Synopses & Reviews
By the winner of the Margaret Mead Award of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology
The farm crisis of the 1980s was the worst economic disaster to strike rural Americans since the Depression. Thousands of farmers lost their land and homes, irrevocably altering their communities and, as Kathryn Marie Dudley shows, giving rise to devastating social trauma that continues to affect farmers today. Through interviews with residents of an agricultural county in western Minnesota, Dudley provides an incisive account of the moral dynamics of loss, dislocation, capitalism, and solidarity in farming communities.
Synopsis
Winner of the Margaret Mead Award of the Society for Applied Anthropology The farm crisis of the 1980s was the worst economic disaster to strike rural America since the Depression-thousands of farmers lost their land and homes, irrevocably altering their communities and, as Kathryn Marie Dudley shows, giving rise to devastating social trauma that continues to affect farmers today. Through interviews with residents of an agricultural county in western Minnesota, Dudley provides an incisive account of the moral dynamics of loss, dislocation, capitalism, and solidarity in farming communities.
About the Author
Kathryn Marie Dudley is professor of American studies and anthropology at Yale University.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Fragile Community
2. Farm Crisis
3. Moral Economy
4. Primal Scenes
5. White Crosses
6. Open Secrets
7. Social Trauma
8. The Last Farmer
Appendix: County Profile
Notes
Index