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Rural Sociology Commons™

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Selected Works

Sociology of Work

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Rural Sociology

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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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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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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