Customer Reviews

Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America

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From the title, this sounds like a very serious book - and the topic is serious, for sure - but the surprise is that it's fascinating to delve into these communities and understand how people of all income levels live day to day. This is a very well written piece that uses lots of real life situations to illustrate it's larger point - that poor people can escape poverty when given a chance. That could be a supportive community, a supportive grandmother, or a good supportive school system. Especially interesting is the proposition that the federal government could make a big difference by ensuring that local school systems in high poverty communities (rural or urban) really serve the needs of their students, including those from poor families. Releasing people from poverty seems like a big impact for just getting the schools to do what they should do anyway.

As a student, I am required to ready many books,and most of them are dry. Cynthia Duncan shows in 'Worlds Apart' that sociology does not have to be boring. She made an uncomfortable subject easy to read. I only put the book down because I had other assignments to read. I loved how she intertwines the statements from the interviewees into her findings and discussions. Cynthia Duncan does not just draw a bleak picture, but shows what everybody could do differently. I already recommended the book to friends, and would recommend it especially to people still thinking about the worthy and un-worthy poor.

I found this book both a page turner-with its gripping first person stories-and a revelation. Though the book's subtitle is "Why Poverty Persists in Rural America," I would say this book has major implications for urban and suburban as well as rural places and policies. I have worked for many years in the field of community development. This book is truly explains what makes a strong community. Here is a sociologist who actually spent years out `in the field' talking to the gamut of people who live there, and building her insights from the ground up. Robert Putnam may tell us about northern Italy or national trends in the U.S. Duncan goes far deeper and for the first time, as far as I know, figures out why we need mixed income communities, why a large gap between the poor and the rich isn't good for a specific community or for the nation as a whole, and how we could make it possible for poor families, in inner cities as well as rural places, to break out of generations of poverty. Imagine what would happen if public policy were based on the insights of this milestone book! Alice Shabecoff, founder and former executive director of the Community Information Exchange.

I come from rural America, where jobs are few. Duncan presents portions of my voice and she reveals how structural limitations continue to stifle many upright citizens who want to work, but can't find work in rural America. I would have liked to have seen more content analysis of the local media in the towns that Duncan studied.

This text offers clear, easy to read and understand case studies of towns in Appalachia, Mississippi, and northern New England. Duncan identifies the ways the community became poor and how it stays poor. She takes a fair and balanced look at unequal power, underdevelopment, and economic exploitation, and suggests remedies without preaching. If you're interested in sociology but not in dry technical writing, try this book! If you liked Rhoda Halperin's "Practicing Community", you'll love this.

The book Worlds Apart describes what life is like for people of different social classes in three different places in the United States. Blackwell* in the Appalachia, and Dahlia* on the Mississippi are two of these places where inequality is constant. Another place where Cynthia M. Duncan studies is Grey Mountain*, New England, where the opposite happens. Citizens are involved in local government; this helps to reduce class inequalities.
Duncan gets very in depth in discovering the roots of the problems of social inequality. Her research consists of visiting everyplace for an extended period of time, with dialogue from 40 of the 350 local people she interviewed in the book.
In Blackwell, she describes the everyday contempt the rich and poor hold for one another, and how neither side has any desire to meet in the middle. People in Blackwell are also distinguished by the job they hold. If you are lucky enough to hold a job, you become a "have", if you don't you become a "have not".
As the author describes, poverty and inequality situation is so drastic in Blackwell that a local pastor is forced to start weeding out candidates for Christian charity. He says everyday people come in and ask the church to pay for their groceries, gas, and other bills. Word has spread around the impoverished community about his good charity and he finds the numbers of his congregation rapidly rising. Duncan finds that experiences like this undermine community trust and reinforce community held opinions that the poor citizens scheme and manipulate the system.
Dahlia in the Mississippi Delta has similar class separation to Blackwell and contempt for one another. The book continues through Dahlia and Grey Mountain, New England. The New England section focuses on equality and civic involvement. Something unheard of in the previous two sections of the book.
The section after Grey Mountain, Northern New England is titled "social change and social policy". This section makes suggestions for solutions on how to combat the problems seen in Blackwell and Dahlia. The main point that Duncan is trying to make is that in order for real change to happen, a complete outside source is needed. One with no local ties or biases. Her suggestion is that federal aid come from the outside, where locals are unable to take advantage of aid, and aid is based on need rather than first come first served.
I suggest that before reading Worlds Apart, the reader look in the appendix and study the various trends. This will allow the reader to paint a more realistic picture of the three circumstances that Duncan describes.

