- Email: [email protected]
Changing works: visions of a lost agriculture
Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 18 (2002) 485–492
data that hardly exist and are not yet available in both countries. In that sense, one would argue, the book rather opens than summarises the investigation efforts focusing on agrarian change in East and Central Europe. And what seems to be even more important is that the book invites to such an undertaking not only
489
economists but also the representatives of other social disciplines. K. Gorlach Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University, Crakow, Poland
PII: S 0 7 4 3 - 0 1 6 7 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 8 - 4
Changing works: visions of a lost agriculture Douglas Harper; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2001, 302pp., price $35.00 hardback In Changing Works, sociologist Douglas Harper explores the practices and rhythms of agriculture in the North Country, a dairying region near Potsdam, New York. It is an area he knows well, having lived in a farmhouse there while he taught at SUNY-Potsdam, and he uses his relationships with his farmer neighbors as the starting point for his study. Although the book is based on interviews with contemporary dairy farmers, its main focus is actually the period during the 1940s and early 1950s, which Harper evokes through a series of photographs from the Standard Oil of New Jersey project headed by Roy Stryker after he left his more famous position directing documentary photography at the Farm Security Administration during the New Deal. Using a process known as photo elicitation, Harper asks his informants to comment on the scenes in the pictures and remember agriculture during the years when they were young men and women. The result is an engaging and humane portrait of farm life during a particularly important period of transformation. Changing Works is a physically beautiful and accessible book, primarily because the striking photographic images are reproduced wonderfully, and because Harper lets his subjects’ voices emerge without imposing too much of his own scholarly or theoretical agenda. The title, Changing Works, is actually something of a double entendre. On the one hand, it is the term used in the region for swapping labor, a custom that was still common during the period immediately after World War II that Harper’s informants were asked to discuss. On the other hand, it also connotes the very real changes in agricultural technology and practices that began during that period and ultimately undermined that older system of neighborly exchange and the kind of rural community that it was embedded in. This kind of transformation and its social consequences are wellknown themes in rural history, but through his combination of photographs and first-hand reminiscence, Harper adds new richness and detail to a familiar story.
The chapters each deal with a particular crop, technology, or farming operations, and include changes in the use of horses and tractors, haying, oats and corn, and women’s work on the farm. In many ways, developments in corn cultivation epitomize the trajectory of Harper’s narrative. The shift to hybrid corn allowed farmers to grow more of the crop and feed larger numbers of cows. At the same time, the adoption of herbicides lessened labor constraints by obviating the need to weed, and this also permitted bigger herds. So, too, did the development of silos and ensilage, which meant that cows could eat more of corn plant, including the stalks. The actual task of filling the silo, however, still required cooperation from the neighbors because it took 18 men two or three days to complete the task. The invention of the field corn chopper, however, made this practice obsolete and allowed three men to do the same work in only one day. Later innovations such as bulk tanks for storing and shipping milk and milking parlors instead of stanchion barns continued the trend towards larger and larger dairy operations that rationalized production by substituting capital and technology for labor and were increasingly separated from the informal cooperative ethos and characterized the earlier era of changing works. Harper has read widely in rural history, and he uses that work to good effect. There are, however, some unfortunate oversights. His discussions of threshing, and of changing works more generally, would benefit from a consideration of J. Sanford Rikoon’s fine book on the history and sociology of threshing rings in the Midwest. More to the point are folklorist Greg Sharrow’s fine ethnography of contemporary dairy farmers in Vermont and the numerous radio interviews and museum exhibits on the same topic that he produced for the Vermont Folklife Center. In a related vein, Harper could also do more with the photographs themselves. Roy Stryker had a long-standing and deep interest in the history of American agriculture that dated from his days as an assistant to economist Rexford Tugwell and agricultural historian Harry Carman at Columbia University, and his shooting scripts for the FSA photographs promoted an idealized vision of rural America. Although Harper elicits his subjects’ reactions
