“Replacing” Tobacco on Kentucky Farms: Discourses of Tradition, Heritage, and Agricultural Diversification
“Replacing” Tobacco on Kentucky Farms: Discourses of Tradition, Heritage, and Agricultural Diversification Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Ann Katherine Ferrell, MA Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2009 Dissertation Committee: Amy Shuman, Advisor Dorothy Noyes Patrick B. Mullen Nan Johnson Copyright by Ann Katherine Ferrell 2009 ABSTRACT Tobacco farms, once an icon of American history, are disappearing from the landscape. For the Kentucky tobacco growers who are the focus of this study, tobacco farming is a livelihood that involves a mastery of traditional skills passed through generations and adapted to changing circumstances—technological, economic, social, and political. In this project, I examine the consequences of the changing status of tobacco and the category “tobacco farmer,” both of which have become stigmatized because of the health effects of tobacco use. This dissertation examines the current period of transition for Kentucky burley production and the implications for tobacco farmers of the changing contexts of this traditional occupation, often described as “a way of life.” The project is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Central Kentucky, supplemented by the collection of public discourses from multiple sites about tobacco production past and present. It brings folklore research and theory together with historical and archival research, economic data, and rhetorical analysis. In addition to a metahistory of tobacco production in the U.S. and Kentucky, and a fieldwork- based description of the 2007 crop-year, this dissertation examines the movement of the social and occupational category “tobacco farmer” from respect to stigma, and considers the repercussions of this movement on central folkloristic concepts, heritage and tradition.
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