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Mobile Home Park on the Prairie: A New Rural Community Form *
Author(s) -
MacTavish Katherine,
Salamon Sonya
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
rural sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.083
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1549-0831
pISSN - 0036-0112
DOI - 10.1111/j.1549-0831.2001.tb00081.x
Subject(s) - residence , sense of community , rural area , geography , construct (python library) , sociology , socioeconomics , economic growth , ideology , rural sociology , population , political science , rural development , social science , agriculture , demography , politics , archaeology , computer science , law , economics , programming language
Mobile home parks are an increasingly common form of residence for the rural poor. A rural central Illinois mobile home park and its residents seemingly possess features—a distinct territory, a homogeneous population, and a collectively held rural ideology—that foster formation of a sense of community. Other factors, however, some unique to this relatively new rural residential form, present physical and social barriers that challenge park residents' construction of a sense of community. We use ethnographic data to describe daily life in a rural mobile home park and to determine who among its working‐poor residents are most able to construct a sense of community, and thus to gain access to the potentially beneficial community social resources that are crucial to making a difference in the quality of their lives.