The Center for U.S. Rural Cultures Studies (June 2018-March 2020)
[All work has been transferred to The Relational Democracy Project]
The Center’s Purpose
Rural American Cultures (RAC) face enormous challenges and, currently, also exert considerable influence on the rest of the country and the rest of the world. Research communities interested in addressing rural challenges have focused their efforts internationally, leaving RAC without the cultural knowledge conventionally provided by research institutions. Much is written about the economics and politics of U.S. rural places, but a focus on cultural norms and how humans grow in them is largely absent.
The Center for U.S. Rural Cultures Studies focuses on understanding norms in the variety of Rural American Cultures embodied by 60 million people in the U.S. The Center seeks to understand what’s normal in rural America, working quietly — immersed in the field — to first understand each RAC. The research is designed to remain quiet, in the field, and focused on describing actual conditions. The creative projects — which grow out of field research findings — show how power moves in human relations, how power is shared or stolen, and how everyone can help create healthy social soil.
The Center’s research also avoids one-factor analysis (race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, species); attention is focused on relations, which always already connect those factors. Indeed, those crucial factors are functions of power relations. The Center’s research guides production of accessible cultural knowledge, creative products, and change tools to support RAC in self-understanding and self-directed healthy change, while facilitating understanding between rural and non-rural cultures. Ultimately, sophisticated qualitative research drives creation of simple, direct, and functional sense-making tools, which all concerned U.S. citizens urgently need to navigate, challenge, and change everyday authoritarian power relations.
The Center’s work to embody, model, and encourage democratic (power-sharing) relations in RAC and beyond has long-term potential to change cultures at the relational level. There is currently no other academic, business, religious, political, or nonprofit research program or cultural work effort of this kind underway in the United States.
Cultural Work in Rural (and Urban) America
Cultures — rural or urban — are made up of practices : what humans normally do and say that shows how they think and what they value and believe. Cultural work practices focused in everyday authoritarian contexts include questioning and challenging imbalanced power relations to loosen packed down social soil around power-stealing and hoarding sites. Cultural work practices also amend the social soil with fresh, creative nutrients — power-sharing ideas, stories, and practices — while hand-tilling that soil to encourage growth and wide-spread diffusion of democratic practices that can develop into norms. Cultural work practices focus on those most vulnerable to power-stealing in order to create conditions within which everyone is empowered to drive their forward momentum.
At the Center, cultural work grows from research, is pre-political, and starts on the ground of rural cultures. It’s not about votes or voting. It’s not about political organizing or political parties; not about candidates or issues. The Center’s cultural work — concentrated in U.S. rural cultures — is about fear reduction: fear of the unknown, fear of punishment, fear of invisibility, fear of authority. It’s about building the enabling conditions necessary to support the health of our democracy. Cultural work creates, embodies, models, and shares relational practices that nurture a sense of safety, trust, and human well-being. It enables vulnerability and sparks creativity that can only happen in democratic cultures. Cultural work makes possible the magic that democracies grow.
From Boal to hooks to Giroux, those dedicated to cultural work use their lives as creative instruments of healthy social change. Cultural workers see possibilities, even if they’re mired in brutal actuality. We know we can’t change people, so we focus on changing the cultural conditions in which people live and grow. At the Center for U.S. Rural Cultures Studies, researchers, artists, and educators immersed in U.S. rural cultures work to intervene and reshape unhealthy relational patterns that undermine democratic norms and practices, while creatively embodying and encouraging power-sharing in its many forms.
Rural American Cultures (RAC)
Rural American Cultures (RAC) are made up of patterns of typical human practices, which include “knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, [and] custom…” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn). A RAC is a living whole, and its norms are not abstract categories; norms are what humans do that add up to cultures. The Center’s research and creative focus on RAC includes understanding and showing the diverse practices that humans in rural areas engage.
For instance, in a democratic culture like ours in the United States, sharing power via systems and processes is (or was) a cultural norm. Democratic practices — how humans do power-sharing with those processes and systems — occurs between humans, in our relations with one another. In other words, democracy is not in systems or processes. The heart of any democratic culture is the human commitment to share power via systems and processes and in everyday practices. Observing and documenting how power-sharing happens between humans in RAC makes it possible to understand how those rural norms influence nation-wide democratic norms. Showing — through creative projects — how those norms function helps create the conditions for the possibility of fresh relational norms that support a fundamentally democratic culture.
