Calling on the Imagination: Using Mills and Young to reclaim the rural narrative

• In Event: Theorizing the Rural

Abstract

This paper confronts the prevailing narrative concerning issues of crime and justice in rural communities; that narrative being the oft accepted position that social disorganization and disruptions are, alone, the source of crime and criminality in rural communities. Works of this aforementioned nature appear to engage in the abstracted empiricism against which Mills (1959) so strongly warned. In employing Mills’ and Young’s Imagination in rural areas, this paper produces a deeper narrative and establishes rural communities as unique areas with their own issues and struggles, rather than banal areas only capable of being acted upon by outside forces. The imagination allows us to frame issues of rural crime and deviance in a larger context, while maintaining the unique existence of each distinct community.

Authors

• FM Jones, University of Central Oklahoma

• Roni Mayzer, University of North Dakota