A Great Place to Raise Kids: Interpretation, Science, and the Urban-Rural Debate

Elaine Porter is an associate professor of sociology at Laurentian
University.

Kieran Bonner’s purpose in writing this book is purportedly to
evaluate the claim that small towns are better for child rearing than
are cities. At the same time, this book is also a means to show the
superiority of radical interpretive sociology over scientific
approaches. The latter goal predominates and the reader suspects that
the question is set up as a straw man to make the points that Bonner
drives home. The research question evolves from two sources, neither of
which are presented with enough detail for a thorough evaluation. The
question originated in the neighborly town talk that Bonner attended
after moving from Toronto to rural Alberta. On the basis of his research
and on opinion poll results from The Globe and Mail, Bonner asserts that
there is a generalized proclivity to prefer a rural over an urban
environment for family life. Because it is posed so starkly, the
research question can easily be called into question even within
scientific sociology.

The author discusses what he considers to be a scientific approach to
evaluating the claim of the superiority of rural life. He points to
statistics showing crime rates for towns to be equal to those of cities,
figures that would seem to discredit the claims of the townsfolk. This
parody of positivism then serves as a whipping post against which to
flaunt the virtues of subjective approaches and their denial of
value-free sociology.

There is, nevertheless, value in this book. Bonner gives a sensitive
account of the different ideas of the rural-urban divide in 19th- and
20th-century thought. He also provides a useful discussion of the
methodology of interpretative sociology in counterdistinction to
phenomenology. His conclusions about the differences in the perspectives
of locals versus ex-urbanite dwellers are fine-tuned and plausible
renderings. His final chapter on the distinction between Foucault’s
panopticon and the polis is a shining example of the virtues his radical
interpretative approach, al-though I wondered why I needed to wade
through so much diatribe to get there.