490
Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 18 (2002) 485–492
to the photographs and analyzes the images in terms of what they imply about gender, he does not subject them to enough critical inquiry to unpack their marked tendency towards agrarian romanticism. Finally, Changing Works, is so tightly focused on the work of farming, that certain basic questions about the history and sociology of the region go unaddressed. The New York milkshed was the scene of bitter organizational battles throughout the first half of the twentieth century. These fights first resulted in the creation of the Dairymen’s League and then in conflicts between the League and more left-leaning farmers’ organizations during the Great Depression. What echoes did these struggles have in the post-war period that Harper discusses? What are the political dimensions of the present day community? Although Harper makes much of the difference between factory-like dairy farms and
craft-like dairy farms in the North Country today, he does not explore the social or cultural bases of these differences. The one new small dairy operation that he mentions is run by recent Vietnamese immigrants. During the earlier period, many Catholic immigrants also moved into previously all-Protestant areas in upstate New York and began farming. What effect did this diversity have on social relations and the practice of changing works? These caveats aside, Changing Works remains a most interesting study that will be a valuable addition to the libraries of all who are concerned with the changing dimensions of modern agriculture. Hal S. Barron Department of History, Harvey Mudd College and the Claremont Graduate University, USA
PII: S 0 7 4 3 - 0 1 6 7 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 9 - 6
Managing Scotland’s environment Charles Warren, Edinburgh University Press, 2002, xxii+410 pp., price d24.99 paperback, ISBN 0-74861313-7 Is a book to be judged by its cover? Probably not, but the cover to Warren’s Managing Scotland’s Environment is a revealing place to start, and I’m sure the author would not mind me saying so. We are presented with a people-less Highland scene of mountain, native pine and loch, the former two perfectly reflected in the last. Acidopholous vegetation, including birch saplings, are silhouetted in the foreground. There is no industry or intensive agriculture. To many eyes, the term ‘wilderness’ would seem entirely appropriate. Such is the illusion of Scotland’s environment, and such is the author’s challenge of presenting the reality rather than the myth. Warren’s book is extremely timely and welcome. The author graciously acknowledges the contribution of my (edited) book in 1988, and quite rightly notes that it ‘has now been largely left behind by the speed and extent of subsequent change’ (p. xi). Several times I have contemplated the possibility of editing a completely revised version, but events have been moving too swiftly to permit a degree of ‘future-proofing’. However, with Scotland’s own Parliament establishing its authority and a distinctive policy framework stabilising, the time is now just right, and Warren has seized the moment. The book is wide ranging, covering key land uses, debates and policy measures, together with principles and practices of environmental management. It is, to all intents and purposes, sufficiently compre-
hensive to remain the definitive text on the subject for a decade. Grounded in recent environmental history, the book takes an appropriately long-term perspective on forces of change and human interventions. A central theme is that, despite containing some of the most awe-inspiring and least populated landscapes of Western Europe, Scotland’s environment is nonetheless inescapably cultural, and no manager of its physical or ecological assets can succeed without an understanding of its profound historical, social and economic legacies. Warren endeavours to provide a balanced account, systematically working his way through the core elements of the natural and political environments. Thus, Part I provides an overview of the factors which have shaped the land, sketching out the interplay between natural and human pressures. This is followed by a re! sume! of the policy scene, describing the principal features of governance and land use planning. Part II addresses the land and the vexed issues of its ownership, husbandry and conservation, together with wide-ranging views of water and wildlife resources. Part III provides thematic and case study coverage of some dominant issues in environmental management, namely, access, the native-exotic wildlife debate, and integrated land use. Part IV explores the ethical and conceptual basis of decision-making, whilst Part V concludes with a prospectus for future decision-making. The text is detailed and extremely well documented. It betrays its basis in lecture notes, but this is no great criticism as it evidently draws on a very successful series of lectures. Its emphasis also reflects the physical geography background of its author. Those hoping for
