Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Morality, Identity, and Mental Health in Rural Ghettos

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Communities, Neighborhoods, and Health

Part of the book series: Social Disparities in Health and Health Care ((SDHHC,volume 1))

Abstract

When we think about the impact of place on poor mental health outcomes our thoughts are often anchored in images of how urban ghettos’ influence the prevalence of problem behaviors and violence among individuals and families who reside within them. Within the last decade, however, social scientists have increasingly turned their attention to the emergence of rural ghettos and the concomitant rise of mental health problems in these environments. Rural ghettos are residentially segregated places that have high concentrations of disadvantage and contextual stigma. They exist within small, geographically isolated towns and their adjacent pastoral communities. Ghettos take different forms including dilapidated tracts of housing, subsidized housing projects, and run-down trailer parks on the outskirts of town. They are also parts of larger ecologies of local residents who reside in protected and affluent spaces on their geographic peripheries.

In this chapter, we explore the impact of place on mental health by examining the role of the rural ghetto in shaping the well-being of its residents and those who live in close proximity. We discuss the role of two dimensions of place that are endemic to understanding the influences of rural ghettos on mental health – location as morality and as identity. We argue that emerging ghettoized sections of rural communities have presented challenges to residents’ perceptions, beliefs, and practices regarding their “rural moral codes” and their “rural place identities.” These challenges are products of changing local landscapes (e.g., the disruption of routine social relations through diminished work opportunities) and stigmatizations as “undesirable living spaces” that compromise the mental health of those who reside within a rural ghetto as well as those who live outside of a ghettos’ borders.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Aiken, Charles S. 1987. “Race as a Factor in Municipal Underbounding.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77:564–579.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aiken, Charles S. 1990. “A New Type of Black Ghetto in the Plantation South.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80:223–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aiken, Charles. 1998. The Cotton Plantation South Since the Civil War (Creating the North American Landscape). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Elijah. 1990. Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Streets: Decenty, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Antonovsky, Aaron. 1979. Health, Stress, and Coping. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Antonovsky, Aaron. 1987. Unraveling the Mystery of Health: How People Manage Stress and Stay Well. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bageant, Joe. 2007. Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War. New York: Crown Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourgois, Philippe. 1996. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, David L., Louis Swanson and Alan Barton (eds). 2003. Challenges in Rural American in the 21st Century. University Park: Penn State Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burton, Linda M. and Sherri Lawson Clark. 2005. “Homeplace and Housing in the Lives of Low-Income Urban African American Families.” pp. 166–188 in Emerging Issues in African American Family Life, edited by Vonnie C. McLoyd, Kenneth Dodge, and Nancy Hill. New York: Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bushy, Angeline 1997. “Mental Health and Substance Abuse: Challenges in Providing Services to Rural Clients.” Bringing Excellence to Substance Abuse Services in Rural and Frontier America. Technical Assistance Publication (TAP) Series 20, DHHS Publication no (SMA) 97-3134. http://treatment.org/taps20/bushy.html.

  • Cobb, James. 1992. The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conger, Rand and Glen H. Elder Jr. 1994. Families in Troubled Times: Adapting to Change in Rural America. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cromartie, John B. and Linda L. Swanson. 1996. “Census Tracts More Precisely Define Rural Populations and Areas.” Rural Development Perspectives 11(3):31–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cromartie, John B. and Calvin L. Beale. 1996. “Increasing Black-White Separation in the Plantation South, 1970–90.” Economic Research Services, USDA downloaded from downloaded on July 11, 2008 from: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer731/aer731e.pdf.

