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Rural Sociology Commons™

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Selected Works

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Rural Sociology

Negotiating Work And Family: Lifestyle Migration, Potential Selves And The Role Of Second Homes As Potential Spaces, Brian Hoey Dec 2014

Negotiating Work And Family: Lifestyle Migration, Potential Selves And The Role Of Second Homes As Potential Spaces, Brian Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

This article is based on ethnographic research conducted in the USA with migrants who use an act of relocation as a means of deliberately constructing identity as well as seeking greater ‘balance’ and ‘control’ in their lives. Specifically, it examines how ‘second’ homes can serve as a transitional or ‘potential space’ in the lives of these migrants not only between different geographic places but also what are taken to be distinct identities and ideals associated with these places and the lives lived in them. Such behaviour is not simply about coping and adapting to a new environment; rather, it is …

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Opting For Elsewhere: Lifestyle Migration In The American Middle Class, Brian A. Hoey Nov 2014

Opting For Elsewhere: Lifestyle Migration In The American Middle Class, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

"Do you get told what the good life is, or do you figure it out for yourself?" This is the central question of Opting for Elsewhere, as the reader encounters stories of people who chose relocation as a way of redefining themselves and reordering work, family, and personal priorities. This is a book about the impulse to start over. Whether downshifting from stressful careers or being downsized from jobs lost in a surge of economic restructuring, lifestyle migrants seek refuge in places that seem to resonate with an idealized, potential self. Choosing the "option of elsewhere" and moving as a …

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Theorising The ‘Fifth Migration’ In The United States: Understanding Lifestyle Migration From An Integrated Approach, Brian Hoey Jun 2014

Theorising The ‘Fifth Migration’ In The United States: Understanding Lifestyle Migration From An Integrated Approach, Brian Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

This chapter is an empirically-informed discussion of relevant social theory for examining the phenomenon of lifestyle migration in the United States in both rural and urban settings. Specifically, the chapter explores key explanatory models born of research into so-called non-economic migration occurring since the early twentieth century—models that may be characterized as primarily either production or consumption oriented in their emphasis—as a context for outlining an integrated approach. The author then highlights changes in how some Americans appear to calculate personal and collective quality of life as engendered by an emerging economic order—based on principles of flexibility and contingency—whose affects …

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Place For Personhood: Individual And Local Character In Lifestyle Migration, Brian A. Hoey Dec 2009

Place For Personhood: Individual And Local Character In Lifestyle Migration, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

While drawing on literature of narrative interpretations of the construction of self and place-based, embodied identity, this article will explore the impact of invasive market forces on intertwined processes of person, self, and place-making. It considers how resources for these projects have changed in the face of translocal market forces and neoliberal ideals. Despite numerous proclamations of an essential placelessness to contemporary American society, place continues to be a basic part of the construction of the person. In fact, a variety of place-making practices are increasingly pursued as ways of negotiating tension between personal experience with material demands in pursuit …

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Pursuing The Good Life: American Narratives Of Travel And A Search For Refuge, Brian A. Hoey Dec 2008

Pursuing The Good Life: American Narratives Of Travel And A Search For Refuge, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

September 11th 2001 helped create a sense of ever-present risk for many Americans. At the same time, highly publicized abuses of corporate power and financial meltdowns in former Wall Street gems like Enron and WorldCom together with more recent economic trouble in the U.S. housing market heighten uncertainties. Although these events have hastened personal experience of insecurity across all socioeconomic levels, even in the dotcom glory days many middle-class families rightly sensed a threatening undercurrent of change. Although unsettling, global economic restructuring begun in the 1970s fueled stratospheric growth in the 90s as corporations embraced “flexibility.” On an individual level, …

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American Dreaming: Refugees From Corporate Work Seek The Good Life, Brian A. Hoey Dec 2007

American Dreaming: Refugees From Corporate Work Seek The Good Life, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

The economic restructuring and corporate downsizing that has come to define the contemporary working world has made contingent, part-time, and temporary work a part of the American social landscape. In this chapter, life-style migrants describe challenging taken for granted assumptions of the American Dream as a framework, a moral horizon that orients and promises future reward for present day loyalty, hard work and self-sacrifice. The decision of how to live one’s life is made of more than simply economic choices, they are also moral. The case of life-style migration shows how people may attempt to be true to an emerging …

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Therapeutic Uses Of Place In The Intentional Space Of Purposive Community, Brian A. Hoey Dec 2006

Therapeutic Uses Of Place In The Intentional Space Of Purposive Community, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

This chapter will explore the therapeutic uses of place within the intentional space of purposively created community. By tracing the history of the Northern Michigan Asylum from mental hospital, to its closing and recent adaptive-reuse as neo-traditional community, the chapter will present a detailed case of the intentional use of place for therapeutic purposes in community settings. Built during a period of sweeping social, cultural and structural changes in late 19th century America, the Asylum was founded on the reformist “moral” or “milieu” treatment approach of Thomas Kirkbride. Kirkbride espoused creating self-sustaining communities where the built environment together with a …

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Grey Suit Or Brown Carhartt: Narrative Transition, Relocation And Reorientation In The Lives Of Corporate Refugees, Brian A. Hoey Dec 2005

Grey Suit Or Brown Carhartt: Narrative Transition, Relocation And Reorientation In The Lives Of Corporate Refugees, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

This article examines relocation stories of people who leave behind corporate work culture, relocate from metropolitan areas to small towns and rural places and attempt to reorient themselves to work and family obligations. Decisions to start over take place within the context of moral questions about what makes a life worth living and what does not through a process in which geography has bearing. For these migrants, a choice about where to live is also one about how to live. Choices of how to live one’s life are made of more than simple economics, they are also moral. The restructuring …

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