Definitions of “rural” used in U.S. rural scholarship are created by the Federal government and function to assess need and divide and distribute economic resources to those populations. Economics is only one factor in creating a meaningful, healthy life, however. The over-focus on top-down economic analysis has swamped our ability to understand the everyday normal lives and practices of rural Americans. The Center seeks to illuminate those norms, understand their impacts on humans, and begin by collecting data about those humans at the bottom and on the margins.
Mission: The Center for U.S. Rural Cultures Studies produces, shares, and markets accessible, first-hand knowledge about the variety of Rural American Cultures (RAC)
Vision: A country whose cultural self-knowledge extends beyond the urban.
Values:
- People come first
- Accuracy is fundamental
- Start at the bottom
- Live democratic principles every day
- Embody non-violence in words and action
- Everybody wins
- No one is a stranger
Goals:
- Create the most comprehensive and accessible resource for understanding Rural American Cultures
- Recreate human connection in hostile environments via qualitative methods.
- Nurture conditions for human trust, vulnerability, self-knowledge, and expression.
- Model power-sharing practices and processes in all projects.
- Model practices that are fair and equal in terms of giving and sharing efforts and resources.
- Model transparent, open, and accurate professional practices.
- Provide tools for developing community media and arts resources.
- Provide free access to resources that support relational health and human well-being.
- Develop possibilities for local intellectual labor opportunities.
- Develop local Citizen-Researchers (CR).
- Embody independence from business, academic, religious, and political organizations by making decisions and judgements based solely on the Center’s mission and aligned with its vision and values.
[NO LONGER ON-GOING. FOR REFERENCE ONLY, 2019]
“The Reference Collection” at The Center for U.S. Rural Cultures Studies is an ongoing project aimed at gathering current, living examples organized into categories relevant for the Center’s work.
The compilation and organization process is currently underway. What is listed here is always already partial, curated, and edited. Relevant, vetted contributions are gratefully accepted and included.
Modes of Democracy (Power-Sharing)
Authoritarianism (Power-Stealing and Hoarding)
Modes of American Authoritarianism: White Supremacy and White Nationalism
American Authoritarian Standards: Whiteness and Toxic Masculinity
American Authoritarian Tools: NRA, Militia, and Guns
Capitalism Eats Unprotected Democracies
AMAC and AARP Narratives
Rural Oregon and Josephine County (Joco)
RURAL SPECIFICS
Cultural Analysis more relevant than Economic Analysis: https://www.agriculture.com/news/culture-more-than-economics-divides-rural-and-urban-america
Rural America is more diverse than ever: https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/4/24/15286624/race-rural-america-trump-politics-media
Media ignores rural diversity: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-a-big-part-of-rural-america-that-everyones-ignoring/2017/03/24/d06d24d0-1010-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html
No Signal = Rural Isolation: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5cb4cdb2e4b098b9a2d822a8
Electoral College Favors Rural Regions: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/09/us-democracy-trump-white-rural-minority-majority?CMP=share_btn_link
Yet Another Example of Economic Rural Analysis: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/13/dollar-general-walmart-buhler-haven-kansas
Another Example of Economic Framing of Rural Issues: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/six-charts-illustrate-divide-rural-urban-america
Cancer Prevention and Treatment Inferior in Rural Areas: http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/27/11/1240.abstract
Opioid Treatment Inferior in Rural Areas: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jrh.12141
Rural America is in a Bubble: https://www.rollcall.com/news/opinion/im-a-coastal-elite-from-the-midwest-the-real-bubble-is-rural-america
Rural Youth Culture Description: http://cultureandyouth.org/rural-culture/articles-rural-culture/rural-youth-u-s
Poor Rural Healthcare Resources=Poor Health: https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-015-1053-3
Dumping Toxins on Rural America: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/08/climate-changed-racism-environment-south
The Rural Purge, Wiki Version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge
The Rural Purge, Medium Version
