Doctoral Dissertation Research: Intentional Peasants: The Unexpected Persistence of Homesteading in Appalachia

BCS 0703373迈克尔·沃茨杰森·斯特兰奇有意农民：阿巴拉契亚地区意想不到的宅基地持续性小规模农村自给生产在美国许多地区是一种至关重要的持续实践。 尽管它的流行，这种当代宅基地几乎被忽视了在大众媒体和学术文献。 当代宅基地不是一个古怪和褪色的历史遗迹;它直接出现在当前的政治，经济和文化动态。 因此，它为许多关键的社会问题提供了一个极好的、未被使用的窗口。应用民族志和历史的方法，在阿巴拉契亚县在东部肯塔基州的宅基地密集的个案研究，这个博士论文的研究项目将检验两个假设。 首先，宅基地的推行，在某种程度上，作为对当地劳动力市场结构调整对工薪家庭影响的直接反应。虽然资本主义经济发展使广泛的物质繁荣成为可能，但资本主义固有的集中财产所有权在很大程度上排除了这种可能性的实现。资本主义劳动力市场越来越多地使美国各地的工人，特别是肯塔基州东部的工人，面临着长时间工作、工资下降、从事单调重复的工作、没有福利或工作保障的前景。在某种程度上，定居是限制人们对就业市场依赖的一种策略。简而言之，这是一种未被承认的劳工激进主义形式。第二个假设是从观察开始的，即肯塔基州东部的自耕农被分为两个亚文化群体，乡下人和回归土地的人。这两个群体是“乡下人”和“嬉皮士”、左翼和右翼，或者最近的红州和蓝州之间的全国性显著区别的地方实例。 尽管这一点被广泛误解，但这是一个真实的区别，它在新自由主义候选人的选举成功和创造对劳工的敌对政策氛围方面发挥了关键作用。 研究人员将证明，正如它发生在肯塔基州东部，这种亚文化的区别不是农村或城市的起源，家庭背景，或社会经济地位的产物，但在一个群体的口头和积极的识字在另一组的卓越。尽管被忽视，但宅基地正是批判社会学者在过去几十年里卓有成效地强调的那种非精英社会行动。作为一个被忽视的社会运动，宅基地提供了一个无与伦比的机会，使人们看到和理解1）占主导地位的政治经济趋势对工人家庭的影响，2）有多少农村家庭以创造性和意想不到的方式应对这些影响，以及3）新自由主义秩序的文化基础，许多人被迫转向宅基地，而其他的抵抗途径被排除在外。该项目将为当代美国和资本主义全球现代性的研究增添一个新的篇章，为创新的农村经济和社会发展政策开辟新的领域。它还可能有助于为民间社会行为者的社会正义努力提供信息或调整其方向。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立的研究生涯。

BCS 0703373Michael WattsJason StrangeIntentional Peasants: the Unexpected Persistence of Homesteading in AppalachiaSmall-scale rural subsistence production is a vital, ongoing practice in many regions of the United States. Despite its prevalence, such contemporary homesteading has been virtually overlooked in both the popular media and in the academic literature. Contemporary homesteading is not a quaint and fading historical vestige; it emerges directly from current political, economic and cultural dynamics. Thus, it offers an excellent, and unused, window into numerous key social issues. Applying ethnographic and historical methods to an intensive case-study of homesteading in an Appalachian county in eastern Kentucky, this doctoral dissertation research project will examine two hypotheses. First, homesteading is pursued, in part, as a direct response to the impacts on working families of restructuring in local labor markets. While capitalist economic development has made widespread material prosperity possible, the concentrated property ownership intrinsic to capitalism has substantially precluded the realization of that possibility. The capitalist labor market increasingly confronts workers throughout the US, and particularly in eastern Kentucky, with the prospect of working long hours for declining wages, performing dull, repetitive tasks without benefits or job security. Homesteading is, in part, a strategy for limiting one's dependence upon this job market. It is, in short, an unrecognized form of labor activism. The second hypothesis begins from the observation that homesteaders in eastern Kentucky are divided into two sub-cultural groups, the country-folks and the back-to-the-landers. These two groups are local instantiations of a nationally prominent distinction between "hicks" and "hippies", right and left, or, more recently, red state and blue state. Even though it has been widely misunderstood, this is a real distinction that has played a key role in the electoral success of neo-liberal candidates and in the creation of a hostile policy climate for labor. The investigators will demonstrate that, as it occurs in eastern Kentucky, this sub-cultural distinction is not a product of rural or urban origins, family background, or socio-economic status, but of the preeminence of orality in one group and of active literacy in the other. Although overlooked, homesteading is precisely the kind of non-elite social action that critical social scholars have productively emphasized over the past several decades. As a disregarded social movement, homesteading provides an unparalleled opportunity to bring into view and understand 1) the impacts on working families of dominant political-economic trends, 2) how many rural families are responding to these impacts in creative and unexpected ways, as well as 3) the cultural foundations of a neo-liberal order in which many people are forced to turn to homesteading, while other avenues of resistance are foreclosed. This project will add a fundamental new chapter to research on the contemporary US and capitalist global modernity, opening novel terrain for innovative rural economic and social development policy. It may also help inform or reorient the social-justice efforts of civil society-based actors. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.