Dissertation Research: Trucking Country: Food, Farms, and Freight in America's Rural Industrial Landscape, 1945-1975

这是一个科学和技术研究论文改进补助金，探讨了大规模粮食生产和消费系统如何在第二次世界大战后依赖于灵活的公路运输，在这个过程中改变了美国农村的生活和景观。第二次世界大战结束时，郊区、超市和高速公路的蓬勃发展为流线型食品经济创造了条件。食品加工商和超市联合起来，使向郊区消费者提供新鲜食品的系统合理化。本文认为，卡车和高速公路提供了灵活的基础设施，使这种合理化成为可能，连接超级生产力的农场和高科技食品加工商到郊区超市。本文使用三个案例研究（牛奶，牛肉和冷冻蔬菜），以探讨如何以及为什么这些变化在美国的食品分销网络来了。此外，长途卡车是技术、商业和政治网络的复杂网络的一部分，不仅有助于以新的方式养活美国人，而且有助于改变曾经依赖铁路的农村景观。卡车运输将联邦农业专家、食品加工商和超市、卡车制造商和农村工人阶级的卡车司机联系在一起，形成了一个致力于将食品顺利运送到郊区消费者手中的政治和经济体系。“卡车运输国”试图通过观察食物从生产者到消费者的流动，弥合技术史和农业史之间的差距。本论文对交通、技术体系和工业化的研究做出了贡献，这些研究通过普遍忽视农村技术和二战后的时期，构建了一部不完整的美国工业史。与此同时，农业和农村历史学家倾向于将技术变革视为决定性地重建农村生活的自主力量。虽然技术史学家通常试图在广泛的社会背景下理解技术变革，但农业技术史学家通常只关注农场的生产技术。《卡车乡村》在打开农业技术“黑匣子”的同时，也将技术史推向更远的地方。重要的是，这种融合导致了对“主流”美国历史的重大贡献。研究生产者和消费者之间的食品流动提供了一个经验丰富的战后郊区消费文化及其对全国其他地区的影响的理解。因此，本论文旨在达到广大读者谁还没有看到一个严格的学术处理的历史上的卡车在美国。此外，“卡车运输国家”还将对当代关于工业、农业综合企业和运输政策的政治辩论作出重大贡献。 NSF的拨款将通过为档案研究提供资金来支持这些目标的实现，否则这是不可能的。访问将收集有关乳制品，牛肉和冷冻食品加工，农业组织，联邦农业运输政策制定和卡车运输业的手稿材料和口述历史。

This is a Science and Technology Studies Dissertation Improvement Grant that explores how systems of mass food production and consumption came to depend on flexible highway transportation after World War II, transforming the lives and landscapes of rural Americans in the process. At the end of World War II the booming growth of suburbs, supermarkets, and highways created the conditions for a streamlined food economy. Food processors and supermarkets teamed up to rationalize the system for getting fresh food to suburban consumers. This dissertation argues that trucks and highways provided the flexible infrastructure that made this rationalization possible, connecting super-productive farms and high-tech food processors to suburban supermarkets. The dissertation uses three case studies (milk, beef, and frozen vegetables) to explore how and why these changes in America's food distribution network came about. Furthermore, long-haul trucks were part of an intricate web of technologies, businesses, and political networks that not only helped to feed Americans in new ways, but also helped to transform rural landscapes that had once been dependent on railways. Trucking bound together federal agricultural experts, food processors and supermarkets, truck manufacturers, and rural working-class truck drivers in a political and economic system dedicated to moving food smoothly to suburban consumers. "Trucking Country" seeks to bridge the gap between the history of technology and the history of agriculture by looking at the flow of food from producers to consumers. The dissertation contributes to studies of transportation, technological systems, and industrialization, which have constructed an incomplete history of industrial America by generally ignoring rural technologies and the period after WWII. Agricultural and rural historians, meanwhile, have tended to treat technological change as an autonomous force that deterministically reconstructs rural life. While historians of technology generally seek to understand technological change within a broad social context, historians of agricultural technology have generally focused only on technologies of production on farms. "Trucking Country" opens up the "black box" of agricultural technology while simultaneously pushing the history of technology farther afield. Importantly, this integration leads to a significant contribution to "mainstream" American history. Studying the flow of food between producers and consumers provides an empirically rich understanding of postwar suburban consumer culture and its consequences for the rest of the nation. The dissertation is thus intended to reach a broad audience of readers who have yet to see a rigorous scholarly treatment of the history of trucking in America. "Trucking Country" would furthermore make significant contributions to contemporary political debates about industrial agribusiness and transportation policies. An NSF grant would support the achievement of these goals by providing funds for archival research that would otherwise be impossible. Visits will be made to collect manuscript materials and oral histories regarding dairy, beef, and frozen food processing, agricultural organizations, federal agricultural transportation policymaking, and the trucking industry.