Background
Barron, Hal S. was born on December 29, 1951 in Louisville.
(In a departure from the longstanding emphasis on the fron...)
In a departure from the longstanding emphasis on the frontier in American historical writing, Hal Barron employs a range of sources to reconstruct the social and economic history of a nineteenth-century rural community - Chelsea, Vermont -which was profoundly affected by population loss and economic stagnation at a time when most of the country was experiencing geographical expansion and economic growth. The author's lucid, accessible account explores the hard choices faced by the people of Chelsea as the economic vitality drained out of their community and shows how they dealt with these choices. Using new methods of social history to place Chelsea in the larger context of nineteenth-century American culture and society, this book provides an innovative contribution to the history of rural America.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521347777/?tag=2022091-20
(Mixed Harvest explores rural responses to the transformat...)
Mixed Harvest explores rural responses to the transformation of the northern United States from an agricultural society into an urban and industrial one. According to Hal S. Barron, country people from New England to North Dakota negotiated the rise of large-scale organizational society and consumer culture in ways marked by both resistance and accommodation, change and continuity. Between 1870 and 1930, communities in the rural North faced a number of challenges. Reformers and professionals sought to centralize authority and diminish local control over such important aspects of rural society as schools and roads; large-scale business corporations wielded increasing market power, to the detriment of independent family farmers; and an encroaching urban-based consumer culture threatened rural beliefs in the primacy of their local communities and the superiority of country life. But, Barron argues, by reconfiguring traditional rural values of localism, independence, republicanism, and agrarian fundamentalism, country people successfully created a distinct rural subculture. Consequently, agrarian society continued to provide a counterpoint to the dominant trends in American society well into the twentieth century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807846597/?tag=2022091-20
Barron, Hal S. was born on December 29, 1951 in Louisville.
Bachelor, Oberlin College, Ohio, 1973. Master of Arts, University Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1976. Doctor of Philosophy, University Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1980.
Assistant professor history Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California, 1980—1985, associate professor history, 1985—1991, professor history, since 1991, Louisa and Robert Miller professor humanities California, since 2005. Member graduate history faculty Claremont (California) Graduate University, since 1980.
(In a departure from the longstanding emphasis on the fron...)
(Mixed Harvest explores rural responses to the transformat...)
Member of American History Association, Agricultural History Society (president 2005-2006), Organization of America Historians (life).
Married Katherine T. Kobayashi, June 23, 1977. 1 child Maya K.