Rural Diversity: Why we can’t Ignore These Americans: https://www.salon.com/2017/02/26/rural-america-broadens-our-economic-intellectual-cultural-diversity-we-cant-ignore-its-residents_partner
Colleges in Rural America Offer No Classes in Ag: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/30/rural-colleges-agriculture-industry-skills?CMP=share_btn_link
The Invisible Rural Ghettos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_ghetto
Conservatives Despise Rural Americans
White Rural Poverty Ignored by the Left: http://inthesetimes.com/rural-america/entry/18526/why-the-left-isnt-talking-about-rural-american-poverty
The New Rural Demographics, Much More Diversity: https://www.wsj.com/articles/rural-america-is-the-new-inner-city-1495817008
Most Rural Analysis is Urban-Centered
Rural Cultures, Values, and Immigration: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/rural-america/?utm_term=.016b6e4d3b56
All Rurals are Socially Different: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK56967
Yet another rural analysis that reduces it all down to economics: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2005/november/education-as-a-rural-development-strategy
Yet Another Economic Analysis of Rural America: http://prospect.org/article/new-culture-rural-america
Colleges Boost Small Town Econ (culturally marginalizing “native” rural populations) https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/rural-economies-colleges-development/525114/
AUTHORITARIANISM (POWER-STEALING & HOARDING)
Brian Porter-Szűcs, Everyday life under authoritarianism in Poland, 17 July 2018
Insa Koch, Everyday authoritarianism in Britain, 2018
Nur Amali Ibrahim, Everyday authoritarianism in Singapore, 8 March 2018
Marlies Glasius, Authoritarianism is in everyday practices, May 2018
Emily Walton’s “misrecognition” in a US rural culture, 4 November 2019
Tom Pepinksy, Everyday authoritarianism in Malaysia, 6 January 2017
U.S. Surrounded by Authoritarian States
Evidence Supports the claim that the GOP is authoritarian
Authoritarian Parenting: General Search
National Security Experts warn: U.S. is sliding into authoritarianism
MODES OF AUTHORITARIANISM: WHITE SUPREMACY & WHITE NATIONALISM
Price of Speaking Up in Authoritarian Cultures: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/11/the-white-women-who-flipped-the-price-of-changing-your-conservative-views
White Nationalists Infiltrating Workplaces: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/03/21/are-white-nationalists-infiltrating-our-workplaces-%E2%80%98secret-agents%E2%80%99
Yet Another Macho Undercover Drama, The White Nationalist Convention: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/10/04/25451102/we-snuck-into-seattles-super-secret-white-nationalist-convention
Yet Another Macho Undercover Drama, White Supremacist Groups: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/opinion/alt-right-neo-nazis.html?referer=https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/03/21/are-white-nationalists-infiltrating-our-workplaces-%E2%80%98secret-agents%E2%80%99
White Women Tormenting Black Men and Women: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/08/gardening-while-black-lawsuit-marc-peeples
Racist White Women: https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/mothers-of-massive-resistance-white-supremacist-women
White Men Torturing Black Men and Women: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/08/chicago-reparations-won-police-torture-school-curriculum
White Nationalist in the Coast Guard Plot, Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/02/christopher-hasson-coast-guard-neo-nazi-far-right
White Nationalist in the Coast Guard Plot, HuffPost: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-supremacist-coast-guard-terror-attack-christopher-hasson_n_5c6dddb1e4b0f40774cbd0bc?ncid=engmodushpmg00000006
White Supremacy and Nationalism in Sports: https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/corbin-smith
Alabama News Editor Calls on KKK to “Clean Up”: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/goodloe-sutton-kkk-washington_n_5c6b7ce6e4b01cea6b889c4d
U.S. White House Senior Policy Advisor, Stephen Miller, is a White Nationalist: https://www.gq.com/story/stephen-miller-is-a-white-nationalist
Portland Police & Alt-Right: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/15/joey-gibson-portland-police-relationship-cooperation-text-messages
Portland Police & The Proud Boys: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/14/proud-boys-far-right-portland-oregon?CMP=share_btn_link
White People’s Intentional Ignorance: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/16/white-fragility-racism-interview-robin-diangelo?CMP=share_btn_link
