Rural communities legacy change 5th edition ebook pdf

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Contents

vii

Bonding and Bridging Social Capital: Homogeneity or Inclusion?, 165 Entrepreneurial Social Infrastructure, 171 Chapter Summary, 177 Key Terms, 178 Discussion Questions, 179 Web Resources, 180 References, 181

6

Political Capital

183

Political Capital, 184 Power and Economic Interests, 196 Power Structure and Community Change, 206 Understanding Power Structure and Increasing the Political Capital of Excluded Groups, 208 Who Gains?, 210 Chapter Summary, 211 Key Terms, 212 Discussion Questions, 213 Web Resources, 213 References, 214

7

Financial Capital

217

The Concept of Financial Capital, 219 Accounting and Accountability, 222 Forms of Financial Capital, 225 Financial Capital and Community Needs, 227 Sources of Capital, 231 The Changing Rules of Financial Capital and Increasing Inequality, 239 Business Financial Capital and Community, 244 Chapter Summary, 252 Key Terms, 253 Discussion Questions, 255 Web Resources, 256 References, 257

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Built Capital Defining Built Capital, 260 Public versus Private Provision of Built Capital, 266

259

Contents

viii Community Choices, 270 Federal, State, and Local Roles: Making Linkages, 283 Motivation to Act, 292 Chapter Summary, 292 Key Terms, 293 Discussion Questions, 294 Web Resources, 294 References, 295 PA R T T H R E E

COMMUNITY CAPITALS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN A CHANGING WORLD 297

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The Global Economy

301

Altering Globalization: The Growing Importance of Financial Capital, 308 Rural Linkages to a World Economy, 320 Opportunities and Risks: Rural Areas in the Global Economy, 334 Chapter Summary, 340 Key Terms, 341 Discussion Questions, 343 Web Resources, 343 References, 344

10 Consumption in Rural America

347

Consumption and American Exceptionalism, 349 Consumption and Debt, 362 Consumption and Consumerism in Rural Areas, 364 Impacts of Increased Consumption, 379 Chapter Summary, 394 Key Terms, 396 Discussion Questions, 397 Web Resources, 398 References, 399

11 Governance What Is Governance?, 403 Organization and Functions of Local Governments, 405 Challenges Face by Local Governments, 409

401

Contents

ix

Providing Public Services: An Example of Collaboration, 417 Sustained Citizen Engagement, 419 Leveraging Regional Resources, 421 Chapter Summary, 423 Key Terms, 424 Discussion Questions, 425 Web Resources, 425 References, 426

12 Generating Community Change

427

Community and Development, 433 Models of Community Development, 434 Factors in Effective Change, 454 Approaches to Economic Development, 458 Chapter Summary, 462 Key Terms, 463 Discussion Questions, 464 Web Resources, 464 References, 466

Index

469

List of Illustrations

Tables Table 3.1 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 8.1 Table 8.2

Table 8.3

Table 10.1 Table 10.2 Table 10.3

Summary of differences in childrearing approaches 89 Achievement of schools attended by race/ethnicity, elementary reading score percentiles 144 Achievement of schools by race/ethnicity and degree of poverty of school location 145 Types of goods and services 265 Summary of estimated gap between current spending and investment needs for water and wastewater infrastructure 272 Ranking of states for roads in poor conditions, deficient bridges, and fatalities per one hundred thousand miles traveled 286 Change in median household income by rural-urban residence, 2007–2013 357 Consumer credit outstanding, share by type, and interest rates, September 2014 363 Rural-urban differences in spending on consumer goods and services, 2013 366

Figures Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 2.1

Urban and rural distribution 9 Community capitals framework 17 Distribution and severity of drought as of September 2013 45 xi

List of Illustrations

xii Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3

Figure 2.4

Figure 2.5 Figure 3.1 Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3 Figure 4.4 Figure 4.5 Figure 4.6 Figure 4.7 Figure 5.1 Figure 5.2 Figure 6.1 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4

Figure 7.5 Figure 7.6 Figure 7.7

Groundwater depletion in the United States 49 Atmospheric CO2 measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in parts per million, 1958–2014, monthly and annual averages 59 Primary energy overview: total US energy production, consumption, and imports in quadrillions of British thermal units, 1950–2013 63 US primary energy use by type of fuel (quadrillion BTUs), 1980–2012 64 US religious groups 76 Nonmetro population change and components of change, 1976–2013 111 Recession birth rates declines for young women but remains stable for older women, 2007 to 2013 112 Real median earnings and women’s-to-men’s earnings ratio, 1960–2011 119 Real median household income by race and Hispanic origin, 1967–2013 121 Nonmetro and metro quarterly employment indices, 2007 through 2013 125 Child poverty by residence, 1978–2012 128 Average freshman graduation 143 County-level social capital levels, 2005 161 Social capital typology 167 Pyramid of social control 186 Quarterly homeownership rates and seasonally adjusted rates, 1995–2014 220 Rural and small town household by age and mortgage status, 2010 221 Number of commercial banks in the United States, 1998–2014 224 Share of US gross domestic income to persons represented by compensation to wage and salaried employees 239 Corporate profits after tax, 1965–2014 (not adjusted for inflation) 240 Share of national income going to the richest 1 percent, selected countries 241 Earned income tax credit for households with one child, 2014 250

