Reviving Rural America
Toward Policies for Resilience

Debunks myths about rural people, places, and policies, offering a vision for a more just and resilient society.

Ann M. Eisenberg (Author)

9781108834018, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 June 2024

224 pages
23.5 x 16.1 x 1.9 cm, 0.47 kg

'… an in-depth and powerful scholarly analysis of how America's laws and policies have impacted the divide between rural and urban America … an excellent resource for today's law and society courses. … Recommended.' L. Campbell, Choice

We often hear that there is no way out of the modern economic and political tensions that fall along geographic lines. The media regularly declares that rural America is dying and that rural voters are driven only by anger. This narrative of hopelessness centers on the role that markets have played in abandoning rural regions and populations. In Reviving Rural America, Ann M. Eisenberg analyzes our society's laws and policies' role in the urban/rural divide to make the case for hope. She demonstrates how law and policy, as well as decision-makers acting on their own subjective values, have contributed to modern rural challenges. Each chapter debunks a common myth about rural people, places, and policies, helping reveal how we got to where we are now. Ultimately calling for our laws and policies to steward rural America holistically, as a collective resource for all, this book envisions an alternative, more resilient and more just future.

1. Introduction
2. The foundational myths: the myths of rural hyper-simplicity, rural hyper-complexity, and rural immateriality
3. The myth of rural empowerment
4. The myth of rural unsustainability
5. The myth of rural decline
6. The myth of rural radicalism
7. The myth of rural whiteness
8. The myth of rural obsolescence.

Subject Areas: International law [LB]