Agrarianism

Agrarianism is a philosophy of society and politics that stresses the primacy of family farming, widespread property ownership, and political decentralization. These tenets are typically justified in terms of how they serve to cultivate moral character and to develop the full and responsible person. Many proponents of agrarianism bear a reverent affection toward nature (understood as natural phenomena or as God's creation), respect tradition and experience, distrust ideological systems of thought, and regard skeptically what they perceive as the pretensions of science and technology. By attaching individuals to nature, the agrarian suggests that our labor can enhance life; by bonding individuals to the rooted and stable associations of family and locale, we may experience, in a nonacquisitive [Page 49]way, the goods of a grounded community, ...