Understanding the Rural Heart Land
Harald Wenzel
Comments
The outcome of the recent presidential elections provides additional motivation to investigate the rural heartland of the United States which overwhelmingly has voted for Donald Trump. But this will not be another study of Trumpology, but rather a reckoning with the everyday problems of rural America which served as a basis for vote-winning dystopian interpretations. These problems are multi-facetted – they pertain, e.g., to industrialized agriculture, deindustrialization/globalization, multiple forms of “desertification” (regarding health, food, media, religion, education – and erosion of soil proper), immigrant labor and depopulation. -----
This course will try to get detailed insight into some of these problems to see how they reverberate on an individual and (middle) class level. This has to be done on the explicit background of a deteriorating climate crisis which has been pounding the population vehemently, particularly during extreme weather events, floods, droughts and fires. -----
To make yourself familiar with the topic I recommend reading:
Arlie Hochschild 2024, Stolen Pride. Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right. New York: The New Press
close14 Class schedule
Regular appointments