ABSTRACT
In rural boomtowns, energy workers do integrate into the communities in that they make friends, engage in social activities, and develop social support networks. However, they integrate into subcultures consisting of other energy workers and are largely segregated from the community as a whole. Most do not participate in church activities, clubs, classes, community projects and events, or in the political life of the towns. Instead, they play softball, fish, hunt, etc., with their coworkers. This chapter provides a theoretical explanation for this sociocultural division, utilizing the concepts of occupational association and stereotyping and of work-emergent behaviors and traits. Occupational association identifies the tendency of people to associate in their leisure time with individuals involved in work which is the same or is similar to their own work with respect to skills and role relations. Occupational stereotyping refers to the ascription of certain traits to an individual on the basis of knowledge of his or her occupation.