List of Illustrations Figure 8.1a Figure 8.1b Figure 9.1a Figure 9.1b Figure 9.2 Figure 9.3 Figure 10.1 Figure 10.2 Figure 10.3

Figure 10.4 Figure 10.5 Figure 10.6

Figure 10.7

Figure 11.1 Figure 11.2 Figure 11.3 Figure 11.4 Figure 11.5 Figure 12.1

xiii

Trends in municipal solid waste generation, 1960–2010 279 Trends in municipal solid waste recycling, 1960–2010 279 Manufacturing employees 306 Manufacturing production 306 Households and nonprofit organizations, consumer credit, liability level 317 Unemployment rate (seasonally adjusted) 324 Top marginal tax rate and income inequality, 1925–2010 354 Growth in productivity and in real compensation 355 Real average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, private sector, 1964–2014 356 Union membership as a percentage of employment, 1930–2003 358 Civilian labor force participation rate, women and men, age sixteen-plus, 1948–2014 359 Percent of households ages twenty-five to sixty-four earning within 50 percent above or below the median income, 1979–2012 361 Share of degrees conferred on US residents that are female by all degree-granting institutions, by level of degree and race/ethnicity, 2009–2010 academic year 381 Volunteer rate, 2002–2013 405 Federal grants to state and local governments 409 State and local consumption expenditures and gross investment 410 Local government property tax revenue, 2007–2012 (billions of dollars) 412 Number of local, state, and federal government employees, 1980–2014 413 Upward spiraling of capital assets 454

Boxes Box 1.1 Box 2.1 Box 2.2

Definitions of Rural 11 Working Together to Combat Sprawl 41 Water and Urban-Rural Connections? 46

xiv Box 2.3 Box 2.4 Box 6.1 Box 7.1 Box 8.1 Box 8.2 Box 8.3 Box 8.4 Box 8.5 Box 9.1 Box 10.1

List of Illustrations Rural-Urban Collaborations for Safe Drinking Water: New York City and the Catskills 51 From Natural Capital to Financial and Human Capital: The Rosebud Sioux Wind Energy Project 61 Whistle-Blowers and Political Capital 188 Workers as Part-Owners 237 Boomtowns and Built Capital 262 What Exactly Is Wastewater? Why Treat It? 273 Water Infrastructure and Public Health 274 The Hidden Costs of the Landfill on Dunlap Road 276 Public Private Partnerships of US and Canadian Highways 288 A Walnut Grove Welcome 328 The Walmarting of Rural America: Who Wins and Who Loses? 372

Preface

Many changes have occurred since the first edition of Rural Communities: Legacy and Change. Yet the basic tools of social science that we included in that edition still give us insights and paths for action for communities around the world. We focus on communities in the United States but build on research of scholars across the globe.

The first edition of Rural Communities: Legacy and Change was written to accompany a video series by the same name for PBS. These fifty-five-minute videos are still available on the web or can be ordered through Annenberg Learner (www.learner.org/resources/series7.html). For each chapter we now have a list of web links to useful videos and other audiovisuals, including the relevant ones from this series. We have sought audiovisual materials on these same communities so instructors and students can follow changes that have occurred since the video series was published in 1992.

The Community Capitals Framework serves as an organizational frame for understanding the diversity and changes in rural communities. As we have continued our research and work with community development and read the research and practice of colleagues in the context of a rapidly changing social, economic, and climate context, we have incorporated these insights into each chapter, backed up by available data. Unfortunately data that is disaggregated by rural and urban has drastically decreased since 1992, as induced austerity has cut into government data-collection systems and, thus, citizens’ ability to monitor the effects of change.

In this edition we have added emphasis on rural health care, financialization of the economy, increasing tensions over international immigration, impacts of the implementation of neoliberal policies, climate change impacts and adaptations, and income and wealth inequality that has become increasingly worse since the Great Recession.

