Debt and Dispossession
Farm Loss in America's Heartland
211 pages
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4 halftones, 5 line drawings
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5-1/2 x 8-1/2
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© 2000
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.
"Dudley presents a subtle, insightful, and nuanced treatment of the rural 'community' itself, emphasizing its divisions and contradictions. . . . [A] very good and enlightening book. With Debt and Dispossession, Kathryn Dudley joins the ranks of such anthropologists as Jane Adams, Deborah Fink, and Sonya Salomon who are presently doing more than rural historians to illuminate the nature and texture of rural American society."—David Danbom, Rural History
"Dudley writes with rare skill and passion. This is a midstream account of America coming of age. Midwesterners are protagonists who may yet wrest a more satisfactory resolution, thanks to this superb contribution."—Deborah Fink, Annals of Iowa
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.
"Dudley presents a subtle, insightful, and nuanced treatment of the rural 'community' itself, emphasizing its divisions and contradictions. . . . [A] very good and enlightening book. With Debt and Dispossession, Kathryn Dudley joins the ranks of such anthropologists as Jane Adams, Deborah Fink, and Sonya Salomon who are presently doing more than rural historians to illuminate the nature and texture of rural American society."—David Danbom, Rural History
"Dudley writes with rare skill and passion. This is a midstream account of America coming of age. Midwesterners are protagonists who may yet wrest a more satisfactory resolution, thanks to this superb contribution."—Deborah Fink, Annals of Iowa
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
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
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