Agrarian Environmental Rhetoric: a Theoretical Conceptualization
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Agrarian Environmental Rhetoric: A Theoretical Conceptualization Ross Singer Saginaw Valley State University ~ [email protected] Jeff Motter University of Colorado Boulder ~ [email protected] Abstract This study develops the heuristic concept of agrarian environmental rhetoric and its topoi of practice, place, and solidarity. Guided by a telos of a more sustainable, just, and democratic world, the concept informs theoretical and critical inquiry at the symbolic intersections of food, agriculture, and environment. Key words: agrarianism; food and environment; place; myth; sustainable agriculture Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015 Page 2 of 20 Across academic disciplines, agrarianism has been a rather obscure term. Studies of agriculture, environment, food, politics, and rural culture have given agrarianism multiple related meanings. Across these meanings, the concept of agrarianism tends to demarcate more than agricultural issues and includes positive value judgments about agriculture, as well as those who cultivate the land (Hilde & Thompson, 2000; Montmarquet, 1989). At times, scholars use agrarianism to refer to a guiding or normative philosophy for a “good society” built on agricultural communities (e.g., Berry, 1977; Thompson, 2010; Wirzba, 2003). Others recognize agrarianism as having a long philosophical history but focus on examining how agrarianism symbolically functions through cultural narratives and imagery. Work in this area considers how agrarianism manifests mythically through culture, often through subtle, brief, simple, romantic, and ideologically vague forms. Some manifestations of agrarianism in this mythic sense are found in social movements (Bouton, 1985; Mooney & Hunt, 1996), film (Retzinger, 2002; Singer, 2011), literature (Inge, 1969; Marx, 2000; Smith, 1950; Thompson, 2010), agricultural trade journals (Johnstone, 1940; Walter, 1995), political policymaking and campaign discourses (Browne, Skees, Swanson, Thompson, & Unnevehr, 1992; Dorsey, 1995; Hofstadter, 1955; Kelsey, 1994; Peterson, 1986), public perceptions (Buttel & Flinn, 1975), and even in farmers’ accounts of their own identities (Harter, 2004; Peterson, 1991; Singer & de Souza, 1983). Despite standing as one of the oldest and most influential traditions of environmental place- making in Western culture, agrarianism has received little attention from scholars of environmental communication and rhetoric. The few existing studies in these areas that engage the term—by Tarla Rai Peterson (1986; 1990; 1991), Leroy Dorsey (1995) Jean Retzinger (2002), and Ross Singer (2011), conceptualize it primarily through the writings of Thomas Jefferson and refer to it as “agrarian myth” or “yeoman myth.” Borrowing the term from Michael McGuire (1977), Peterson (1991) situates agrarian myth as a “working myth”—“a story of a hero superior in kind to us who nonetheless is a real person acting in a real social setting” (p. 13). The other noted studies also conceptualize the farmer as a “real” mythic agent. Peterson (1986) contends that for farmers, agrarian myth may be self-defeating and justify the crisis mentality idea of the farmer as noble victim. During the 1930s Dust Bowl, agricultural conservationists exonerated farmers of any responsibility for the disaster, instead pointing to climatic conditions. In more recent conservation studies, agrarian myth often merge with other industry-sanctioned myths such as that of the American frontier to create paradoxical self-images among farmers—self-images that hinder the adoption of conservation practices (Peterson, 1991). Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015 Page 3 of 20 Like Peterson (1986; 1990; 1991) and Dorsey (1995), Retzinger (2002) and Singer (2011) demonstrate that agrarian myth is an evolving and contextually adapted narrative, shaped to fit new times, needs, and motives. In her study of several Hollywood films, Retzinger (2002) observes that given today’s largely (sub)urban population, media play a key role “temporarily bridging the gap between the city and the country” (p. 46). Retzinger identifies a persistent focus on individual character attributes of the farmer, rather than on specific agricultural and environmental practices. The resulting, revised myth incorporates technology and feminism, but largely leaves the traditional agrarian myth intact. Films’ emphasis on some agrarian attributes over others, such as simplicity and honesty, also tended to produce oversimplified and