Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America (Revisiting Rural America) [Paperback]

Ronald R. Kline (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2002 | Series: 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Kline's work is strong in a number of areas... The study is a well written and well researched compilation... and should be standard reading for those interested in the transformation of rural America in the twentieth century.

(Allen Shepherd Nebraska History 2003)

Kline fills a real gap in our understanding of the ways rural Americans incorporated technology into their daily lives.

(Melissa Walker Journal of American History )

His social historical-technological approach makes any historical study of technology ultimately much more valuable.

(Tyler O. Walters Journal of Illinois History )

Kline's work is a welcome addition to this body of scholarship.

(Pamela Riney-Kehrberg Kansas History )

Consumers in the Country provides an important and very welcome venture into both the history of consumption patterns—an underdeveloped subject in our field—and nonurban people.

(Deborah Fitzgerald Technology and Culture )

Careful, meticulously researched, and well written.

(David Blanke Annals of Iowa )

This extremely thorough presentation presents a clear picture of how industries changed, and were changed by, farm families.

(Choice )

Consumers in the Country makes important contributions to scholarship in the history and theory of technology and the social history of rural life.

(Mark Finlay History: Reviews of New Books )

Well-researched, entertaining, and generally convincing.

(Brian Q. Cannon Western Historical Quarterly )

Kline does a fine job in describing the ways in which rural people made new technologies part of their lives, noting regional, class, and gender implications. His writing is clear, thoughtful, intelligent, and often highly amusing.

(Jeanette Keith Journal of Appalachian Studies )

Kline's presentation of farmers as historical actors who controlled acceptance of technology on their own terms is valuable and should inform future studies of agricultural communities.

(Barbara Handy-Marchello Great Plains Research )

Kline displays a confident grasp of technology. He really understands how things work and he has the ability to explain this to readers. This is a rare and valuable quality. He also has an exemplary understanding of the social dimension of technology, throwing new light on the relationship between farm people and modernizers.

(David B. Danbom, North Dakota State University )

A welcome addition.

(Pamela Riney-Kehrberg Kansas History )

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (July 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801871158
• ISBN-13: 978-0801871153
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #399,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Meticulous research, April 11, 2004

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America (Revisiting Rural America) (Hardcover)

This book is an in-depth exploration into the social forces behind the adoption of 4 technologies into rural American households in the early Twentieth century: the telephone, the automobile, the radio, and electricity. The book also describes some of the social changes that came about as a result of the adoption of these technologies.

The book is divided into three section. The first section looks at each of the technologies in turn. The second deals with rural electrification, and the third sums up the material. Also included are appendices, with much statistical data about the technologies, endnotes, an annotated bibliography, and an index.

Personally, I found the first section most interesting. It was fascinating to read about attitudes towards these technologies before they came to be seen as necessities. Indeed, as Kline describes, rural families were doing just fine without them, and often resisted the technologies when they were first introduced. But the social possibilities brought by the telephone and radio did provide a welcome social outlet, especially for women. Between listening in on party lines (which Kline is careful to point out was done by both genders), and listening to music and talk shows on the radio, women found that the hours spent in housework seemed to go by faster, even if the number of housework hours weren't necessarily shortened by technology as predicted by home economists of the times. Indeed, some of Kline's most interesting points were about economists and home economists of the early Twentieth century. One reason why policy makers thought it was so important for farm families to modernize and take up the new technologies was that they wanted to stem the flow of people leaving farms to work in the cities. Looking back from our perspective today, it's much more clear that the reason people were leaving the farms was to head for the greater economic opportunity of the city, not to improve social conditions. As farm technology improved and farmers became more efficient, each increment of farm production would have become less valuable- -if the government really wanted to keep people on the farms, they should have restricted farmers from acquiring technology instead of encouraging it. Kline describes how farmers came up with their own creative uses of technology, based on their real needs, rather than on what the experts thought they needed. They hooked up machinery including clothes washers to the axels of their cars instead of using the gas engines that had been built for these purposes, they used automobiles to plow their fields before diesel tractors were developed, and they used telephones to broadcast home concerts for the enjoyment of all their neighbors.

I found the minute detail of the second section dealing with the political history of the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to be a bit overwhelming. Kline did some extensive research to complete this section, and it is all very well documented, but general readers might have found a more broad overview a little more palatable. The discussion of how the REA had to find ways to get farmers to increase their electric usage was particularly illuminating. As Kline describes the situation, once farmers were connected to a central power station, all they wanted to do was to run a light bulb or two and maybe a radio. But such light usage would not allow the electrical co-op to pay off its loans for stringing the lines, so the REA promoted all sorts of high energy consumption appliances, from electric ranges and hot water heaters to milking machines. It took some 20 to 40 years to get farmers to start consuming enough electricity to make their connections to the grid worthwhile to the co- ops. So how much longer will it take to convince regular consumers as well as farmers to reduce their consumption of electricity? Something tells me once habits have become ingrained into the culture, it's easier to build demand than to decrease it.