Habits of the Heartland: Small-Town Life in Modern America
"In researching her book, the author lived and worked for nearly two years in Viroqua, a small town in southwestern Wisconsin, where she tended bar at the American Legion and even served as vice president of the historical society's museum. This kind of work stands or falls by the vigilance and precision of the ethnographer's observations. Macgregor acquits herself brilliantly; she draws subtle distinctions within and between social groups, yet her analysis lets readers generalize about what some idealize and others castigate as small-town American values. For all their differences, the longtime residents (who might drive ATVs and snowmobiles) and the progressives (who favor Subaru Outbacks, the local Waldorf school, and organic produce) share a belief that raising children in Viroqua helps protect them from the 'excesses of consumerism.' Indeed, readers from non-flyover places will be struck by the subdued and skeptical consumerism and the commitment to thrift that Macgregor finds among Viroquans. Here's an unintentional paean to midwestern modesty that's especially noteworthy in our post-crash era."—Benjamin Schwarz,The Atlantic Monthly, October 2010"Lyn C. Macgregor shows how communities are made in a rural place and, through the three cultural groups identified (Alternatives, Main Streeters, and Regulars), gives important insight into the production of community as well as community identities and individual and collective agency.Habits of the Heartlandis a real contribution to the fields of community studies, rural studies, and cultural studies."—Cornelia Flora, Iowa State University"A rich, multilayered ethnographic portrait of a Wisconsin town emerges from Macgregor's keen insights drawing on two years spent living there and working as a bartender. She uniquely focuses on local patterns of consumption to show that ordinary shopping or entertainment choices are motivated by a distinctive sense of community among each of its factions, allowing us to see how multiple cultures coexist within the shared boundaries of this small place."—Sonya Salamon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign