The Urban-Rural Imaginary: Second Homeownership in the Woods of Northern Maine

• In Event: 095 - Section on Community and Urban Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 20. Reputations and Images of Space and Place

Abstract

Scholars in community and urban sociology have long been concerned with people who move and the processes related to their movement. However, few scholars have paid attention to second homeowners, a group of transient residents who live between two places. This paper fills this empirical gap in literature by asking how second homeowners in Rangeley, a rural town in northern Maine, make sense of and experience life between two homes. The findings of this paper contribute to an ongoing theoretical debate of the importance of the urban and rural in both discourse and practice. The findings of this paper present an empirical puzzle. First, locals in Rangeley imagine that second homeowners and tourists are coming from large urban centers. Second homeowners themselves use imagery of city life to explain their residential choices. However, data show that most second homeowners do not, in fact, come from large urban centers. Why, then, do locals think that second homeowners are coming from large urban centers, and why, then, after talking with second homeowners does it seem like they are? Ultimately, this paper finds that despite not representing their material reality (i.e. second homeowners do not live in urban places), second homeowners and locals in Rangeley use the dichotomy between the urban and the rural, what I call the urban-rural imaginary, to make sense of residential choices and experiences.

Author

• Meaghan Stiman, Boston University