  • Cuba, Lee J. 1984. “Reorientations of Self: Residential Identification in Anchorage, Alaska.” pp. 219–237 in Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Vol. 5), edited by N. Denzin. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, Osha G. 1990. Broken Heartland: The Rise of America’s Rural Ghetto. New York: The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Dona L. 1993. “When Men Become ‘Women’: Gender Antagonism and the Changing Geography of Work in Newfoundland.” Sex Roles 29:457–475.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Dona L. 2000. “Gendered Cultures of Conflict and Discontent: Living ‘The Crisis’ in a Newfoundland Community.” Women Studies International Forum 23:343–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dill, Bonnie Thornton. 1999. Poverty in the Rural U.S.: Implications for Children, Families, and Communities. Literature review prepared for the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dill, Bonnie Thornton and Bruce B. Williams. 1992. “Race, Gender, and Poverty in the Rural South.” pp. 97–110 in Rural Poverty in America, edited by C. M. Duncan. New York: Auburn House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duncan, Cynthia M. 1999. Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duncan, C. M. and N. Lamborghini. 1994. “Poverty and Social Context in Remote Rural Communities.” Rural Sociology 59:437–461.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duneier, Mitchell. 1999. Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eason, John. 2010. It’s Like the City, Only Quieter: Making the Rural Ghetto. Unpublished Paper. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erikson, Kai T. 1976. Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. New York: Simon & Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falk, William 2004. Rooted in Place: Family and Belonging in a Southern Black Community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitchen, Janet M. 1991. Endangered Spaces, Enduring Places: Change, Identity, and Survival in Rural America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitchen, Janet M. 1994. “Residential Mobility Among the Rural Poor.” Rural Sociology 59:416–434.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flora, Cornelia Butler, Jan L. Flora with Susan Fey. 2004. Rural Communities: Legacy and Change. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foulkes, Matt and K. Bruce Newbold. 2008. “Poverty Catchments: Migration, Residential Mobility, and Population Turnover in Impoverished Rural Illinois Communities.” Rural Sociology 73(3):440–462.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gans, Herbert J. 1972. “The Positive Functions of Poverty.” American Journal of Sociology 78:275–289.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garrett-Peters, Raymond. 2009. “‘If I Don’t Have to Work Anymore, Who Am I?’: Job-Loss and Collaborative Self-Concept Repair.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 38:547–583.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gessert, Charles E. 2003. “Rurality and Suicide.” American Journal of Public Health 93(5):698.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, Erving 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graumann, Carl F. 1974. “Psychology and the World of Things.” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 4:389–404.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenhouse, Carol J. 1986. Praying for Justice: Faith, Order, and Community in an American Town. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greider, Thomas, Richard S. Krannich, and E. Helen Berry. 1991. “Local Identity, Solidarity and Trust in Changing Rural Communities.” Sociological Focus 24:263–282.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, Lawrence C., Leslie R. Hamilton, Cynthia M. Duncan, and Chris R. Colocousis. 2008. Place Matters: Challenges and Opportunities in Four Rural Americas. Carsey Institute Reports on Rural America, Vol. 1(4). Durham, NH.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, David. 1993. Potter Addition: Poverty and Kinship in a Heartland Community. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Arnold. 1998. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940–1960. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirschl, Thomas A. and Mark R. Rank. 1991. “The Effect of Population Density on Welfare Participation.” Social Forces 70:225–235.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoey, Brian A. 2005. “From Pi to Pie: Moral Narratives of Noneconomic Migration and Starting Over in the Postindustrial Midwest.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 34:586–624.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoey, Brian A. 2006. “Grey Suit or Brown Carhartt: Narrative Transition, Relocation: An Reorientation in the Lives of Corporate Refugees.” Journal of Anthropological Research 62:347–372.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hormuth, Stefan E. 1990. The Ecology of the Self: Relocation and Self-Concept Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackall, Robert. 1988. Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Kenneth. 2003. “Unpredictable Directions of Rural Population Growth and Migration.” In Challenges in Rural American in the 21st Century, edited by Brown, David L., Louis Swanson and Alan Barton. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knapp, Tim. 1995. “Rust in the Wheatbelt: The Social Impacts of Industrial Decline in a Rural Kansas Community.” Sociological Inquiry 65(1):47–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lamont, Michele and Marcel Fournier (eds). 1992. Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawson Clark, Sherri. 2008. Migration for Housing: Urban Families in Rural Living. The Center for Rural Pennsylvania Report.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, David J. and Andrew Weigert. 1985. “Trust as Social Reality.” Social Forces 63:967–985.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lichter, Daniel T. and David L. Brown (in press). “Rural America in an Urbanizing Society: Changing Spatial and Social Boundaries.” Annual Review of Sociology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lichter, Daniel T. and Kenneth M. Johnson. 2007. “The Changing Spatial Concentration of America’s Rural Poor Population.” Rural Sociology 72(3):29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lichter, Daniel T., Dominico Parisi, Steven M. Grice, and Michael Taquino. 