data that hardly exist and are not yet available in both countries. In that sense, one would argue, the book rather opens than summarises the investigation efforts focusing on agrarian change in East and Central Europe. And what seems to be even more important is that the book invites to such an undertaking not only
489
economists but also the representatives of other social disciplines. K. Gorlach Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University, Crakow, Poland
PII: S 0 7 4 3 - 0 1 6 7 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 8 - 4
Changing works: visions of a lost agriculture Douglas Harper; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2001, 302pp., price $35.00 hardback In Changing Works, sociologist Douglas Harper explores the practices and rhythms of agriculture in the North Country, a dairying region near Potsdam, New York. It is an area he knows well, having lived in a farmhouse there while he taught at SUNY-Potsdam, and he uses his relationships with his farmer neighbors as the starting point for his study. Although the book is based on interviews with contemporary dairy farmers, its main focus is actually the period during the 1940s and early 1950s, which Harper evokes through a series of photographs from the Standard Oil of New Jersey project headed by Roy Stryker after he left his more famous position directing documentary photography at the Farm Security Administration during the New Deal. Using a process known as photo elicitation, Harper asks his informants to comment on the scenes in the pictures and remember agriculture during the years when they were young men and women. The result is an engaging and humane portrait of farm life during a particularly important period of transformation. Changing Works is a physically beautiful and accessible book, primarily because the striking photographic images are reproduced wonderfully, and because Harper lets his subjects’ voices emerge without imposing too much of his own scholarly or theoretical agenda. The title, Changing Works, is actually something of a double entendre. On the one hand, it is the term used in the region for swapping labor, a custom that was still common during the period immediately after World War II that Harper’s informants were asked to discuss. On the other hand, it also connotes the very real changes in agricultural technology and practices that began during that period and ultimately undermined that older system of neighborly exchange and the kind of rural community that it was embedded in. This kind of transformation and its social consequences are wellknown themes in rural history, but through his combination of photographs and first-hand reminiscence, Harper adds new richness and detail to a familiar story.
The chapters each deal with a particular crop, technology, or farming operations, and include changes in the use of horses and tractors, haying, oats and corn, and women’s work on the farm. In many ways, developments in corn cultivation epitomize the trajectory of Harper’s narrative. The shift to hybrid corn allowed farmers to grow more of the crop and feed larger numbers of cows. At the same time, the adoption of herbicides lessened labor constraints by obviating the need to weed, and this also permitted bigger herds. So, too, did the development of silos and ensilage, which meant that cows could eat more of corn plant, including the stalks. The actual task of filling the silo, however, still required cooperation from the neighbors because it took 18 men two or three days to complete the task. The invention of the field corn chopper, however, made this practice obsolete and allowed three men to do the same work in only one day. Later innovations such as bulk tanks for storing and shipping milk and milking parlors instead of stanchion barns continued the trend towards larger and larger dairy operations that rationalized production by substituting capital and technology for labor and were increasingly separated from the informal cooperative ethos and characterized the earlier era of changing works. Harper has read widely in rural history, and he uses that work to good effect. There are, however, some unfortunate oversights. His discussions of threshing, and of changing works more generally, would benefit from a consideration of J. Sanford Rikoon’s fine book on the history and sociology of threshing rings in the Midwest. More to the point are folklorist Greg Sharrow’s fine ethnography of contemporary dairy farmers in Vermont and the numerous radio interviews and museum exhibits on the same topic that he produced for the Vermont Folklife Center. In a related vein, Harper could also do more with the photographs themselves. Roy Stryker had a long-standing and deep interest in the history of American agriculture that dated from his days as an assistant to economist Rexford Tugwell and agricultural historian Harry Carman at Columbia University, and his shooting scripts for the FSA photographs promoted an idealized vision of rural America. Although Harper elicits his subjects’ reactions