Analysis of Portland’s Alt-Right Problem: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/16/portland-proud-boys-rightwing-march-liberal-city
No Domestic Terror Unit for White Nationalists/Supremacists: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/domestic-terrorism-fbi-white-supremacy_n_5ce6e695e4b0a2f9f28ba855
“All Hate Speech Matters” Hides White Nationalists and Supremacists: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/congress-held-a-hearing-on-white-nationalism-and-left-questioning-its-existence_n_5cacd268e4b043f7925c2995?ncid=engmodushpmg00000006
U.S. Domestic Terror Unit Disbanded: https://www.thedailybeast.com/homeland-security-disbands-domestic-terror-intelligence-unit?ref=home
Yet Another Example of Police Hiding White Nationalists/Supremacists: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ae5d552e4b02baed1bb2050
NFL Players: They need you more than you need them, Speak UP: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/25/dear-black-nfl-players-protest-power
Federal Bureau of Investigation Hides White Nationalists/Supremacists: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/01/sacramento-rally-fbi-kkk-domestic-terrorism-california
AUTHORITARIAN STANDARDS: WHITENESS & TOXIC MASCULINITY
MODES OF DEMOCRACY (POWER-SHARING)
Sharing Recognition is democratic: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/28/excellent-overrated-good-enough-modern-quest-damaging?CMP=share_btn_link
Stripped of all his power and in the face of overwhelming power, this man tries to take his personal power back. Some find this funny. If you’ve ever had zero power while facing overwhelming power — while multiple guns are pointed at you — you might not find this so funny. You might see this differently. https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-chase-ends-in-suspect-breakdancing-at-gunpoint-video
Sometimes, leaving is the only way to take back stolen power: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lawrencehunter/2012/06/03/freedom-to-leave-may-stop-oppressive-government
New Zealand: Sharing access to human well-being is deeply democratic
General: Share Power with Young People
General: Parenting that Shares Power
Healing and Learning from Authoritarian Parenting (parenting that steals power)
One Way to Enforce Power-Sharing: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/discriminating-against-incompetent-men-leaders_n_5c7d5b26e4b0614614dd5efc
Ask The Teachers! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/17/counter-far-right-extremism-germany-uk-teachers?CMP=share_btn_link
Giving the Stolen Power Back: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/01/defend-smacking-children-abuse-power-parents
A New Generational Compact: It’s not either/or, child or adult. It is always already both/and: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/23/old-people-enemies-young-generational-compact
Community Media Shares Power: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/26/670058419/digging-deep-into-local-news-a-small-newspaper-in-rural-oregon-is-thriving
Local Rural Giving Shares Power: https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/6/26/myths-and-opportunities-whats-happening-in-rural-philanthropy
AUTHORITARIAN (POWER-STEALING) TOOLS: NRA, MILITIA, & GUNS
Militia Terrorizes Immigrants: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/19/us/border-militia-migrants/index.html
NRA Pretends to be Bigger than it is (And it invokes ALL white people’s power if they don’t signal otherwise.)
Bolton’s Cozy Relationship with the NRA: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ab45053e4b054d118e15380
HUMANS CAPITALISM GROWS
Business People Who Make Subprime Loans to Children
Americans with Years Hoarding Power and Resources: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/america-baby-boomer-old-generation_n_5c82db8de4b0ed0a00136b0c
Americans with Years who Ignore Solutions for Climate Change: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/25/adults-room-climate-change-dianne-feinstein
HUMAN RELATIONS AND CHANGE
Healthy Relational Communication Necessary for Change in Rural Areas, Enabling Conditions: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705816323359
AMAC & AARP NARRATIVES
RURAL OREGON AND JOSEPHINE COUNTY (JOCO)
“Josephine County is somewhat unique in Oregon counties in being named for a woman…”
Narrative bites: Gender Justice in Rural Oregon
Reducing Josephine County’s Challenges to Econ, again
Another macho “undercover” rural story, Oregon Tale, the Medium Version
2014 Joco: No Tax Dollars, Little Law Enforcement
Our Land, the Patriot Movement, and the Bundys: https://www.opb.org/news/series/burns-oregon-standoff-bundy-militia-news-updates/this-land-is-our-land-podcast-patriot-movement-family/
