Rural Primitive in American Popular Culture
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€97.99
A01=Karen E. Hayden
Author_Karen E. Hayden
Backwoods horror
Category=JBCC1
Category=JBSC
cultural studies
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
media studies
popular culture
Rural crime
Rural images
Rural stereotypes
rurality
urban-rural studies
Product details
- ISBN 9781498547604
- Weight: 395g
- Dimensions: 161 x 230mm
- Publication Date: 24 Nov 2020
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The Rural Primitive in American Popular Culture: All Too Familiar studies how the mythology of the primitive rural other became linked to evolutionary theories, both biological and social, that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. This mythology fit well on the imaginary continuums of primitive to civilized, rural to urbanormative, backward to forward-thinking, and regress versus progress. In each chapter of The Rural Primitive, Karen E. Hayden uses popular cultural depictions of the rural primitive to illustrate the ways in which this trope was used to set poor, rural whites apart from others. Not only were they set apart, however; they were also set further down on the imaginary continuum of progress and regress, of evolution and devolution. Hayden argues that small, rural, tight-knit communities, where “everyone knows everyone” and “everyone is related” came to be an allegory for what will happen if society resists modernization and urbanization. The message of the rural, close-knit community is clear: degeneracy, primitivism, savagery, and an overall devolution will result if groups are allowed to become too insular, too close, too familiar.
Karen E. Hayden is professor in the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Merrimack College.