sometimes negative representations of “bumpkins” and “rednecks.” This simplified message extends to emphasize the experience of the farmer’s struggles rather than the source of plight, including political economic structures. Dorsey’s (1995) study of an adapted version of the Jeffersonian “yeoman myth” in President Theodore Roosevelt’s early twentieth century conservation discourse also finds that the myth may contain perceptions of rural agricultural issues and limit long-term social change. However, Dorsey also observes that this myth was central to Roosevelt’s short-term political success in the achievement of important environmental legislation. In his study of the South Central Farmers in urban Los Angeles, Singer (2011), too, shows how agrarian myth may be contextually adapted in ways that constrain and enable change. Despite the tragic ending of the SCF’s story, agrarian myth provided a formidable democratic, spiritual, familial, and inspirational basis for local community and political mobilization. Although these studies and several of the common meanings of agrarianism surveyed at the outset cluster around the notion of agrarianism as myth, there is also a distinct, second clustering around the notion of agrarianism as a historical and philosophical tradition consisting of normative ideals for the good society. The work of contemporary writers such as Paul Thompson, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson and Frederick Kirschenmann exemplifies this second meaning of the term. Agrarianism-as-philosophy shares with agrarianism-as-myth romantic assumptions, appeals, arguments, and visions that are rooted in the past but extend to the future. In the American context, the symbolism of the land going back to the first European settlers helped create a romantic idea of cultivating the land. Indeed, agrarianism closely resonates with notions of the sacred tied to the Puritans’ “Promised Land” (Hilde & Thompson, 2000) and going back to Ancient Greece and Rome, farming had been recognized among Europeans as one of the most exceptional Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015 Page 4 of 20 occupations (Hanson, 1999; Montmarquet, 1989). In the American colonial era, popular media expounded upon and exaggerated the moral character of the farmer-hero as a natural caretaker of nature and community (Johnstone, 1940). Regardless of specific cultivation or husbandry methods used, “the farmer” is a figure who remains largely beyond reproach. After all, who would question the honesty, integrity, and interests of the farmer? Agrarian appeals often tacitly command moral legitimation, even as they may be clouded by visual imagery and ideological ambiguity. Their imagery of simplicity, nature, and the virtuous farmer’s struggle against overwhelming forces (weather, markets) are among the attributes making agrarianism mythic. Understanding the various symbolic and material implications of agrarianism as cultural myth begins with recognition that it may be enabling and constraining agency for positive social change within the agriculture, food and environment relation. Although myth oversimplifies and may distort the causes and remedies of important problems, it may also inspire and give meaning, provide social glue for collective action, and remind us of the wisdom of timeless virtues. Although myth links agrarian philosophy with more informal cultural articulations of agrarianism, it is important that scholars not limit the idea of agrarianism to only mythic narrative or romantic trope. The conceptualization and application of agrarianism-as-myth has tended to underscore the myth in “agrarian myth” in ways that inadvertently foreclose the broader and deeper meanings of “agrarian” and “agrarianism.” In other words, to limit “agrarian” to a modifier may circumvent recognition of it as a living tradition (neo-agrarianism) and evolving normative philosophy of sustainability relevant to the future. Given that past studies of agrarianism reflect it as both a philosophical and cultural idea, agrarianism ought to be conceptualized as a rhetorical idea. We propose that rich possibilities for cultivating a rhetoric of agrarianism manifest at this intersection. It is here that agrarianism stands as a distinctive and heuristic theoretical concept for scholars of environmental communication and rhetoric. The task of theorizing agrarian rhetoric is important for several reasons. At a very general level, agrarian rhetoric provides environmental rhetoric scholars with one means of tying the past to the future, and for contemplating rural-urban eco-cultural