Growth fundamentalism in dying rural towns:Implications for rural development practitioners

Curtis Stofferahn, Cordell Fontaine, Douglas McDonald, Mike Spletto and Holly Jeanotte

Agriculture and Human Values, 1991, vol. 8, issue 3, 25-34

Abstract: In our paper we will try to connect the dynamics of community decline to individual responses. We will operate on two levels of reality. At the first level we will discuss the circumstances surrounding the recent decline of small communities in North Dakota. At the second level we will discuss how this decline affects small town residents' attitudes toward economic development. In the first level analysis we examine the thesis that the natural environment of community growth is economic exploitation; therefore, the decline of resource-based communities is natural and inevitable. We discuss the circumstances surrounding the recent decline of small communities in North Dakota. At the second level analysis, we operate at the level at which life circumstances and environments are shaped by political-economic institutions that in turn shape the behavior and mentality of communities, families, and individuals. We hypothesize that residents of declining small towns deny their powerlessness and adapt to their situation through intense dedication to economic growth. We develop a series of hypotheses to test this thesis using data from the North Dakota Rural Life Poll. In our conclusion, we discuss implications for rural development practitioners working in declining small towns where this intense dedication to economic development in prevalent. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1991

Date: 1991
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF01591840 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:8:y:1991:i:3:p:25-34

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10460

DOI: 10.1007/BF01591840

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture and Human Values is currently edited by Harvey S. James Jr.

More articles in Agriculture and Human Values from Springer, The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().