A great place to raise kids : interpretation, science, and the urban-rural debate / Kieran Bonner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bonner, Kieran, 1951-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rural children--Canada.

Rural children.

Child rearing--Social aspects--Canada.

Child rearing.

Sociology, Rural--Canada.

Sociology, Rural.

Quality of life--Canada.

Quality of life.

Canada--Rural conditions.

Canada.

Physical Description:

xi, 241 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Buffalo : McGill-Queen's University Press, c1997.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Bonner analyses historical contributions to the urban-rural debate by Karl Marx, Ferdinand Tonnies, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Louis Wirth, and Robert Redfield, as well as contributions by contemporary theorists, such as Ray Pahl, Anthony Giddens, and Peter Berger. He shows how both societal developments and scientific assumptions unwittingly shape the debate, making a distinctive rural culture more and more difficult to identify, and suggests that phenomenology can rescue the urban-rural debate from its conceptual predicament. Through an analysis of statements by parents in both urban and rural settings, Bonner goes on to point out the limitations of a narrowly scientific approach to research, demonstrating how a more radical interpretive approach that combines phenomenological, hermeneutic, and dialectical analytic methods and theories can further our understanding. He argues convincingly that practical/ethical matters and theoretical assumptions are inextricably intertwined.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction Parenting, the Urban–Rural Debate, and the Logic of Social Inquiry

The Urban–Rural Debate in Sociological Literature

The Problem of Otherness in Modernity: Sociology and the Development of the Urban-Rural Debate

The Urban-Rural Debate and the Hegemony of the Scientific Paradigm in Sociology

The Experience of Parents Regarding Safety: An Evaluation of Scientific and Interpretive Methodology

The Conceptual Predicament of the Urban-Rural Debate in Sociology

“It’s Better Because It’s Safer”: Knowledge by Discovery and Knowledge by Interpretation

The Prairie Edge Solution to the Problem of Anxious Parenting

Hope, Fear, and Safety: A Problem for Parents and a Problem for Understanding

Parenting in Prairie Edge: A Rurban Experience

Smallness, High Visibility, and the Parental Life-World

Whose Side Does the Research Take - the Community of Scholars, the Research Subjects, or the Phenomenon Itself?

Postmodernism, Finitude, and the Problem of Community

Postmodernism and the Consumer Relation to Place

Understanding the Whole and One’s Place in It: The Panopticon, the Polls and Radical Interpretive Sociology

Epilogue

Appendix: The Radical Interpretive Research Approach to the Question of Rural Merit

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-235) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-85451-8

9786612854514

0-7735-6661-9

OCLC:

892946835