Test #4 study questions.

1. What factors characterize transition from traditional (rural) to modern (urban) societies? (i.e., where do people live? How do they provide for themselves? How is social order produced? What are the values and norms upheld?)
2. Define and compare the most important features of rural and urban societies (i.e., family ties; degree of privacy; attitudes towards deviance; social change; and the character of interactions).

1. What was the social structure of the rural NC during the 1950s, when Flowers was growing up? In what geometrical shape you could depict rural society at that time? What were the most important social groups? Who were "up" and who were "down"?
2. Who were the landlords? What were the sources of their wealth? How was the wealth of landlords transferred to their children in 1950s?
3. What were the relationships between landlords and tenants? Was it an antagonistic relationship? Was it a relationship of cohabitation? Was this relationships of co-dependence or of some other type/nature? Where landlords and tenants honest or cheating each other?
4. What was economically the most important crop of the tenants? Why this crop and not the other? What equipment tenants were using?
5. Who were Hands? What was the relationship between tenants and Hands? Equal/unequal? Free contract based or co/dependent? Why did hired laborers were called hands and not persons or workers?
6. By the late 1950s the tenant agriculture throughout NC began to unravel. What were the most important factors that contributed to its decline? Discuss changes in the rural demography, availability/cost of the agricultural labor; price structure (inputs/outputs), i.e., squeeze; and structure of farms.

1. Who were the first among tenants–men or women--to make a transition from working on the farm to being employed in the industries? Explain why.
2. How did the transition from farm to an industrial workforce affect relationships between parents and the children? (Time spent together/child rearing; commonness of interests; attachment to locale/place; centrality of the family in children’s life.)
3. Where was the migrant labor coming from to work in the agriculture of the Eastern North Carolina during the 1950s? In which agricultural sector it was employed? Where does the migrant agricultural labor is coming to the Eastern North Carolina nowadays from? Where does most of the produce we buy in Eastern North Carolina nowadays originate? Is it locally grown?
4. For whom–tenants or small landowners–the transition to manufacturing labor force was easier? For men or women? Explain what accounts for the difference.
5. How rapid was transition from farming to manufacturing in the Eastern North Carolina? What percentage of ENC population did remain by 1979 working in agriculture as compared with those engaged in manufacturing? How did farm size change as a result of a decline in number of people working on the land?
6. How did parents and their children view low paying industrial or service jobs that were replacing work on the farms?
7. Was the transition from farm to manufacturing easier for Whites or Blacks? How were the differences expressed?
8. Let summarize the chapter. Why this chapter was called "Nothing to do...", but _________? (fill in the blank)
9. In sociology there are two ways to explain social order–micro and macro (for explanation of these perspectives see handout). Which of the two perspectives–macro or micro--is used by Flowers to explain the change in Eastern North Carolina? How did the tenants themselves perceived the causes of change? Was the change something imposed on them over which they did not have any control?

1. Flowers argues that in pre-Civil rights area public schools in Eastern North Carolina were characterized racial segregation. Since the late 1960s, racial segregation of schools was replaced by "grouping" of students within integrated schools. What does Flowers mean by student grouping? Why does Flower think that "grouping was based ‘more [on] social standards than [it was on] educational standards?
2. What impact did "grouping" had on race relations in the region? Use notions of labeling and self-fulfilling prophesy to explain your answer (p. 123). Did grouping fostered racial integration?
3. Flowers argues that since the 1960s the system of public education in Eastern North Carolina had improved dramatically in every respect–funding, teachers and administrators qualifications and professionalism, quality of education provided, etc. At the same time she argues that in educational reforms and progress "lie <...> profound inequity; that in strive to provide a better education for all, we should have perpetuated virtual entrapment of so many" (p. 152). Explain, how despite the progress the profound inequity was produced. For this purpose discuss the impact of grouping; professionalization and bureaucratization of public education on teachers and students;; and attitudes of students and their parents and "white flight" (on "white flight" see questions for "Little Black (Little White) Schoolhouse" bellow).

1. Decline of the tenantry based agriculture led to geographic relocation of the rural population in the Eastern North Carolina. Where did the landowners, tenants and African-Americans relocated? How were schools affected by the new patterns of settlement? What were the most important divisions among schoolchildren in Dominion High School? In what way the "class snobbishness" of the rich kids differed from racial prejudice?
2. Did desegregation of the late 1960s mandated by the federal government produced racially segregated schools? Why does one of the people interviewed by Flowers claimed that "Integration has destroyed that <supportive and strong communities> too" (p.166)? Where did the whites, as especially middle/upper middle class whites had schooled their kids after integration was mandated by the law?
3. What in your opinion were the most important reasons that Whites in the East North Carolina tend to opt out of public education system? What impact, according to Flowers, did the absence of involvement and interest by the community leaders in public schools had on quality of schooling in the region?
4. What impact does "white flight" and disinvestment have on Black students? Are they academically motivated? Ambitious? How many of them take a failure in school for granted? Why this is the case?

Working and Living and Getting By, pp. 181-205

1. Why the industrial employment which replaced tenantry and agricultural jobs did not bring economic security and prosperity to the Eastern North Carolina? Base your answer on a discussion of (a) types of industries that were relocating and their financial situation at the time of relocation; (b) causes and incentives of relocation to North Carolina’s rural areas; (c) most recent changes and future trends in employment base of the region
2. Why do attempts to unionize industrial workers in the Eastern North Carolina had failed miserably? What are cultural, religious and gender specific factors that explain hostility of the rural populations in this part of the state towards labor unions?