Our goal is to engage readers in the dynamic process of community change in order to enhance local ecosystem health, economic security, and social inclusion utilizing the best of diverse legacies in responding to global forces. xv

PA R T O N E

INTRODUCTION

I

n this section we present an overview of the diversity of rural communities and the community capitals that contribute to their degree of environmental health, social inclusion, and economic security. How is rural defined? What is the variation in ruralness across the United States? Watch the first episode, Who Cares? From the “Rural Communities: Legacy and Change” video instructional series (www.learner.org/resources/series7.html) to get an introduction to the book and the some of the places discussed in the text. It addresses why rural America is important to us as a nation, what steps should be taken to respond to rural communities in crisis, and what the future holds for these rural areas. In it, rural people show how the provision of water, recreation, minerals, and biodiversity come from rural areas and how the production of those shared resources contribute to values and cultures that support people and places. The differences among rural areas in the United States are shown, as are the different assets and issues that stem from those differences. Rural communities are sources of innovation in working together to resolve issues as they also increase their dependence on the rest of the world. Those who are rural by choice versus rural by heritage sometimes conflict, but they can come together through their commitment to place.

It will help in doing the assignments to choose a community with which you are familiar to analyze and to apply the concepts learned. If it is an urban community or neighborhood, it can help you understand what is unique about rural communities and what characteristics all communities of place share.

It is increasingly difficult to analyze rural-urban differences, as less and less data are available on smaller places (known as small-area data). Except for seven basic questions still asked on the census, the American Community Survey (ACS) has replaced the decennial Census of Population and Housing. The 2000 Census was the last that included the full battery of social, economic, and housing characteristics. The ACS has the advantage that it is conducted annually rather than once every ten years. As a survey rather than a complete census, it may in fact be more accurate than the census for larger jurisdictions. However, for smaller places and populations it is necessary to 3

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Part One: Introduction

combine data for three or five consecutive years for the data to be reliable. A National Research Council panel (Panel 2015) analyzed options for increasing the accuracy of small-area data gathered in the ACS, but as is pointed out by Chevat and Lowenthal (2015), there is need for funds to test out new approaches for more efficient and accurate data collection, but such efforts are complicated by a failure of Congress to appropriate adequate funds, except in the couple years leading up to the decennial census. As government shutdowns, budget sequestrations, and cuts in research budgets and research personnel increase, separate rural data analysis is easy to drop, as there are few constituencies organized to demand it. An important source of available rural data—and all in one place—is the Atlas of Rural and Small Town America (Economic Research Service 2011).

Rural areas are increasingly linked to urban ones through migration, information technology, and social media, with less obvious differences in important norms, values, and symbols. Viewing rural, suburban, and urban as a continuum with a high degree of interaction does not deny the importance of considering rural communities, but it does suggest that the lessons learned about how community capitals work in rural communities can give us great insights into other settings as well.

1 Community Capitals and the Rural Landscape

The Rural Landscape Christine Walden grew up in paradise. The daughter of schoolteachers in Mammoth Lakes, California, Christine spent her childhood surrounded by the majestic peaks, lush forests, and crystal-clear lakes of the Sierra Nevada range, nurtured by the closeness possible in a town of two thousand. In 1954 an all-weather road and a double chairlift opened, beckoning skiers to the north face of Mammoth Mountain. By 2013 the town’s population was over three times what it was in 1970, the year Christine’s parents first came to the community. Golf courses replaced horse pastures, as befits a major tourism destination. Multimillion dollar vacation homes adorn hillsides that once were covered with trees and native shrubs. Christine and her husband now work as teachers in the same school district for which her parents worked.

But Christine no longer lives in Mammoth Lakes. Land development and speculation have driven housing costs beyond what the salaries paid by the local school district can support. The median house or condo costs over half a million dollars, and the average rent is over $1,200 a month. So the family lives in Bishop and commutes forty miles each way to work. Paradise has grown too expensive!

Wade Skidmore grew up working in coal mines. Part of the fifth generation of Skidmores to live in McDowell County, West Virginia, Wade in his childhood was shaped by what was underground rather than what could be enjoyed on the slopes of the rugged Appalachian Mountains. He attended school in Welch, the county seat, only through the tenth grade. Working in the mines didn’t require much education and offered him a chance to work 5

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at his own pace. For a time the work was steady and the pay was good. But as the price per ton of coal dropped, Wade found that he had to work harder to make ends meet. Then coal-loading machines came along—machines that could do the work of fifty men. Then some veins started giving out. Wade’s children are now growing up in poverty: substandard housing, water pollution from mine runoff, raw sewage in the streams, poor schools, and high illiteracy rates. McDowell County, which lost approximately 20 percent of its population between 2000 and 2013, has unemployment that is nearly twice as high as in West Virginia as a whole. Wade Skidmore lives in a region and among people trapped in persistent poverty. To make things worse, the town is susceptible to floods, as extreme weather events have increased in the last twenty years. A recent flood seriously damaged the Skidmore home located on the bank of the Tug Fork River—the only flat land around.

