From “Hicks” to High Tech: Performative Use in the American Corn Belt

From “Hicks” to High Tech: Performative Use in the American Corn Belt Joshua Todd Brinkman Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Science and Technology Studies Richard F. Hirsh, Chair Saul E. Halfon Daniel Breslau Matthew R. Goodrum January 17, 2017 Blacksburg, VA Keywords: Performativity, Agricultural Technology, Identity, Modernity, Farmers From “Hicks” to High Tech: Performative Use in the American Corn Belt Joshua Todd Brinkman ABSTRACT This historical narrative examines technology use among farmers from the eighteenth century to the present, with an emphasis on the American Midwest. I contend that people do not simply use objects for articulated benefits, but to perform unspoken identities, a process called performative use. Through an analysis of agricultural discourses, I demonstrate how performative use allows farmers to form self-images strategically in response to changing social factors. I identify six main agrarian discourse-identity bundles – ways of thinking about words and actions that communicate or construct people’s understanding of themselves. These bundles present distinct notions about moral ways of making a living and relationships with nature and objects. Therefore, technologies and identities co-construct one another. Beginning in the eighteenth century, elite observers evaluated the modernity of a rural “other” through a “pattern of audience.” Concurrently, German farmers exhibited the practice of performative use. These developments set the stage for conflicts over rural identity in the 1920s when urban industrialism and “rube” stereotypes framed farmers as dysfunctional. Performative use early in the twentieth century allowed rural Midwesterners to establish their own identities to combat these perceived urban threats and stereotypes. Through this resistance, farmers developed an identity of rural capitalistic modernity, gaining strength during the Cold War. Rural modernity evolved into the current “ultramodern” identity in which farmers see themselves as more technologically savvy than urban dwellers while retaining a desire to combat negative urban views of rural life. Ultramodernity partially explains why farmers have embraced the use of wind turbines and other sophisticated technologies. My analysis shows how rural experiences with patterns of audience cause farmers to see the current organic discourse as another urban threat that stereotypes farmers as backwards and frames agriculture as male, industrial, overly technological, and immoral. I show how these urban discourses have particularly alienated rural women who formed identities as modern producers. Farmers’ attitudes towards discourses about organic agriculture reflect a continued practice of using technology to express rural resentments. I conclude that agricultural policies must respect farmers’ performative use of technology. From “Hicks” to High Tech: Performative Use in the American Corn Belt Joshua Todd Brinkman GENERAL AUDIENCE ABSTRACT This study traces the history of how farmers have used technologies from the eighteenth century to the present to form identities, not simply as ways of making greater economic profits. Using technologies becomes a way to “perform” a person’s sense of him or herself. This insight serves historians because it suggests that users, not just important inventors, drive technological change. My study also suggests that the relationship people have with technology (and how they use it to form their identities) has historical genealogies. Engineers and business people will also find my history useful because the notion of “performative use” means that people’s views of themselves can influence the way they adopt and employ technologies. Policy scholars will gain from my study because I show that the way people use technology to understand themselves has consequences in determining how they participate in controversies over science and technology policy. This narrative begins in the eighteenth century by analyzing how elites like Benjamin Rush viewed the agricultural practices of German farmers, regarded by many in the upper classes as backwards. I show how observances of German farmers by elites created a pattern repeated throughout American history where rural people would use technology to perform their identities for an outside observer. In addition, I describe an identity, which I call “German agrarianism,” and contend that this rural self-image migrated to the Midwest when German farmers moved westward. German agrarianism had several important features including the association of morality with family-based production practices, an obsession with owning personal property, the inclusion of women in farming and land ownership, and the practice of performing identity through the use of material objects. Next, I describe a rural identity with English origins, one that other scholars have named “Jeffersonian agrarianism.” This Jeffersonian identity saw farmers as heroes who conquered the frontier, preserved American democracy, and supported less moral urban dwellers. I argue that Jeffersonian agrarianism in the nineteenth century began to reject technological and social change and that this view of rural people as anti-modern has influenced the way observers of rural life have viewed farmers up to the present. This study then analyzes the rural-urban conflict of the 1920s, contending that farmers used technologies to develop their own rural modern identity, which I call “rural capitalistic modernity.” Farmers used technology this way to combat a version of modernity, which I name “urban industrialism.” This modern identity, arising from the cities, advocated improving rural life by making farms resemble urban factories. This factory model threatened German and Jeffersonian rural identities that existed prior to the 1920s because it removed the family as the center of production and advocated work processes that took control and property ownership away from farmers. In addition, urban industrialism saw farmers as backward and in need of reform, which offended farmers who saw themselves in heroic terms as a result of Jeffersonian agrarianism. I argue that many rural people in the 1920s used technology to perform an identity of rural capitalistic modernity as a means of combating these urban efforts to restructure farms as factories and stereotype farmers as “yokels” or “rubes.” This rural modern identity became reinforced during the Cold War because the farmer saw Soviet collectivized agriculture as posing the same threats as previous urban industrialism. In addition, the way farmers used technology to reinforce their views of themselves as modern became valuable to government actors in the United States who saw increased agricultural production as a weapon in defeating the Soviet Union. By the 1970s, farmers formed an identity called “rural ultramodernity” in which they began to think of themselves as more modern than urban dwellers because of their design and use of advanced technologies and their role as producers in the global food network. This ultramodern identity incorporates aspects of previous rural identities, including an obsession with combating urban stereotypes of farmers as “hicks.” In addition, this rural ultramodern identity views farmers as having an inborn modernity inherited from previous generations of farmers. I argue that this ultramodern way farmers think of themselves explains why rural people in the Midwest have embraced the erection of wind turbines, unlike residents of other regions in the U.S. From a policy perspective, this study also contends that debates over science and technology, such as efforts to render agriculture more sustainable and organic, are impacted by unexpressed fundamental views about nature and morality. Statements about these controversies often take the form of proxy arguments that sound “rational” but mask these unstated ideas, and they often alienate those with opposing views. Current debates over genetically modified organisms, from a rural perspective, are actually unspoken clashes over rural ultramodern and organic identities hidden by “objective” points made by both sides involving science or economics. This study also challenges the common notion that technology and production are male domains by showing how both men and women have used technology to construct their identities as producers on Midwest farms. This insight illustrates how disagreements over gender roles underlie current policy debates about agriculture. Farmers view organic discourse as threatening rural women’s identities as modern producers by framing farming as an immoral, industrial, and male domination of a moral and female nature. Rural people view organic discourse as carrying on the tradition of urban industrialism, which saw farmers as backwards and farm women as unhappy and occupying an exclusively domestic sphere. This study suggests that any effort to reform agriculture must include farmers and incorporate the way rural people use technologies to form and reinforce their identities. At the same time, the conclusion advocates for a new rural identity that avoids farmer’s tendencies to view all technologies as “progress” regardless of their environmental or social impacts. Acknowledgements In writing this study I am indebted to Bethany Brinkman for her love and support. I could not have changed careers, traveled weekly to Blacksburg,

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