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

这是一篇科技研究论文改进补助金，探讨了二战后大规模粮食生产和消费系统如何依赖灵活的公路运输，在这个过程中改变了美国农村的生活和面貌。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精简的食品经济创造了条件。食品加工商和超市联手，将向郊区消费者提供新鲜食品的系统合理化。这篇论文认为，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，将超高产农场和高科技食品加工商与郊区超市连接起来。本文使用三个案例研究(牛奶、牛肉和冷冻蔬菜)来探索美国食品分销网络的这些变化是如何以及为什么发生的。此外，长途卡车是错综复杂的技术、商业和政治网络的一部分，这些网络不仅帮助以新的方式养活了美国人，还帮助改变了曾经依赖铁路的农村面貌。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薪阶层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系统。《卡车之国》试图通过观察粮食从生产者到消费者的流动，来弥合技术历史和农业历史之间的鸿沟。本文致力于对交通、技术系统和工业化的研究，这些研究普遍忽视了农村技术和二战后的时期，从而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一种自主力量，可以决定性地重建农村生活。虽然技术历史学家通常寻求在广泛的社会背景下理解技术变化，但农业技术历史学家通常只关注农场生产技术。《卡车国》在打通农业技术黑匣子的同时，将技术史推向更远的地方。重要的是，这种融合对“主流”美国历史做出了重大贡献。研究生产者和消费者之间的食品流动，对战后郊区消费文化及其对美国其他地区的影响提供了丰富的经验理解。因此，这篇论文的目的是为了接触到广大读者，他们还没有看到对美国卡车运输史的严格学术处理。“货运国”还将对当代有关工业、农业综合企业和运输政策的政治辩论作出重大贡献。国家科学基金会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，否则这些资金是不可能的。访问将收集关于乳制品、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行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.