CAPITAL CONSTRAINTS ON NONMETROPOLITAN ACCUMULATION - RURAL PROCESS IN THE UNITED-STATES-OF-AMERICA SINCE THE 1960S

Does the turnaround in net migration to rural areas in the 1970s and its subsequent reversal in the 1980s anticipate a reordering of rural process in the United States of America? I conclude that it does. Whereas standard neoclassical theory posits interregional equilibration through the interplay movements and prices, it is here contended that capital supply has become of paramount importance inn shaping rural outcomes, and that the nexus of capital control is shifting. The centerpiece of my argument is the partition of capital flows into three distinct circuits, within and among which capital 'switches' in periods of disproportionality - primarily overaccumulation - in search of new investment options or in response to new state-capital conformations. Viewed from this perspective, rural process is found to have progressed from a period of 'counterbalanced growth' (1960s and early 1970s), toward a period of 'rural overaccumulation', and then after the world debt crisis of 1981 to an interval of rural 'consolidation'. During the latter - still underway - the electoral base of Federal support for rural enterprise had begun to erode, and capital had begun to recenter in the urban primary circuit. Rural areas, as well, had become more fully absorbed in national and global capital circuits. Then too, customary alliances in support of rural accumulation had begun to disassemble and new ones had yet to emerge. Future infusions of state capital in the secondary and tertiary circuits in support of rural accumulation are consequently in doubt. Under these conditions, the restructructing of rural industry may be further slowed, and the formulation of a new urban workforce in nonmetropolitan areas placed in jeopardy. © 1991.