J. Dwight Hines

Visiting Lecturer

Ph.D. University of California at Santa Barbara, 2004

Research Interests: sociocultural anthropology; contemporary US society; rural gentrification; modernity; globalization; postindustrialism; qualitative ethnographic fieldwork methods

J. Dwight Hines (BA. University of Wyoming 1992; MA. Louisiana State University 1997; PhD. University of California-Santa Barbara 2004) completed his dissertation (Moving Back to Modernity: Contemporary Urban-to-Rural Migration and the Cultural Dialectic of Authenticity and Progress) by analyzing the underlying cultural motivation of the ongoing middle-class gentrification of the rural US. The central focus of that investigation was (and Dr. Hines’ abiding research interest is) to contextualize behavior within contemporary US society relative the powerful and resilient cultural forces (that act on and through them) as subjects of this distinct era of Western history (i.e. Modernity).
Dr. Hines continues to conduct ethnographic research as part of his intended long-term fieldwork project in the rural Rocky Mountain West. Over the past two summers he has collected data on the effects of in-migration on the local landscape, architectural, and land-use practices in southwest Montana. This and subsequent research is intended to facilitate the discussion of the diverging cultural logic of emerging status groups within the US middle-class—e.g. those enculturated to an industrial worldview and those schooled to a postindustrial cultural perspective—as examples of an ever-widening sociocultural dichotomy in late-Modernity.
Dr. Hines grew up on a sheep/cattle ranch in the Thunder Basin of northeast Wyoming. In his free time he is an avid fly-fisherman, kayaker, and ultimate player and enjoys spending time with his family in the mountains.

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