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Consumers in the Country

Technology and Social Change in Rural America

Ronald R. Kline

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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...

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.

Reviews

Reviews

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.

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

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

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

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.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
384
ISBN
9780801871153
Illustration Description
7 halftones, 4 line drawings
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Urban Technology and Rural Reform
Chapter 1. (Re)inventing the Telephone
Chapter 2. Taming the Devil Wagon
Chapter 3. Defining Modernity in the Home
Chapter 4. Tuning

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Urban Technology and Rural Reform
Chapter 1. (Re)inventing the Telephone
Chapter 2. Taming the Devil Wagon
Chapter 3. Defining Modernity in the Home
Chapter 4. Tuning In The Country
Part II: A New Deal In Rural Electrification
Chapter 5. Creating the REA
Chapter 6. Struggling for Local Autonomy
Chapter 7. Lights in the Country
Part III: Postwar Consumerism
Chapter 8. Completing the Job
Chapter 9. (Re)forming Rural Life
Conclusion. Consumers All?
Appendix
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliographical and Methodological Note
Index

Author Bio
Ronald R. Kline
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Ronald R. Kline, Ph.D.

Ronald R. Kline is the Bovay Professor in History and Ethics of Engineering at Cornell University. He is the author of Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist and Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America.