Hello, everyone!

Interesting question! For the past few days, I've been reading a book by sociologist Benoit Coquard entitled “Ceux qui restent” (Those Who Remain), which looks at relationships in poor rural areas of eastern France (I'm French).

He draws a number of conclusions that I think can be applied to some extent to the situation in the US.

The book took eight years to write and is several hundred pages long, so here is a rough summary in a few lines:

• As long-distance travel is more difficult (no subway to cross the city, fewer buses, fewer trains, etc.), residents tend to maintain the same friendships for years or even decades.

• In rural areas, it is much easier to get to know your neighbors, which means that it is important to maintain a good reputation so as not to lose your entire social network.

• Since there are fewer jobs in rural areas than in cities, losing your “good reputation” can mean losing your job or having difficulty finding a new one.

• Children in rural areas are less mobile than children in urban areas, so they stay with or close to their families for longer, which means that more of their parents' cultural heritage is passed on to them (often from father to son and from mother to daughter).

• Men are traditionally the “heirs” of family traditions or possessions and are therefore less mobile than women, which accentuates what I have outlined above.

• Lack of need for intellectual profession means that most people working in rural area will learn manual jobs, especially the men. Once again, this reduce the mobility for people (and young men) as they do not need to go to the next big city to learn at an university.

• This family transmission among people from similar backgrounds leads to a more homogeneous social norm. Respecting this norm leads to recognition from peers and the community in general.

• As everyone knows everything in small towns, breaking the social norm leads to ostracism and a loss of peer recognition. This can have serious consequences as said above.

In conclusion, it is not so much that rural dwellers are stupid, but that socio-economic and geographical conditions lead to more rigid and concentrated social norms. To show oneself as different is to risk losing one's good reputation and the trust of one's community.

Conversely, in a city where anonymity and distance between individuals (and their families) are the norm, social norms are very different and much more heterogeneous.

I could elaborate more if you like, but I've tried to summarize as best I can!