The Road to Poverty
The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia

Kathleen Blee and Dwight Billings examine the social dynamics of persistently poor rural communities.

Dwight B. Billings (Author), Kathleen M. Blee (Author)

9780521655460, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 January 2000

452 pages, 23 b/w illus. 5 maps 29 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm, 0.66 kg

'It is a book built on patient research and observation, which will reward the patient reading of scholars and activists elsewhere trying to build community alternatives to clientelism.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Kathleen Blee and Dwight Billings examine the social dynamics of persistently poor rural communities through the history of Clay County, an especially poor section of the Eastern Kentucky mountains in Appalachia. The authors uncover the systemic problems and patterns of low income by tracing its socio-cultural, economic, and political development of Clay County from its earliest non-native settlement and agricultural development, to the advent of the coal industry, to the present day. This study of the long-term, institutional basis of rural poverty contains some fascinating, new local historical detail, based upon the authors' meticulous archival research. This book makes an important contribution to basic research on inequality - pointing to the shortcomings of treating symptomatic problems of low income, while failing to address systemic ones - at a time when American policymakers are struggling to design and implement effective programs to move people from welfare to work.

List of illustrations
List of tables
Preface and acknowledgments
Part I. Public Policy and Historical Sociology: 1. Introduction
Part II. Antebellum Capitalist Markets: 2. Fronier Kentucky in the capitalist world system
3. Industry, commerce, and slaveholding
Part III. Antebellum State Coercion: 4. State making and the origins of elite conflict
Part IV. Cultural Strategies: 5. The patriarchal moral economy of agriculture
6. Racial dynamics and the creation of poverty
Part V. Postbellum Capitalist Markets and the Local State: 7. From marginality to integration
8. Feud violence
9. Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Poverty & unemployment [JFFA]