Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. By Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.

Abstract

deal with the issue in the 1960-1970 period with a,;ailable data.At t.he very least, the problem of commuting to other counties and. the unpact of expandll~g0l?portunities for doing so in the 1960s .onnonmetropolita n sustenance orgamzatlon and net migration could have been dIscussed.This review will overlook other technical lim.itations of Frisbie and Poston's work such as their use of cross-sectional measures of sustenance activities to expla' interce.nsalnet mi.gration r~tes,.and turn.to a brief discussion of their convention~1 ' analysIs of ecolOgIcal orgamzatlOn followmg the precedent of many other ecological studies.It is informative that sustenance differentiation, retailing, educational service and public administration, as well as certain kinds of agricultural activitie, make substantia!positive contributions to net migration in the 1960-1970 period c These findings may suggest that the very nature of organized community life i1; rural and less densely populated metropolitan fringe areas is undergoing functional changes of a fundamental kind, and that this social back nearly twd ecades now.But does a focus on the in thesp couniie:; i" and of itself provide organization of a 1110dern industrial or postindustrial society as it influences human populations living outside the dom.inant metropolitan communities?Are the enterprises which provide "sustenance" for nonmetroJ?o~tan residen~s locally contr?lJed?Are they ex~anding components of already eXlstmg economIc enterprIses Il1 these commumties or absentee-owned retail, educational and agricultural organizations administered from corporate associations located in the United States or even in foreign-based metropolitan communities?And if this is so, what merit is there in even considering these counties as "nonmetropolit an" when they are or are becoming even more dominated by a metropolitan social organization which is national or multinational in scope?