2007a. “Municipal Underbounding: Annexation and Racial Exclusion in Small Southern Towns.” Rural Sociology 72(1):47–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lichter, Daniel T., Dominico Parisi, Steven M. Grice, and Michacl Taquino. 2007b. “National Estimates of Racial Segregation in Rural and Small-Town America.” Demography 44(3):563–581.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lichter, Daniel T., Dominico Parisi, Michael Taquino, and Bo Beaulieu. 2008. “Race and the Micro-Scale Spatial Concentration of Poverty.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1:51–67.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacTavish, Katherine. 2007. “The Wrong Side of the Tracks: Social Inequality and Mobile Home Park Residence.” Community Development 38:74–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacTavish, Katherine and Sonya Salamon. 2001. “Mobile Home Park on the Prairie: A New Rural Community Form.” Rural Sociology 66:487–506.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacTavish, Katherine, Michelle Eley, and Sonya Salamon. 2006. “Housing Vulnerability Among Rural Trailer-Park Households.” Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy 13:95–117.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGranahan, David A. 1994. “Rural America in the Global Economy: Socioeconomic Trends.” Journal of Research in Rural Education 10:139–148.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, Robert M. 2001. The Hidden America: Social Problems in Rural America for the Twenty-First Century. London: Associated University Presses, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Naples, Nancy A. 1994. “Contradictions in Agrarian Ideology: Restructuring Gender, Race Ethnicity, and Class.” Rural Sociology 59:110–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, Margaret K. and Joan Smith. 1999. Working Hard and Making Do: Surviving in Small Town America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, Margaret K. 2005. The Social Economy of Single Motherhood. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pattillo, Mary. 2003. “Extending the Boundaries and Definition of the Ghetto.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 26:1046–1057.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reding, Nick. 2009. Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town. New York: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salamon, Sonya. 2003. Newcomers to Old Towns: Suburbanization of the Heartland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salamon, Sonya and Jane B. Tornatore. 1994. “Territory Contested Through Property in a ­Mid-Western Post-Agricultural Community.” Rural Sociology 59:636–654.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sampson, Robert J. and Jeffrey Morenoff. 2006. “Durable Inequality: Spatial Dynamics, Social Processes, and the Persistence of Poverty in Chicago Neighborhoods.” pp. 176–203 in Poverty Traps, edited by Samuel Bowles, Steve Durlauf, and Karla Hoff. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scaramella, Laura V. and Angela W. Keyes. 2001. “The Social Contextual Approach and Rural Adolescent Substance Use: Implications for Prevention in Rural Settings.” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 4(3):231–251.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schafft, Kai. 2006. “Poverty, Residential Mobility, and Student Transiency Within a Rural New York School District.” Rural Sociology 71(2):212–231.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwalbe, Michael. 2005. “Identity Stakes, Manhood Acts, and the Dynamics of Accountability.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 28:65–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwalbe, Michael L. and Douglas Mason-Schrock. 1996. “Identity Work as Group Process.” pp. 113–147 in Advances in Group Processes, edited by B. Markovsky, B. J. Lovaglia, and R. Simon. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwalbe, Michael, Sandra Godwin, Daphne Holden, Douglas Schrock, Shealy Thompson, and Michele Wolkomir. 2000. “Generic Social Processes in the Reproduction of Inequality: An Interactionist Analysis.” Social Forces 79:419–452.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sherman, Jennifer. 2006. “Coping with Rural Poverty: Economic Survival and Moral Capital in Rural America.” Social Forces 85:891–913.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sherman, Jennifer. 2009. Those Who Work, Those Who Don’t: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singer, Milton. 1980. “Signs of the Self: An Exploration in Semiotic Anthropology.” American Anthropologist 82:485–507.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Singh, Gopal K. and Mohammad Siahpush 2002. “Increasing Rural-Urban Gradients of U.S. Suicide Mortality, 1970–1997.” American Journal of Public Health 92(7):1161–1167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Small, Mario. 2007. “Is There Such a Thing as ‘the Ghetto’?” City 11(3):413–421.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Kristin. 2008. Working Hard for the Money: Trends in Womens’ Employment: 1970–2007. A Carsey Institute Report on Rural America.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snyder, Anastasia R. and Diane K. McLaughlin. 2004. “Female-Headed Families and Poverty in Rural America.” Rural Sociology 69(1):127–149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stack, Carol. 1996. A Call to Home. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tickamyer, Ann R. 1992. “Rural Labor Markets and the Working Poor.” pp. 41–62 in Rural Poverty in America, edited by C. M. Duncan. Westport, CT: Auburn House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tickamyer, Ann R. and Cynthia M. Duncan. 1990. “Poverty and Opportunity Structure in Rural America.” Annual Review of Sociology 16:67–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tickamyer, Ann R. and Debra A. Henderson. 2003. “Rural Women: New Roles for the New Century?” pp. 109–117 in Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century, edited by D. Brown and L. E. Swanson. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Twiss, Pamela C. and Thomas R. Mueller. 2004. Exploring Public Housing Use in Rural Pennsylvania. Center for Rural Pennsylvania Report.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Gundy, Karen. 2006. Substance Abuse in Rural and Small Town America. Carsey Institute Report. A Carsey Institute Report on Rural America.

