Dividing Paradise: Rural Inequality and the Diminishing American Dream

by Jennifer Sherman

Winner, Rural Sociological Society Frederick H. Buttel Outstanding Scholarly Achievement Award for a Book, 2023
 
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2022

How rural areas have become uneven proving grounds for the American Dream.

Late-stage capitalism is trying to remake rural America in its own image, and the resistance is telling. Small-town economies that have traditionally been based on logging, mining, farming, and ranching now increasingly rely on tourism, second-home ownership, and retirement migration. In Dividing Paradise, Jennifer Sherman tells the story of Paradise Valley, Washington, a rural community where amenity-driven economic growth has resulted in a new social landscape of inequality and privilege, with deep fault lines between old-timers and newcomers. In this complicated cultural reality, "class blindness" allows privileged newcomers to ignore or justify their impact on these towns, papering over the sentiments of anger, loss, and disempowerment of longtime locals.
 
Based on in-depth interviews with individuals on both sides of the divide, this book explores the causes and repercussions of the stark inequity that has become commonplace across the United States. It exposes the mechanisms by which inequality flourishes and by which Americans have come to believe that disparity is acceptable and deserved. Sherman, who is known for her work on rural America, presents here a powerful case study of the ever-growing tensions between those who can and those who cannot achieve their visions of the American dream.

Genres: Nonfiction

284 pages, Hardcover

Published April 13, 2021

Reviews

[Sara Reese · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an in-migrant of the real “Paradise Valley” that Sherman is writing about, I found this book extremely helpful in gaining a fuller understanding of the issues at play in our community. I think anyone that lives here has something to learn from Sherman’s research.

[David Sogge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Using good old-fashioned ground-level research methods, the author puts a small community, Paradise (its real name) under a sociological lens. With it she invites the reader to observe increasing precariousness, isolation, wounded pride and resentment among poor and powerless residents. Their conditions contrast sharply with contentment verging on self-satisfaction among the well-to-do. Members of this latter stratum, as the author demonstrates in some detail, are largely blind to class. Few of them seem to grasp how social divisions reproduce themselves and harden into a polarised society. Such processes, widespread and gaining ground in America (referenced in a substantial bibliography) help cripple public politics and advance the Brazilianization of the USA. Today, as a microcosm of American society, Paradise is no paradise for the underclass. Tomorrow it may be not all that heavenly for other classes as well.

This is a good book. But a lack of tight editing left it with real blemishes, as other Goodreads reviewers have pointed out. That's a matter the publisher, University of California Press, could have dealt with, but failed to do so.

[nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an excellent look the complex and underlying issues in rural communities that continue to exasperate the rural / urban divide and deeper red/blue divide in this country. It was interesting to read the thoughts of people in a community that has seen significant gentrification and change over the last decades from both the old timer and new comer perspectives. It definitely provided me a deeper understanding of some of the issues, challenges and potential solutions to bridging these divides.

The only criticism I have is that, at times, it felt like the writing could be more succinct. Perhaps it was to provide more emphasis on certain aspects of the challenges--or because it was reiterating something that a person shared, but it tended to repeat the same points which made me feel a little impatient at times.

[Judith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Redundant, biased, should have been a magazine article

This must have been written as an academic thesis or dissertation, judging by the repetitive use of footnotes and terms such as class blindness, neoliberal, Social Security-reliant, moral capital, and the most cringe-inducing construction: how they perform community. Just painful.

It is the most redundant book I've ever read or tried to read, and I read a lot. After 3 chapters, I couldn't bear it anymore and had to start skimming. It should have been a long magazine article at most.

I was interested in it because the history and current situation in town where I live, Port Angeles, Washington, USA, is much like the Washington town described in this book: former logging town now dependent on tourism. Unlike the author's description of what motivates people to move to Paradise Valley, I moved here because I could no longer afford where I lived before, not because I bought a second home or wanted to live an "idyllic" rural "lifestyle," as the author seems to think are the reasons people move to such places.

Nonetheless, much of what she says could be said of our town and inhabitants, too. I had hoped to suggest it to the local library for a book discussion group next year, but the bias that continually seeps through would set a divisive tone for a discussion. Besides, there wasn't a thing in it that anyone who lives in a similar community doesn't already know, regardless of how long they've lived there or level of education, occupation, or income.

[Sonya]

Get this woman an editor! She makes the same points again and again and makes broad, sometimes damning conclusions, based on a few interactions. Her understanding of the nonprofit sector — how it works, is funded and delivers community mission is immature and at times pointless. This book could have been 1/3 the size and edited in a way to spark good conversations about the true nature of community.

[Bergen Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about a place whose natural endowments are completely dissimilar to nearly every other rural community in the U.S., so there is little extrapolation to do. Namely, very few towns are within an hour or two from Mt. Rainier and grappling with Seattle-folk migrating into town. Most towns are having the exact opposite problem, where people leave town to get a college degree and don't come back, so the town's labor pool becomes continuously less skilled and the culture less vibrant. Paradise Valley is dealing with the problem of people moving in with their city money, and while they may be ignorant of the local culture, they prop up the local businesses and donate the most to non-profits. Besides, it's hard to imagine how rich the culture is in a town where 38% of the town's old-timers self-report an alcohol problem.

The lessons from this book are the following:

People whose labor is more valuable (more skilled or educated or experienced) earn more money and have better job security.

A community which doesn't export any goods and otherwise doesn't encourage commerce from outside doesn't produce much wealth.

When a place has people of different worldviews come in, they may clash with the pre-existing one.

Sherman is writing about a very relevant and important topic (wealth and inequality and their role in a town's character and the locals' psyche), and yet she offers almost no insight.

[Max Booher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a great deal from this book about one of my favorite places in Washington state: The Methow Valley (cloaked by the author in the pseudonym of “Paradise Valley”). I’ve been visiting and recreating in this valley since I was a small child in the 70’s, and I’ve occasionally wondered what the local residents thought about the “coasties” from Seattle and elsewhere who descend upon the region for outdoor activities like Nordic skiing and trail running and rock climbing. I gathered that they pretty much despise all of us, even though a huge amount of their economy relies on “amenity tourism”. What I hadn’t considered was the other direction: that newcomers (new residents who have relocated there in recent years) share a similar disdain for their less well-off old-timer neighbors in the valley, even though the newcomers tended to contribute (at a distance, mostly) philanthropically to the region.

[Michelle Schmidtke]

The author seems to be cherry picking facts to support her premise that newcomers, no matter how well-intentioned, philanthropic and willing to engage in countless volunteer hours of service to their community are still class-blind. (sort of like original sin!) She is very repetitive in this respect, so I would accuse her of confirmation bias. I also think she is ignoring how, traditionally, newcomers are shut out by oldtimers in many rural areas throughout the West with disdainful "you don't know anything, you're not from here," until a critical threshold is reached where newcomers increase to a level where their impact cannot be ignored.

[Grace Peven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and honest deep dive into the growing economic and social divide in rural America. One of the big takeaways from me is how folks moving into rural America romanticize rural life without acknowledging the realistic difficulty and hardship of what rural life is actually like. But through this romanticization and their economic means they manifest their ideal rural life while at the same time pushing out people who don’t have the same privileges.