Ray and Mildred Larson face a decision. They farm near Irwin, Iowa, on land that they and Mildred’s three siblings inherited, and they split earnings from the farm four ways. They are worried that they will not be able to pay off the new planter and combine (combination harvester) they contracted to buy when corn prices were high. When hog prices were low in the late 1990s, Mildred’s parents got out of hog raising, growing only corn and soybeans. The Larsons get their seed, fertilizers, and herbicides from the Farm Services Cooperative in nearby Harlan, Iowa, and bought their new equipment from Robinson Implement, Inc. in Irwin. With the increase in corn prices beginning in 2007, they shifted their land from their previous rotations that included small grains into corn. Land prices increased very rapidly, making it difficult to acquire more land. So they plowed up marginal land they had put into the Conservation Reserve Program in order to plant more corn.

Irwin is a farming community that was settled as the railroads pushed westward across the Great Plains during the nineteenth century. The descendants of the early settlers still own some of the homesteads, such as the Larson place. The population of Shelby County declined 10.5 percent between 2000 and 2012, although nonfarm employment increased and unemployment is low. Ray and Mildred both hold full-time jobs off the farm. They wonder whether they should rent out their land or sell their equipment and find a farm management company so someone else will farm it.

Ray and Mildred know that in either case, the new operators would probably not buy machinery and inputs locally. They are also considering renting land from retired farmers to achieve the economies of scale needed to pay for their new machinery, even though corn and soybean prices are low, and cut back their paid employment during planting and harvest season so they can cover all the land.

The Rural Landscape

7

Billie Jo Williams and her husband, Maurice Davis, are moving to Atlanta.

Raised in Eatonton, Georgia, sixty-five miles from Atlanta, they grew up enjoying the gentle hills and dense stands of loblolly pine in Putnam County.

Eatonton is home; both the Williams and Davis families go back to plantation days. But Billie can’t find a job. She just finished a degree in business administration at Fort Valley State College, and Putnam County is growing rapidly, its population increasing more than 14 percent between 2000 and 2013. But Eatonton’s population is decreasing, and other than in the apparel factory (which has now closed and moved overseas) or as domestic workers for the rich families who built retirement homes on the lake, there were few jobs for African American women in Eatonton when Billie Jo graduated high school. Unemployment rates are higher than for the state as a whole, and 31.4 percent of the population lives in poverty. Manufacturing, the major employers, are moving to other countries where people will work cheaper. Maurice settled into a factory job right out of high school but figures he can get something in Atlanta. The situation seems strange. In the twentieth century Eatonton did better than most communities in adapting to change, shifting from cotton to dairying to manufacturing and now to recreation/retirement economies. But in the twenty-first century most African Americans have a hard time finding jobs that pay a living wage.

Which is the real rural America—ski slopes of California, mines of West Virginia, farms in Iowa, or exurban resort and manufacturing communities in Georgia? Family farms and small farming communities dominate popular images of rural areas, in part because politicians, lobbyists, and the media cultivate those icons, supporting the myth that agricultural policy is rural policy. In fact, rural areas embrace ski slopes, mines, manufacturing, farms, retirement communities, Native American reservations, bedroom communities, and much, much more. In the twenty-first century, rural communities differ more from each other than they do, on average, from urban areas.

The diversity found among rural communities extends to the problems felt as each responds to the environmental, social, and economic change under way. Some rural and remote communities share the concerns of Irwin, wondering at what point their population will become too small to support a community. A few farming communities have grown as they take on the role of regional retail and service centers for surrounding small towns. The amenitybased community of Mammoth Lakes, California, faces rapid growth. Its citizens are grappling with how to protect both the environment and the small-town character they value. In Eatonton, Georgia, a long commute from

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several large urban centers, economic growth has been substantial with the expansion of the resort economy and nursing homes, but its majority black citizens have not shared equally in its success. Eatonton’s population is highly transient, and its poverty rate remains higher than that of the state of Georgia as a whole. Those living in mining-dependent McDowell County face poverty and high out-migration, despite the richness of the land surrounding them. Nearly one-third of the population falls below the poverty level, and median income is nearly $16,000 less than in the rest of West Virginia.

Despite the stereotype that life in the country is simpler, rural residents face many of the same issues and concerns urban residents do, plus those related to dispersion and distance. Indeed, rural and urban areas are linked. The garbage produced in New York City may find its way into landfills in West Virginia. Plastic products in Chicago are made from Iowa corn, grown with fertilizers that increase productivity but may endanger rural water supplies.

A housing boom in San Francisco creates jobs in the lumber industry in Oregon. However, the jobs last only as long as the forests. Air-quality concerns in Boston could shut down coal mines in Pennsylvania.

This book examines the diversity of rural America—its communities, the social issues they face in the twenty-first century, and the histories that explain those issues. It also addresses ways that rural communities have built on their history and their increasing connectedness to creatively address those issues.