Land Use: 7 Differences Between State and Public Lands (from Protect Our Public Lands): https://www.protectourpublicland.org/news-collection/2015/7/28/7-differences-between-state-lands-and-public-lands
Gender Discrimination case in Grants Pass: https://www.opb.org/news/article/appeals-court-sides-with-woman-in-gender-discrimination-case/
State vs. Federal Land Management in the West: https://www.perc.org/2015/03/03/divided-lands-state-vs-federal-management-in-the-west/
THE SEA RANCH/SEA RANCH (Sea Ranch NonHuman Residents Project)
2019-
Sea Ranch Architecture gets an upgrade — no section or discussion of current land or landscape management practices: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/lifestyle/9697675-181/sonoma-countys-sea-ranch-hailed?sba=AAS
Sea Ranch Legacy, Utopia, Architecture — no section or discussion of current land or landscape management practices: https://www.dwell.com/article/sea-ranch-architecture-7f30ea15
Sea Ranch Modernist Utopia, Architecture — no section or discussion of current land or landscape management practices: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/arts/design/sea-ranch-california.html
SFMOMA promo piece — mentions “Environment” in the title, but no section or discussion of current land or landscape management practices: https://www.sfmoma.org/press/release/the-sea-ranch/
Dezeen SFMOMA piece (scroll down to find Eleanor Gibson’s piece). Although the words “environment” and “landscape” appear in the article, no description or discussion of current landscape practices is offered.
Curbed Sea Ranch Oral History, Pt. 1 piece quotes Larry Halprin within a “utopian” narrative history, thereby effectively characterizing his “Live Lightly on the Land” ethic as currently “naive.” No mention of current TSRA landscape management policies or practices in this carefully crafted “complete” history. https://www.curbed.com/2019/2/20/18231590/sea-ranch-northern-california-sonoma-county-coast-history
Curbed Sea Ranch Oral History, Pt. 2 piece quotes Mary Griffin and Lisa Dundee grappling with how to save the human architecture from fire. Missing is any discussion or consideration of a sustainable landscape policy that protects both human and nonhuman habitat in this carefully crafted “complete” history. https://www.curbed.com/2019/2/21/18232116/sea-ranch-coastal-commission-oral-history-legacy
Sea Ranch VIP sales narrative (PDF): http://www.tsra.org/photos/VIPBooklet.pdf
The Sea Ranch Association website narrative — landscape management declared and inferred as “Live Lightly on the Land”: https://www.tsra.org/news.php?viewStory=1790
As The Sea Ranch wiki narrates it, no landscape policies exist beyond no non-native plants and no planting outside fenced courtyards. An incomplete description of grasses management only mentions sheep. Sea Ranch “owners” are free to cut and spray as they see fit. “Larry Halprin” listed under landscape — no further information is provided. (Hard, non-democratic firewall patrolled by Dundee-TSRA. Even with citations and documentation, attempts to add to an incomplete Wiki account — from a current resident of Sea Ranch — was declared “malicious." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Ranch,_California
Pre-2019 narrative
Utopia Rules at Sea Ranch, NYT 2015: One journalist’s experience at the Lodge. No mention of landscape architectural practices
Landscape Architecture Magazine piece that only quotes TSRA literature without any focus, description, or mention of actual landscape architecture or management policies or practices.
Ostensibly about landscape architecture and design, the blog post mentions nothing about those actual policies or practices; simply invokes Halprin.
Curbed article about specific Sea Ranch house. No utopia narrative; no mention of landscape management policies or practices. https://www.curbed.com/2018/4/9/17192240/sea-ranch-california-home-tour-framestudio
All of The Sea Ranch Association rules. All related to architecture, building, maintenance. etc. No articulation of a functional, sustainable landscape management policy or practice. http://www.tsra.org/photos/TSRA_Rules.pdf
THE SPECTACLE: THE 45th
The 45th Grabs for Control of the U.S. Military
The Democracy is Stronger than the 45th: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/opinion/michael-cohen-trump.html
The 45th’s 2nd Amendment People: https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/08/09/clinton-trump-s-second-amendment-people-remark-dangerous
The Women who Support the 45th: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/10/women-for-trump-michigan-supporters-grassroots-organizing?CMP=share_btn_link
