Community Fissioning and a Resettlement: A Study of the Impacts of a Mennonite Migration

这个项目是一系列特别奖之一，以初级研究人员，少量的钱，让他们发起一个新的研究议程。这项研究将涉及12个月的人种学研究，研究对象是从东部不同地区（主要是宾夕法尼亚州）迁移到威斯康星州的门诺派农民，他们从当地家庭那里购买农场，这些家庭已经放弃了靠农业谋生的斗争。 PI将在农业家庭、门诺派移民和正在出售的当地威斯康星州家庭中进行参与性观察。 这项研究的目的是解释为什么威斯康星州（非门诺派）家庭放弃农业，而门诺派家庭急切地购买同样的农场，并使它去面对同样的市场。 家庭劳动在门诺派教徒的假定相对成功的作用将通过记录基本的输入和输出数据进行研究。 将通过查阅地方记录（人口普查记录、商品、牲畜、合作社和推广报告）和参与者观察，研究社区组织和资源在家庭农场成败中的作用。 这一研究将有助于我们理解当地文化或种族背景在经济生活中的作用，同时也有助于我们理解家庭农场的成败因素，这是自杰斐逊时代以来美国一直关注的一个话题。

This project is one of a set of special awards to junior investigators, of small amounts of money to allow them to initiative a new research agenda. The study will involve twelve months of ethnographic research among Mennonite farmers moving from diverse eastern locations (mainly Pennsylvania) into Wisconsin and buying farms from local families who have given up on the struggle to make a living from agriculture. The PI will conduct participant observation among farming households, both Mennonite immigrants and local Wisconsin families who are selling out. The point of the study is to explain why Wisconsin (non-Mennonite) families give up farming while Mennonite families eagerly purchase the same farms and make a go of it while facing the same markets. The role of family labor in the presumed relative success of the Mennonites will be studied by recording basic input and output data. The role of community organizations and resources in the success and failure of family farms will be studied by consulting local records (census records, commodity, livestock, cooperative and extension reports) and through participant observation. The study will advance our understanding of the role of local culture or ethnic background in economic life, at the same time that it will illuminate our understanding the factors impacting on the success and failure of family farms, a topic of great concern in the US since Jeffersonian times.