Defining Rural Giving a place a particular characteristic, thus “naming” it, suggests how people and institutions act toward it. When governments establish labels for places, they are generally for administrative purposes, to determine which places are eligible for specific government programs. When scholars establish labels, it is generally for analytical purposes, but because governments collect data, scholars often fall back on government labels. Media and advertisers use place labels such as “rural” to evoke particular images. In a consumer society rural is often defined by what one shops for in a place. Box 1.1 shows various governmental definitions of rural. In the past, small size and isolation combined to produce relatively homogeneous rural cultures, economies based on natural resources, and a strong sense of local identity. But globalization, connectivity, and lifestyle changes with shifting income distributions have changed the character of rural communities; they are neither as isolated nor as homogeneous as they once were. Figure 1.1 shows dispersion of population across the United States.

9

Figure . Urban and rural distribution.

Source: Adapted from US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The National Survey of Children’s Health 2007. Rockville, Maryland: US Department of Health and Human Services, 2011. Data from WWAMI Rural Health Research Center, 2006 ZIP Version 2.0 Codes. http://mchb.hrsa.gov/nsch/07rural/introduction.html.

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Isolation Part of the rural image is isolation, a sense that rural people live out their entire lives in the towns in which they were born. This was never true for all rural people. Loggers, miners, farmers, and a host of others routinely moved to wherever they could find work or land. However, some rural people were isolated. In parts of McDowell County, mountain men and women lived in “hollows” in the hills, living on game and part-time work in cutting wood or construction and creating a rich culture of self-sufficiency. Canals, railroads, highways, and airways have altered much of that isolation. Improved road systems have also changed rural residents’ occupations and spending patterns.

Those living near urban areas often commute to work, living in one town and working in another. They buy many of their products in suburban malls. In regions where no metropolitan center exists, small towns, such as Harlan in Shelby County, have grown to become regional trade centers for towns like Irwin as people travel to the next-largest city to purchase products and obtain services.

Communication technologies have had an even greater impact on reducing isolation. Blogs and Twitter link rural residents with people who share their interests around the world. Rural residents now watch opera from New York, football games from San Francisco, the ballet from Houston, and congressional deliberations from Washington, DC, through satellite dishes. Rural people have become as literate, informed, and enriched as their urban counterparts. There is still a rural-urban connectivity divide, however: many residents on reservations in the Great Plains do not have phone service, much less broadband Internet connectivity, and wireless strategies based on satellites still present problems in steep mountain areas. The isolation that distance once imposed is much less than it once was, yet communities that are rural and remote and those that are persistently poor are much more isolated than rural residents in areas of urban sprawl and high rural amenities.

Origins and Change The Ioway Sioux were some of the original settlers along the rich Nishnabotna River bottoms in Shelby County. In Mono County the Northern and Owens Valley Paiute walked through what is now Mammoth Lakes as part of their sacred rituals to ensure success in their hunting and gathering. Shawnee and Delaware occasionally hunted in what is now McDowell County. The Creek occupied mid-Georgia, including Putnam County, prior to being forced west, first by the Cherokee, then the Europeans. The US government then forcibly

Defining Rural

BOX 1.1

11

Definitions of Rural

County Designations

Metropolitan counties: Over 50,000 people within a county, mostly in an urban core Nonmetropolitan counties: Those with fewer than 50,000 and/ or no urban core Micropolitan: 10,000 to 49,999 with an urban core Place Designations

Rural (US Census): Open countryside or towns of fewer than 2,500 outside urbanized areas Rural (Statistics Canada): Nonurban; not continuously built-up areas with population of 1,000 or more and a density of fewer than 400 people per square kilometer Eligibility Designations

(Definitions fixed by statute made by Congress or regulation made by the administration.)

Sample population size cutoffs for qualifying for rural programs: • rural housing—20,000 or fewer • telecomm loans—5,000 or fewer • water and waste grants—10,000 or fewer • intermediary relending loans—25,000 or fewer • rural business programs—50,000 or fewer outside a metropolitan area • electric, prior to 2000, 1,500 or less in 1993; as of 2000, 2,500 or fewer SOURCES

Adapted from Andrew F. Coburn, a. Clinton MacKinney, Timothy D. McBride, Keith J. Mueller, Rebecca T. Slifkin, and Mary K. Wakefield. 2007. “Choosing Rural Definitions.” Issue Brief #2, March. Rural Policy Research Institute Health Panel. Also online; available: www.cdktest.com/rupri/Forms/RuralDefinitionsBrief.pdf.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Economic Research Service. “Measuring Rurality: What is Rural?” Briefing Rooms, updated March 22, 2007. Online; available: http://www.ers.usda .gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-classifications/what-is-rural.aspx.

removed the Cherokee to Oklahoma, where many lost their lives on the Trail of Tears (Nunna daul Tsuny).

Commercial, then industrial interests brought Europeans, Africans, and Asians to rural America. National interests encouraged Europeans to settle land. Trap-

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pers of fur for British, Spanish, French, and then American trading companies pushed west across Canada and the United States. Cotton and tobacco, both indigenous to the Americas, were grown in the southern United States, where large land grants created a landowning class, and slavery enabled them to plant labor-intensive, land-depleting crops. Both cotton and tobacco were export crops from the South, and both depended on cheap labor and abundant land.

