Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America (Revisiting Rural America)

Kline, Ronald

ISBN 10: 0801871158 / ISBN 13: 9780801871153

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002

About this Item

Fine copy in softcover. Light green spine with green tittles. Sociology.

Seller Inventory # 032644

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America (Revisiting Rural America)
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801871158
• ISBN 13: 9780801871153
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Sociology

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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.