490
Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 18 (2002) 485–492
to the photographs and analyzes the images in terms of what they imply about gender, he does not subject them to enough critical inquiry to unpack their marked tendency towards agrarian romanticism. Finally, Changing Works, is so tightly focused on the work of farming, that certain basic questions about the history and sociology of the region go unaddressed. The New York milkshed was the scene of bitter organizational battles throughout the first half of the twentieth century. These fights first resulted in the creation of the Dairymen’s League and then in conflicts between the League and more left-leaning farmers’ organizations during the Great Depression. What echoes did these struggles have in the post-war period that Harper discusses? What are the political dimensions of the present day community? Although Harper makes much of the difference between factory-like dairy farms and
craft-like dairy farms in the North Country today, he does not explore the social or cultural bases of these differences. The one new small dairy operation that he mentions is run by recent Vietnamese immigrants. During the earlier period, many Catholic immigrants also moved into previously all-Protestant areas in upstate New York and began farming. What effect did this diversity have on social relations and the practice of changing works? These caveats aside, Changing Works remains a most interesting study that will be a valuable addition to the libraries of all who are concerned with the changing dimensions of modern agriculture. Hal S. Barron Department of History, Harvey Mudd College and the Claremont Graduate University, USA
PII: S 0 7 4 3 - 0 1 6 7 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 9 - 6
Managing Scotland’s environment Charles Warren, Edinburgh University Press, 2002, xxii+410 pp., price d24.99 paperback, ISBN 0-74861313-7 Is a book to be judged by its cover? Probably not, but the cover to Warren’s Managing Scotland’s Environment is a revealing place to start, and I’m sure the author would not mind me saying so. We are presented with a people-less Highland scene of mountain, native pine and loch, the former two perfectly reflected in the last. Acidopholous vegetation, including birch saplings, are silhouetted in the foreground. There is no industry or intensive agriculture. To many eyes, the term ‘wilderness’ would seem entirely appropriate. Such is the illusion of Scotland’s environment, and such is the author’s challenge of presenting the reality rather than the myth. Warren’s book is extremely timely and welcome. The author graciously acknowledges the contribution of my (edited) book in 1988, and quite rightly notes that it ‘has now been largely left behind by the speed and extent of subsequent change’ (p. xi). Several times I have contemplated the possibility of editing a completely revised version, but events have been moving too swiftly to permit a degree of ‘future-proofing’. However, with Scotland’s own Parliament establishing its authority and a distinctive policy framework stabilising, the time is now just right, and Warren has seized the moment. The book is wide ranging, covering key land uses, debates and policy measures, together with principles and practices of environmental management. It is, to all intents and purposes, sufficiently compre-
hensive to remain the definitive text on the subject for a decade. Grounded in recent environmental history, the book takes an appropriately long-term perspective on forces of change and human interventions. A central theme is that, despite containing some of the most awe-inspiring and least populated landscapes of Western Europe, Scotland’s environment is nonetheless inescapably cultural, and no manager of its physical or ecological assets can succeed without an understanding of its profound historical, social and economic legacies. Warren endeavours to provide a balanced account, systematically working his way through the core elements of the natural and political environments. Thus, Part I provides an overview of the factors which have shaped the land, sketching out the interplay between natural and human pressures. This is followed by a re! sume! of the policy scene, describing the principal features of governance and land use planning. Part II addresses the land and the vexed issues of its ownership, husbandry and conservation, together with wide-ranging views of water and wildlife resources. Part III provides thematic and case study coverage of some dominant issues in environmental management, namely, access, the native-exotic wildlife debate, and integrated land use. Part IV explores the ethical and conceptual basis of decision-making, whilst Part V concludes with a prospectus for future decision-making. The text is detailed and extremely well documented. It betrays its basis in lecture notes, but this is no great criticism as it evidently draws on a very successful series of lectures. Its emphasis also reflects the physical geography background of its author. Those hoping for