Railroads were key in settling many of the rural and remote communities in the western United States in the 1860s. Government land grants were used as incentives to build the railroads, and US railroads advertised widely in Europe and the eastern United States to sell land to people who wanted to improve their lot in life. Growing cities such as New York, Chicago, and Boston needed cheap food to feed the workers that fueled their industrial revolutions, and grain grown by the new settlers filled trains. The Chicago-Rock Island & Pacific Railway laid out townships, and entrepreneurs from Denmark and Germany recruited their compatriots to buy land from them and recreate their old cultures in a new land. For example, in 1872 Emil Flushe began selling railroad land west of Irwin, recruiting Catholics from Germany to come to a town he named Westphalia, just as he already had named Westphalia, Minnesota, and would name Westphalia, Kansas, as he followed the railroad west.

African Americans were a critical part of the land-extensive, laborintensive agricultural system of the South. As lands wore out, plantation owners moved west, to the edge of the Oconee Forest in Putnam County, taking their slaves with them. Later, freed slaves demanded land as reparation for their forced labor, and some were given forty acres of the cottoned out land. After Reconstruction many ex-slave owners reclaimed their land.

Other ex-slaves bought land collectively, where they raised a variety of crops and animals. Some lost their land under a heavy debt load, and others sold their land and became sharecroppers. By 2013 there were 13 black or African American farm operators (7 percent) enumerated among the 165 farms in the county, even though African Americans make up over 30 percent of Putnam County’s population. Prior to the Civil War African Americans escaping slavery in Missouri and Arkansas crossed through Shelby County on their way to freedom. African Americans who had worked in the coal mines in Birmingham, Alabama, moved to McDowell County to open the mines there, even though their children would attend segregated schools until the late 1950s. Asians, particularly Chinese, who helped build the western half of the intercontinental railroad participated in the mining boom in Mammoth Lakes in the 1880s and 1890s. When they were forbidden to engage in mining, they provided essential services to the miners, such as cooking and washing.

Defining Rural

13

In Mono County, where Mammoth Lakes is located, the Hispanic population has increased from very few in 1970 to nearly 28 percent of the population in 2013, where they hold many service jobs in the tourist industry and construction jobs as the housing density increases and new resort properties are built. Living extremely frugally, they manage to live near where they work.

Reservations in Inyo County are the home of descendants of the original Paiute residents.

Spanish and Native American cultures occupied much of the West long before US expansion. The abolition of slavery left African American families scattered throughout a rural South extending from the Atlantic Ocean to central Texas and as far north as southern Kansas and Missouri. From 1910 onward migrant workers from Mexico followed the harvest as far north as Maine in the east and Washington State in the west, entering new destinations in the Midwest and the South at the turn of the twenty-first century.

As a result of the war in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, including very distinct cultures such as the Hmong, moved to rural areas and excelled in both fishing in the Gulf of Mexico and raising vegetables around large cities. Like the Mexicans, they also filled jobs in rural areas that US-born rural residents were unwilling to do in animal production, such as dairies and meat packing plants. But as they saved money by having many workers per household and through low consumption, they moved to urban or coastal areas.

As other conflicts have created and continue to create refugees, migrants from Sudan, Myanmar (Burma), Bosnia, and Afghanistan have settled in rural communities as well as large cities. This changes the religious as well as racial composition of areas that were once extremely homogeneous.

When counties are ranked by the extent of ethnic diversity, rural counties are among both the most and least diverse. Fourteen of the thirty most diverse counties are rural. Six of these lie in rural New Mexico, where the San Juan, Sangre de Cristo, Jemez, and Nacimiento mountain ranges are home to Latino, Native American, and European cultures. The other rural counties among the most ethnically diverse are in Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas.

In contrast, half of the fifty counties that are the least diverse are located in just two states, Nebraska and Iowa. Gosper County, in the southern tier of Nebraska, reported only one resident who was not white in the 1990 census. By 2010 there were fourteen African Americans and eighteen Native Americans living there.

Shelby County, where Irwin is located, was 98 percent white in 2010. Parts of the rural South and Southwest are also homogeneous, especially on reservation lands or in counties where either black or white populations are the majority.

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Defining Community The definitions and descriptions of rural areas thus far have focused on counties. Yet people typically act through communities. Demographers can count communities, but sociologists have a much harder time defining just what a community is. This section examines the concept of community, the definition used in this book, and the extent to which this study of rural communities has relevance to urban communities.

The Concept of Community Sociologists use the term community in several ways, all of which focus on groups of people. In one use of the term community refers to a place, a location in which a group of people interact with one another. A second use of the term looks at the social system itself, the organization or set of organizations through which a group of people meet their needs. Finally, sociologists use the word to describe a shared sense of identity held by a group of people.

The concept of community is often based on a shared sense of place. This sense of place involves relationships with the people, cultures, and environments, both natural and built, associated with a particular area. For many rural residents that environment may be far beyond political boundaries of town or even county. Stereotypes of rural communities conjure up images of isolated, relatively self-sufficient, and sometimes backward or unsophisticated cultures.

The stereotype may never have been entirely accurate, but there was a time when rural residents turned to their communities for nearly everything. People lived, worked, worshipped, shopped, banked, sent their children to school, and socialized all in the same place. When the community’s economy rested on a single resource, such as mining or farming, people even had a shared sense of what it took to make a living. In mining communities men worked in the mines and women managed the family, both demanding tasks.

These three elements of community—location, social system, and common identity—are increasingly separate. In the past a community offered both a place that housed a set of social institutions (schools, churches, governments, businesses) through which people’s needs could be met and a shared sense of identity created. However, improved transportation has made people more mobile, and telecommunications now put people in touch with a wider circle of acquaintances. For some, a sense of community comes from those who do similar things or share common values, not from those living in the same town. Thus this book considers both communities of place and communities of interest. An example of the latter is a community of high-energy

Defining Community

15

physicists. These people share a common identity—they interact through meetings, journals, e-mail, social media, and texting or by telephone—yet they are dispersed throughout the world. Increasingly, social media provide new communities and a source of identity.

The rural landscape may not have changed much over the past century, but technological changes have affected rural communities. Cars enable people to live in one town, work in another, and shop in yet a third. Better roads have allowed schools to consolidate, which has led to social institutions that may be less attached to their communities, both physically and socially. As rural communities broaden their economic activity, people’s work roles become very different from one another and much less visible. Thus one is known less by what one does than by what one consumes.

This book addresses primarily communities of place, although they are crosscut by communities of interest. A community may or may not provide the social system through which its members’ needs are met. It may or may not provide a sense of identity for its members. What a community does provide is what some sociologists now call locality, a geographically defined place where people interact. The ways that people interact shape the structures and institutions of the locality. Those structures and institutions in turn shape the activities of the people who interact (Brown and Schafft 2011).

Communities and Resources Every community, however rural, isolated, or poor, has resources within it.

When those resources—or assets—are invested to create new resources, they become capital. Over the course of many years of working with rural and urban communities, the authors have found that dividing invested resources into seven “capitals” is extremely helpful in fostering holistic analysis and action. The capitals individually and together contribute to or detract from sustainable communities. Sustainable communities strive to bring economic security to all, foster a healthy ecosystem, and offer social inclusion to all residents. When one capital is emphasized over all others, the other resources are decapitalized, and the economy, environment, or social equity is thus compromised. Although some scholars study these capitals as characteristics of individuals, when working with a group seeking to improve their collective well-being, it is useful to see them as community or group properties.

Natural capital includes the air, water, soil, wildlife, vegetation, landscape, and weather that surround us and provide both possibilities for and limits to community sustainability. Natural capital influences and is influenced by human activities. It forms the basis of all the other capitals.

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1 – Community Capitals and the Rural Landscape

Cultural capital determines a group’s worldview, how it sees the world, how the seen is connected to the unseen, what is taken for granted, what is valued, and what things a group thinks are possible to change. Cultural hegemony allows one social group to impose its worldview, symbols, and reward system on other groups.

Human capital is the capabilities and potential of individuals determined by the intersection of nature (genetics) and nurture (social interactions and the environment). Human capital includes education, skills, health, and self-esteem.

Social capital involves mutual trust, reciprocity, groups, collective identity, working together, and a sense of a shared future. Bonding social capital consists of interactions within a specific group or community, and bridging social capital consists of interactions among social groups.

Political capital is the ability of a community or group to turn its norms and values into standards, which are then translated into rules and regulations that determine the distribution of resources. Political capital is also mobilized to ensure that those rules, regulations, and resource distributions are (or are not) enforced.

Financial capital includes savings, income generation, fees, loans and credit, gifts and philanthropy, taxes, and tax exemptions. Financial capital is much more mobile than the other capitals and tends to be privileged because it is easy to measure. Community financial capital can be assessed by changes in poverty, firm efficiency, diversity of firms, and local people’s increased assets.

Built capital is human-constructed infrastructure. Although new built capital is often equated with community development, it is effective only when it contributes to other community capitals. Built capital can cause deterioration of the other capitals when it is deployed without regard for its consequences. Built capital includes information technologies, chemicals, bridges, railroads, oil pipelines, factories, day care centers, and wind farms.

Figure 1.2 shows all the capitals intersecting with each other, with the characteristics of sustainable communities in the middle. A healthy ecosystem means that all have clean water and clean air and access to the outdoors.

