Review of Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America, by Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefala

Kindle, Peter A.

English

eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi)

Journal of Rural Social Sciences Volume 25 Issue 3 Volume 25, Issue 3 Article 14 12-31-2010 Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America Peter A. Kindle The University of South Dakota Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss  Part of the Rural Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Kindle, Peter. 2010. "Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America." Journal of Rural Social Sciences, 25(3): Article 14. Available At: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss/vol25/iss3/14 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Population Studies at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Rural Social Sciences by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact egrove@olemiss.edu. Journal of Rural Social Sciences, 25(3), 2010, pp. 267–269.Copyright © by the Southern Rural Sociological Association Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural BrainDrain and What It Means for America. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009 (239 pp.),ISBN 978-0-8070-0614-6, US$ 16.00 (paperback). Reviewed by Peter A. Kindle Joined by academic discipline and marriage, the sociologists Patrick Carr(Rutgers University in New Brunswick) and Maria Kefalas (Saint Joseph’sUniversity in Philadelphia) have collaborated on an ethnographic study of a small,rural community in northeastern Iowa. Initially conceived as a study of transitionsto adulthood in nonmetropolitan America, Carr and Kefalas were quickly convincedthat something larger was at stake – the survival of small town America. Thisvolume contains their findings related to transitions to adulthood in ruralcommunities, but it is clearly written to address the “rural crisis” by educatingAmericans about it and attempting to justify national policies to fix it. Simplydefined, the rural crisis is the exodus of youth from small town America.Carr and Kefalas relocated and joined the 2,014 residents of “Ellis” in 2002 withsponsorship from the MacArthur Foundation. Over the next 18 months, theysurveyed 350 and interviewed 104 young adults who had enrolled at Ellis HighSchool in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Written in an easily accessible style forthe lay reader, this volume is filled with their observations of life in a ruralcommunity that is just “hanging on,” and stories from the young adults they met.Social scientists who read this book may be dissatisfied by a lack of attention tomethodological niceties, but with more than 200 endnotes on 34 pages, no one canconclude that this research is meager.The preface, introduction, and concluding chapter focus on the rural crisis andsuggestions for how America should respond. Sandwiched between these pages arefour chapters that address the four trajectories of rural youth transitions toadulthood. “. . . [T]he biggest question facing anyone who grows up in a smalltown is whether he or she should leave or stay” (p. xiii). How the youth of Ellisfound personal answers to this question determined not only their trajectory intoadulthood, but also, quite likely, the future destiny of their community. Achievers are an elite few, about one in five youth that are carefully nurtured andprepared by the entire community to leave after high school graduation. This small“aristocracy” leaves because, frankly, the community expects them to do so. Incontrast, about one in ten youth are Seekers who are self-motivated to escape, doing2671Kindle: Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Hollowing Out the Middle: TPublished by eGrove, 2010268 JOURNAL OF RURAL SOCIAL SCIENCESso primarily through military service. Up to four in ten youth will never leave Ellis,choosing the path of early marriage, childbearing, and blue collar employment rightafter high school. Paradoxically, the Stayers have the lowest accumulation of humancapital and offer the community the least upon which to build a future. The Returners are dominated by what Carr and Kefalas call Boomerangs, youth who leavetemporarily for junior college or military service, but return to the comfortablesurroundings of their hometown having concluded that the larger world was notto their liking. Much of the chapter on Returners discusses Iowa initiatives torecruit Achievers to return home, but the few High Flyers who do so appear to bean exception.Because most Ellis resources are invested in Achievers, and because Achieversrarely permanently return to Ellis, the future of Ellis is imperiled by preparing itsbest young people to leave. This irony does not escape Carr and Kefalas’ attention,and to some extent, this may be the primary thesis of the entire book. The futureof Ellis, and by implication other rural communities, depends on Stayers andBoomerangs, but these segments of the young adult community are virtuallyneglected by rural leadership and priorities. When joined to the broader economictrends associated with globalization, the rise in agribusiness, and the decline inmanufacturing employment, the future of rural America appears quite bleak.What does the rural brain drain mean for America? Exactly what does Americalose when a rural community ceases to be self-sustaining? Carr and Kefalas dutifullyreport the nostalgic response that pointed to the “historical centrality” of rurality.Others suggested, perhaps with hyperbole, that abandoning rural communities wascomparable to the South seceding from the Union more than 150 years ago.Perhaps the most persuasive argument might be continued access to the naturalresources, food production, and green potential of this region; however, it is difficultto imagine how a region touted as resource-rich can, in the next breadth, lay claimto the redistribution of national resources proposed by Carr and Kefalas. “. . . [T]hebest way to preserve the nation’s small towns will be to create new sorts ofconservation efforts to invest more efficiently in [Stayers and Boomerangs]. . .” (p.9).Carr and Kefalas may be correct in this conclusion; however, they did notanswer the more important question of whether the nation’s small towns should bepreserved if they cannot sustain themselves. This reviewer suspects that manyAmericans might question federal investment in communities described as having“wariness about new people” (p. 13) and being “populated by insiders impatient withthose who do not take the deepest sort of pleasure in knowing, with absolutely2Journal of Rural Social Sciences, Vol. 25 [2010], Iss. 3, Art. 14https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss/vol25/iss3/14BOOK REVIEWS 269certainty, their place in the world and in abiding by the rules that govern it” (p.109). There may be arguments for rurality that Carr and Kefalas do not address, butthis reviewer fears that redistribution of national resources to sustain communitiesthat cannot sustain themselves may simply convert rural America into an expensivemuseum of times past. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYPeter A. Kindle, PhD, CPA, LMSW is Assistant Professor of Social Work atThe University of South Dakota. His research interests include social welfarepolicy, financial literacy and education, and economic systems affecting poverty.Contact information: Peter A. Kindle, Department of Social Work, 1400 West 22ndStreet, Sioux Falls, SD 57105 USA. (email: Peter.Kindle@usd.edu). 3Kindle: Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Hollowing Out the Middle: TPublished by eGrove, 2010

Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America

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Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America

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