postwar Consumerism
Chapter 8. Completing the Job
Chapter 9. (Re)forming Rural Life
Conclusion. Consumers All?
Appendix
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliographical and Methodological Note
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Kline, Ronald R.
Ronald R. Kline is the Bovay Professor in History and Ethics of Engineering at Cornell University. He is the author of Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist and Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America.

Ronald R. Kline is a professor of history of technology at Cornell University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Science and Technology Studies and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.