Economic security means that equity is considered as well as growth, which often increases inequality. Social inclusion means that each individual has a voice and a safe environment in which to share it. Making sure that advocates for each capital are included in community development efforts is critical, as achieving sustainability requires balance among the capitals.

Legacy is usually thought of as the money or property left to someone through a will, typically what parents leave their children. But parents leave more than just material goods to their children; they also pass on an under-

Defining Community

17

Figure . Community capitals framework.

Source: C. B. Flora, “Social Aspects of Small Water Systems,” Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education 128 (2004): 6–12.

standing of society and their role in it, speech, dress, and ways of being— cultural capital—that in turn affects the choices their children make. Legacy is what families, communities, groups, and nations pass on to the next generation in terms of all the capitals.

Community in an Urban World Early research on cities suggested an urban way of life that stood in stark contrast to that of rural communities. Ferdinand Tönnies ([1887] 1963), a German sociologist who wrote during the latter part of the nineteenth century, introduced the ideal types of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to distinguish between the two environments. Gemeinschaft referred to a society based on personal relationships and face-to-face interactions in which social relations are valued as an end or goal. Gesellschaft described a society based on impersonal, formal, and contractual relationships for which social relations are simply a means to an end. These two terms characterized a rural-urban dichotomy in which the small, isolated community was at one end and the large city at the other.

Such a model may have been appropriate during the early part of the twentieth century, but it certainly seems less relevant today. Just as transportation has altered the character of rural areas, continued growth has led to cities

18

1 – Community Capitals and the Rural Landscape

too large to comprehend. Modern sociologists argue that those who live in a city arrange and rearrange themselves in a variety of smaller communities, experiencing the city through a series of social groups. By the same token, improved transportation and information technology communication (ITC) enables rural residents to participate in a wider number of social groups, lessening their dependence on the single community and reducing isolation.

ITC encourages non-kin ties even while it keeps relatives connected across continents.

Our definition of community, then, applies to both rural and urban areas.

Communities may have political (counties, towns), environmental (watersheds), social, and cultural boundaries. Communities may be recognized politically and thus endowed with local governments and the power to tax their members. They may also be informal groupings of households, neighborhoods within the larger city. Issues can cause neighborhoods to band together to demand better services from the city, just as they inspire rural communities to take control over their economic future. Although the focus in this book is on rural communities, many of the topics are relevant to communities in urban settings as well.

Rural Communities and Change Rural communities have never been insulated from the social and economic change under way in the broader society. The interstate highway system, started by President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s as a national security measure, had a profound effect on rural communities; for example, people can live in Eatonton, Georgia, and work in Macon. Telecommunications have broken the isolation experienced in remote regions: Irwin has several e-based businesses. Increased competition with foreign products led US manufacturers to abandon urban labor markets for rural ones during the 1970s, only to abandon those for even cheaper labor overseas a decade later. With the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the potential Transpacific Trade Partnership (TTP), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), the twenty-first century is seeing even greater movement of low-wage manufacturing to less-developed countries with fewer environmental and labor protections, as occurred when the Sara Lee/Hanes apparel plant closed in Eatonton, Georgia. Thus there is nothing to easily replace mining in McDowell County. Increasing affluence has led to more decisions about where to live being based on lifestyle than on job availability alone. As the affluent choose their lifestyle, the less affluent move in behind them to support that lifestyle, as in the case of Mammoth Lakes.

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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller, without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who, as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.

FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER” (Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley, some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing, but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature, from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,

or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.

Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?

The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both “off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the craving for tobacco in the tropics.

Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to

an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and lemon-juice.

Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment, that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.

Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.

My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari; consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had

bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding, consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us, seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten years to come.

Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch: Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9 × 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.

How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his mutilated finger-tips.

Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.

The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface, however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day such a fire is a grand sight.

Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.

Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush, and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the

western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.

It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process

may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe— not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more, between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them— cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes, perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.

This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the secondary bush.

After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact, receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains, where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were accustomed to rule.

But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and

lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible, impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and come back to his starting point.

The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.

According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast, to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however, correct.

The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau, instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks and springs of the low country.

“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.

He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a stillborn child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which

was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In course of time, the couple had many more children, and called themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams, for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest wateringplace; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”

The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?

Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short, woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood, ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia, Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably) would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded

by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.

The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.

Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.

This knowledge is crystallized in the ancestral warning against settling in the valleys and near the great waters, the dwelling-places of disease and death. At the same time, for security against the hostile Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted that every settlement must be not less than a certain distance from the southern edge of the plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the present day. It is not such a bad one, and certainly they are both safer and more comfortable than the Makua, the recent intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain, especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the

most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.

The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.

It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of “Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have

two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise, come in for a blowing-up.

The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala, shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.

Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde bush:—