    Google Scholar 

  • Venkatesh, Sudhir. 2009. Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wacquant, Loïc. 2001. “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh.” Punishment and Society 3(1):95–134. Also in Garland, David. 2001. Mass Imprisonment: Social Causes and Consequences. London: Sage Publications.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wacquant, Loic. 2002. “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration: Rethinking the ‘Race Question’ in the US.” The New Left Review 13(Feb):41–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wahl, Ana-Maria Gonzalez and Steven Gunkel. 2007. “From Old South to New South? Black-White Residential Segregation in Micropolitan Areas.” Sociological Spectrum 27(5):507–535.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weber, Burce, Leif Jensen, Mathleen Miller, Jane Mosley, and Monica Fisher 2005. “A Critical Review of Rural Poverty Literature: Is There Truly a Rural Effect?” International Regional Science Review 28:441–464.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, William J. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wirth, Louis. 1956[1928]. The Ghetto. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgment

Support for this research was provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (PO1-HD-39667), the National Science Foundation (SES-07-03968), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708-0088, USA

    Linda M. Burton

Authors
  1. Linda M. Burton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Raymond Garrett-Peters
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. John Major Eason
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Linda M. Burton .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Sociology, Duke University, Durham, 27708-0097, North Carolina, USA

    Linda M. Burton

  2. Dept. Anthropology, Penn State University, Carpenter Bldg. 409, University Park, 16802, Pennsylvania, USA

    Stephen A. Matthews

  3. , Department of Sociology, University of Washington, 211 Savery Hall, Seattle, 98195-3340, USA

    ManChui Leung

  4. Dept. Sociology, University of Washington, Raitt Hall 206A, Seattle, 98195-4322, Washington, USA

    Susan P. Kemp

  5. Dept. Sociology, University of Washington, Raitt Hall 206A, Seattle, 98195-4322, Washington, USA

    David T. Takeuchi

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Burton, L.M., Garrett-Peters, R., Eason, J.M. (2011). Morality, Identity, and Mental Health in Rural Ghettos. In: Burton, L., Matthews, S., Leung, M., Kemp, S., Takeuchi, D. (eds) Communities, Neighborhoods, and Health. Social Disparities in Health and Health Care, vol 1. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7482-2_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation