Practicing Development in the American South: Public and Private Agricultural Extension in the Early 20th Century

美国南部的发展实践：20世纪初的公共和私人农业推广

• 批准号: 1262774
• 负责人: Mona Domosh
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: Dartmouth College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-05-01 至 2017-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1262774&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Practicing; Development; American; South; Public

This project seeks to better understand the historical-geographical underpinnings of international agricultural development policies and practices undertaken by the United States government and private corporations in the post-World War II period. It does so by documenting and analyzing public (the United States government - specifically the United Stated Department of Agriculture, USDA) and private (the International Harvester Corporation, IHC), agricultural extension efforts that targeted the American South as a site of underdevelopment in the first decades of the 20th century. Scholars have traced the roots of the concept of 'development' within the European context to the advent of modern liberalism and the age of empires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but few have brought the insights of postcolonial theory to an understanding of American forms of development. As a result, the understanding of the historical and geographical contexts that gave rise to US forms of development is partial and limited. The specific goals of this research project are: 1) to query the history and nature of development practices through the case of agricultural extension services; 2) to question how and why the South became a space of difference; and 3) to understand the ways in which experts, expert knowledge, and public policies, were shaped and in turn helped shape the social construction (class, race, and gender) of the US South in the first decades of the 20th century, and by so doing, to contribute to an understanding of the fluidity and complexity of bio-political efforts to develop the world in the post-World War II period. Using a case-study approach, and through archival and document analysis, the investigator will analyze IHC's and the USDA's agricultural extension practices and encounters in three states (Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas) in the first three decades of the 20th century (1900-1929). The research will be accomplished primarily through the analysis of the content, language, and image style of archival material (accounts of agricultural extension agents, photographs of extension activities, contemporary documents produced by IHC and USDA, particularly their educational pamphlets, regional and thematic maps, letters between agents and government and corporate officials, contemporary newspaper accounts) held at ten different institutions throughout the United States. The research will provide an in-depth and contextually-rich exemplar of the ways in which the language, practices, and ideas that underpin contemporary US development policies were formulated and took shape in the early 20th century in the American South. Ultimately, this project will contribute to a more complete understanding of the making of American development practices, an understanding that is crucial for any critical examination of its contemporary non-military interventions throughout the world.By involving students from underrepresented groups this research project will enhance the goal of diversifying geographical education and research, and will broaden the scholarly infrastructure for research by forming educational partnerships with four historically-Black institutions of higher education. This research will be disseminated widely through teaching activities, publications, conference presentations, and lectures at universities in Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Since the research findings have the potential to speak to contemporary policy debates in terms of agricultural extension services and agricultural development, the findings will also be disseminated through discussions and presentations at appropriate local, regional and national agricultural policy forums.

该项目旨在更好地了解二战后美国政府和私营公司采取的国际农业发展政策和实践的历史地理基础。 它通过记录和分析公共（美国政府，特别是美国农业部，USDA）和私人（国际收割机公司，IHC）在 20 世纪头几十年针对美国南部欠发达地区的农业推广工作来实现这一目标。 学者们将欧洲背景下“发展”概念的根源追溯到现代自由主义的出现和19世纪末20世纪初的帝国时代，但很少有人将后殖民理论的见解用于理解美国的发展形式。 因此，对美国发展形式产生的历史和地理背景的理解是片面和有限的。 本研究项目的具体目标是：1）通过农业推广服务案例来探究发展实践的历史和性质； 2）质疑南方如何以及为何成为差异空间； 3）了解专家、专家知识和公共政策是如何形成的，进而帮助塑造20世纪头几十年美国南方的社会建构（阶级、种族和性别），并通过这样做，有助于理解二战后时期发展世界的生物政治努力的流动性和复杂性。 研究者将采用案例研究方法，通过档案和文件分析，分析 IHC 和 USDA 在 20 世纪前 30 年（1900-1929 年）三个州（阿拉巴马州、密西西比州和阿肯色州）的农业推广实践和遭遇。 这项研究将主要通过分析美国十个不同机构保存的档案材料（农业推广代理人的账目、推广活动的照片、IHC 和 USDA 制作的当代文件，特别是他们的教育小册子、区域和专题地图、代理人与政府和企业官员之间的信件、当代报纸报道）的内容、语言和图像风格来完成。 该研究将提供一个深入且背景丰富的范例，说明支撑当代美国发展政策的语言、实践和思想在 20 世纪初期在美国南方是如何制定和形成的。 最终，该项目将有助于更全面地了解美国发展实践的形成，这种理解对于对其当代在世界各地的非军事干预进行批判性审查至关重要。通过让来自代表性不足群体的学生参与，该研究项目将增强地理教育和研究多样化的目标，并将通过与四所历史悠久的黑人高等教育机构建立教育伙伴关系，扩大研究的学术基础设施。 这项研究将通过阿拉巴马州、密西西比州和阿肯色州大学的教学活动、出版物、会议演讲和讲座来广泛传播。 由于研究结果有可能就农业推广服务和农业发展方面的当代政策辩论展开讨论，研究结果还将通过在适当的地方、区域和国家农业政策论坛上的讨论和演示来传播。