* Real names have been changed

Heartbreaking stories of a society trapped in a cruel circle of politics and poverty. As someone who has observed the effect of politics and poverty in the region, I'm glad this book drives home the danger of the country's apathy toward those who live far below the poverty level.

Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America

In the book Worlds Apart, the author, Cynthia M. Duncan, takes a look at three different areas of rural America to study rural poverty. She studied the different aspects of the communities, including social, economic, educational and political issues. Of the three communities, two areas (Blackwell and Dahlia) have very similar profiles that have limited the people from moving upward in society. The third has a different perspective, in which the middle class is helping the whole community gain opportunities.
In the community of Blackwell, the foundation is based on the have and have-nots. This mining community was founded on a continual idea of separation of class. Every facet of the community depended on how much money a family had and a persons last name. The drawers were the people who continually draw money from the government. They were the uneducated, poor who had only known this way of life. Outside opportunity was never able to enter the community, because the wealthy class would not allow it and wanted to keep its tight hold on the lower classes.
Dahlia is a community similar to Blackwell, unchanging classes and no opportunity. Yet, it differs from Blackwell because the poor were crippled by racial segregation that has existed since slavery. Even though the plantation work is still done by the black people, they are paid considerable low wages. The social elite control everything in the community from who is on the school board, county board and any official government offices. Any radical changes by the people, were punished by blackballing any chances of future employment or service. Education was also damaged by this continual segregation. The community had two schools, the better school is were the best teachers were and the white children and the poorer school had the worse teachers and all the black children.
The community of Gray Mountain was founded on many different ethic groups. It was considered a small version of Americans melting-pot. The poverty here came from the decline of the mill factories employment, but community did not let this create a gap between the classes. The lower classes still associated with the middle class, it did not matter how much money a persons family had. Outside improvements were not pushed away, but welcomed into the community (i.e. unions). Education was key in this community. The poor children went to the same schools as the rich children. The adults knew that the way to improve their society was through education that would inspire mobility.
In the final section of the book, Duncan provides solutions for social change and social policy. The chief solution was education. The children from poor families may not have the moral support at home to push they upward, but that at school there would be potential for a role model. Any type of support would help a children gain the upward mobility to improve themselves.

Duncan creates caricatures of the three communities she studied to promote a paternalistic liberalism that can only fail to resolve the very real social inequities she observes. Her portrayal of "Dalhia," a semi-fictive town in the Mississippi Delta, is rooted in widely popular prejudice: all the whites are rich, almost all the blacks are poor. In fact, half of the white families earn below $25,000 a year, and a significant proportion of white families earn below $10,000. Her small sample of "upper" and "upper middle class" whites shoved these people from view. A far higher proportion of African Americans are poor and very poor, but her characterization of whites as uniformly wealthy and privileged is a canard. In 2004, virtually all political offices in the region -- and specifically in these two counties -- are held by African Americans. Further, she views an old New England town as a model for democracy -- conveniently overlooking that it was founded as a company town, and that it has a still-dynamic economy. The economies of the Delta and the Appalachian coal fields relied on extractive industries. When those industries played out, no matter their prior civic culture, they were stranded. She could have gone to any farming or coal region and found similar distress -- and, even in Kansas, deep class divisions -- the residue of prolonged economic decline. The book is an easy read and addresses important issues, but is so deeply flawed it should not be used in the classroom.

This book once again takes a great minority of the Mississippi Delta and makes it look like it is stuck in slavery days! This couldn't be more untrue. I agree that the Mississippi delta is a poverty srticken area, but it is not as backwards as this book makes it seem! Duncan took a look at ONE small community here in the delta when the Delta is home to at least 4 of the largest towns in the state of Mississippi! If the book was better researched then it might be good but this book inaccurately portrays Mississippi!