[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Given that manyof those white newcomers not out-busing their children are retirees orpeople who no longer have school-age children, it seems clear that thesenew residents will have no affect on school population proportions.Where the newcomers will, I suspect, have a more pronounced effect ison local politics.To the newcomers, most of whom have migrated fromlarger, ostensibly more sophisticated places, local politics probably appearsa vestige from some bygone era, definitely small town and small time.Onthat front, change is coming.Newcomers, better educated and more usedto arguing openly for what they want, have increasingly attended countyboard of supervisor meetings and argued for increasing services for theirpart of the county.To date, none have held elected office, but this is sureto happen, probably in the near future.Politics, however, is one place wherethe old norms will be slow to change (since the board of supervisors hasalways been in the hands of the older, well-entrenched white power struc-ture).Its meetings are definitely a place where you can openly hear peoplesay, usually in very measured tones, The way we do things here or, moreoften, and usually in response to someone s comparatively impassionedpleading, That s not how we do things here. I have tried my best to be vague about descriptions of the county and itsresidents.Virtually all rural counties in the coastal Lowcountry look muchlike Colonial County.So, too, are there many Yvonnes, small, crossroadscommunities that are historically and presently majority black.So, too, are Appendix 197many of these Lowcountry counties experiencing massive new develop-ments that are altering forever local people s sense of place. In all cases,these developments are characterized by the same economic and demo-graphic dynamics found in Colonial County and, as far as I have been ableto tell (by driving the Lowcountry multiple times, top to bottom), planta-tion or country club are the operative terms to describe these places.So,too, have these Lowcountry counties (most of which were majority blackfor about one hundred fifty years) experienced some return migration ofAfrican Americans who migrated out and have now come home. It remainsto be seen how these comparatively better educated, more affluent, pension-supported, disproportionately single and female returnees will be embracedby kith and kin, to say nothing of white residents, old or new.For AC s family and the small community of Yvonne, the years since myinitial visit have, as one would expect, brought further changes.Some ofAC s siblings have died.Grace moved away for awhile, only to return fairlyrecently, with a new husband.She no longer lives in the big old whitehouse ; instead, she bought a lot and a trailer closer to her older sister.Herchildren continue to live in her old house.Both Alice and Rhonda work out-side the county.Their brothers did start their own construction company,but Samuel is supplementing his income by also working at a nearby air-port.Yvonne today looks very much as it did when I first went there.Evenwith new development bringing so much money into the county, it is hardto imagine that Yvonne will change dramatically any time soon.Emergent Theory and TheoristIt is well to remember that, like all social researchers, I could notdivorce who I am from what I did.I am an older white man, a sociologistwho had no ties to Colonial County.I came to the place in search of infor-mation on processes related to migration.Along the way, serendipitously, Ipursued not only my main focus but secondary issues that seemed to meritattention.I was always careful to let people speak openly, with little responsefrom me that would bias what they might say, but, to be sure, my bias was reflected in what I chose to ask about and, no doubt, in how I asked it.Others researchers younger, of color, of a different gender, from a differ-ent social class, from a different part of the country or from abroad, fromdifferent disciplines would, almost assuredly, pursue totally different 198 Appendixstories than the ones I have reported here.Regardless, they would all, Ibelieve, do well to be guided by something Charles Colson has said: Menare born with two eyes, but with a single tongue in order that they shouldsee twice as much as they say. There is a lot to see in the social world.What you report and how youdo it are your choices to make.I made mine.I was never in the lion smouth as AC usually used the term, but to some degree we all often makechoices in which we try to minimize risk, in which we struggle to avoid thelion s mouth.My main risk here has lain in trying to report on a place anda family that I came to value greatly.I encourage others, especially sociolo-gists, to undertake similar ventures or, more accurately, adventures.Notonly did I find myself challenged methodologically, but I also found myselfpondering the utility of various sociological concepts.There are so manythat I chose to use only a few, most of which are well known and requirelittle explanation.For me, Berger and Luckmann s classic book on the social construc-tion of reality is one way of conceptualizing the individual-structure rela-tionship.I was as Berger and Luckmann might say in it and of it. Itried to be mindful of this as I did the fieldwork and also as I reported whatI found.I have provided my own reconstruction of the ongoing social con-structions I observed
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]