Agrarianism

Agrarian Diversity

Within this umbrella description, however, many varied strands of agrarianism have existed and have emerged more recently. Herein lie the multiple paradoxes of agrarianism: The term has carried a number of seemingly dichotomous associations, namely, that it fosters both strong communities but also rugged individualism, champions conservative autonomy as well as leftist populism, and was born of antigovernment (or specifically antifederalist) politics yet is also at the bedrock of various national patriotisms. It has been lauded as the pinnacle of self-reliance and independence, even as others argue that agrarianism is the humble recognition of one's dependence on the land and interdependence with neighbors. Agrarianism has been used to justify the primacy of private property as well as also the value of communal land tenure, exemplified in the persistent traditions of the Oaxacan ejidos to the ayllus of Quechua Peru and Bolivia.

Agrarianism has emerged again recently with these paradoxes renewed: It both speaks for the current gourmet of slow food as well as the rights of subsistence farmers stigmatized as “underdeveloped,” “Third World,” or poor. Agrarianism conjures extreme idealism and pragmatism, and although some have been accused of patriarchal nativism, many eco-feminists now embrace the name.

Agrarian Origins

Before and beyond agrarianism as a movement, however, was and remains the use of the term agrarian as an adjective. Agrarian societies are agrocentric and often practice ancient agricultural traditions indigenous to that ecosystem. Such communities have cultivated their lands according to agrarian calendars for millennia and have visual and musical artistic traditions correlating to the staple crops and local herbs. Myriad indigenous agrarian traditions around the world ground themselves in locally specific cosmovisions—each with respective intricate agriculturally oriented metaphysics.

Although thoroughly global in scope, within agrarianism's European lineages, Hesiod and Virgil remain enduring icons, inspiring the agrarian ideals of Thomas Jefferson, who integrated the yeoman farmer prototype into the founding literature and laws of the United States. Other prominent agrarians include the “twelve southerners” who in 1930 penned I'll Take My Stand: An Agrarian Manifesto. Writing in retaliation against what they considered the dehumanizing effects of postwar, northern industrialization, these writers [Page 5]condemned modernity, urbanity, Fordism, the Enlightenment, and the tyranny of science, factories, museums, and automobiles—all of which needlessly sacrificed the finer and more meaningful aspects of life such as craftsmanship, independent thought, silences, religion, the natural world, leisure, community, and the cyclical rhythms of agricultural life. Many of the arguments put forth in these essays—some precursors to current sustainability discourses—have been overshadowed by their elitist and racist context, wherein the lauded leisure and genteel landscape came at the expense of their disenfranchised, exploited, and unmentioned African American servants.

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