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The Rural Primitive in American Popular Culture
All Too Familiar
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2020
Summary
The Rural Primitive in American Popular Culture: All Too Familiar studies how the mythology of the primitive rural other became linked to evolutionary theories, both biological and social, that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. This mythology fit well on the imaginary continuums of primitive to civilized, rural to urbanormative, backward to forward-thinking, and regress versus progress. In each chapter of The Rural Primitive, Karen E. Hayden uses popular cultural depictions of the rural primitive to illustrate the ways in which this trope was used to set poor, rural whites apart from others. Not only were they set apart, however; they were also set further down on the imaginary continuum of progress and regress, of evolution and devolution. Hayden argues that small, rural, tight-knit communities, where “everyone knows everyone” and “everyone is related” came to be an allegory for what will happen if society resists modernization and urbanization. The message of the rural, close-knit community is clear: degeneracy, primitivism, savagery, and an overall devolution will result if groups are allowed to become too insular, too close, too familiar.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2020
ISBN-Print
978-1-4985-4760-4
ISBN-Online
978-1-4985-4761-1
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
124
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Dedication No access
Contents No access
Preface and Acknowledgments No access
Chapter 1 Introduction No access Pages 1 - 8
Chapter 2 Inbreeding, Cousin Marriage, and the Rural Primitive in Nineteenth-Century America No access Pages 9 - 32
Chapter 3 Inbred Horror and the Rural Primitive in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture1 No access Pages 33 - 54
