Those Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality and Family in Rural America (review)

This book examines the social impact of rural economic decline in a rural northern California lumber town. Based on a year of ethnographic field work, Sherman documents in rich detail the various ways in which individuals and families respond to the closure of the town's principal employer, a lumber mill. The main theme of the book is that moral values and discourses play vital roles, both negative and positive, in shaping individual, family, and collective adaptations to the loss of traditional male employment and the community's dominant source of economic activity.

The book is divided into four main chapters plus a conclusion. The first chapter introduces the reader to the town and its recent history, including an account of the environmental and conservation issues that lay behind the mill closure. Sherman shows that although the town's population and economy were devastated by the mill closure, a significant contingent of "survivors" continued to live in the community despite the lack of secure full-time employment. While she notes there is also a contingent of newcomers seeking to take advantage of the environment and the rock-bottom land and housing prices, the book focuses on the struggles and adaptations of longer-term residents, some of whom had returned to insecure low-paying employment despite having had some success in finding good jobs elsewhere.

In Chapter 2, Sherman documents the various strategies that workers and families use to survive, including a reliance on lower-wage, female-based employment, assistance from older parents, males commuting long distances for employment, subsistence fishing and hunting, and use of various government assistance programs. As she shows, the work ethic is alive and well as a central basis for moral judgements and what she refers to as 'moral capital.' Accordingly, even within a context of widespread unemployment, there is a definite stigma attached to welfare use with a hierarchy of more respectable forms of government assistance including disability and unemployment insurance. Since most families are living well below the state poverty line, social differentiation and self-respect are constructed less around income and more around a continuum of moral judgements with respect to self-reliance and the work ethic. Sherman puts considerable emphasis on alcohol and drug use as major factors in this moral differentiation, arguing that alcohol use in particular is now less accepted than it was when the mill and economy were doing well.

In Chapter 3, Sherman pursues the same theme with reference to the central significance of the family, arguing that the moral significance of family values, having children, and being a 'good' parent are intensified in the context of economic failure, unemployment, and poverty. Providing a good family home and a safe environment are identified as central rationales underlying decisions to stay in the community despite the poverty and lack of work. However, as she shows, what constitutes a good parent for residents in this context varies quite significantly from the views of urban and suburban Americans, focusing on very basic needs with few precise goals for their children's futures. As in the previous chapter, Sherman identifies alcohol and drug use as the key moral indicators of poor family values and negative practices such as abuse.

The fourth and final chapter examines the changes in the construction of masculinity which arise from the loss of employment and the role of men as the principal family wage earners. As other studies have found, men are affected quite profoundly when they lose their paid labour and breadwinning capacity, but as she also shows, women's roles also shift quite dramatically, with particular reference to wage-earning. At the same time, Sherman argues that women often report increased freedom and power as a consequence of their importance as the principal wage earner. While men have developed a greater readiness to accept their changed wage-earning status, there are also considerable tensions associated with males who fail to pitch in...