Articles
“You’re a Bigger Man”: Technology and Agrarian Masculinity in Postwar America
by J. L. Anderson
American farmers of the postwar period reduced labor requirements for production through the use of new machines and chemicals. Farm work was increasingly man- agerial and less physical. Observers struggled with how to represent this businesslike and technocratic farmer, first promoting space age, push-button imagery and then the notion of the “farmer in the business suit,” before turning away from images of actual farm folk toward increasingly hyper-masculine paid models. This shift also corresponded with challenges to traditional masculinity, including the Cold War, the Farm Crisis, a proliferation of new masculinities, second-wave feminism, a growing number of women farm operators, and a new identity as a beleaguered mi- nority. By boosting the size and stature of farm men, advertisers reassured farmers that even during a period of rapid social and cultural change and one in which the physical requirements of farming declined, farmers remained strong.
The Rise and Decline of the Kerosene Kitchen: A Neglected Energy Transition in Rural America, 1870–1950
by Mark Aldrich
Beginning in the 1870s, kerosene stoves became fixtures in many farm kitchens, as households shifted from wood or coal to oil fuel. Surveys during the 1930s reveal that, outside of cities, oil was a far more common cooking fuel than gas. Yet the lit- erature on farm and rural women says little about this important energy transition before electricity and gas. For rural and farm households, where the alternative was coal or wood, oil offered significant benefits, and to farm women especially it was a godsend. Oil was cleaner, quicker, cooler, lighter, and more portable; it changed women’s work patterns and improved their economic status. Thus, focusing on the transition from wood and coal to electricity and gas in home heating and cooking misses a step. Moreover, as this story reveals, energy transitions differed between men and women and were contingent upon economic status and place of residence. Especially for women in rural and farm households, kerosene provided an import- ant bridge fuel to the newer age of gas and electricity. To ignore it is to ignore what was for many an important introduction to modern times.
Cultivating Leisure: Tourism, Progressive Agriculture, and Technologies of Landscape at Pinehurst, North Carolina, 1895–1935
by Michael Winslow
Agricultural science and technology were central elements in creating a tourist land- scape in the southeastern United States, at the Pinehurst resort, around the turn of the twentieth century. Pinehurst offers a case study for thinking about how much work, in terms of human labor, meaning-making, and natural resource use, goes into creating a place for recreation—and how agriculture extends beyond commod- ity crop production. The growth of golf turf on the poor soil of the Carolina sandhills region relied upon intensive resource use and an approximation of convertible hus- bandry, a system that was not widely prevalent in the Southeast.
No Longer Wild but “Wildstock”: Fox Farming in Twentieth-Century New Brunswick
by Ian J. Jesse
Canada experienced a surge of fur farming during the first half of the twentieth century to meet the demands of fashion. The practice was promoted as a relatively easy way in which rural people could earn great income. In the province of New Brunswick, where cash-earning opportunities were limited, many turned to raising foxes. The fox is typically a wild animal and cares for itself when left in its natu- ral habitat. In captivity, however, it required more attention. Farmers treated a wild animal like livestock and faced a range of challenges they needed to overcome if profiting from the animal’s fur had any chance of success. Farmers encountered difficulties in breeding, disease and parasites, and feeding. To help overcome these obstacles, farmers turned to modern scientific methods aided by the establishment of an experimental farm on Prince Edward Island. The farm produced and published a great deal of knowledge on the subject of raising foxes. But even if farmers could raise their animals from pup to pelt, great profits were not guaranteed because they also faced a volatile commodity market.
The Puerto Rican Connection: Recovering the “Cultural Triangle” in Global Histories of Agricultural Development
by Timothy W. Lorek
This essay revisits a 1947 article about race and colonial history in the Americas to uncover overlooked geographic and intellectual components of the emerging Green Revolution in agricultural technologies then in formation. It argues that Puerto Rico and the island’s agricultural and educational institutions served as critical sites of inter-hemispheric collaboration and convergence in agricultural science and technology with global implications. Focusing on the collaboration and careers of the article’s authors, the Puerto Rican polymath Carlos Chardón and the US geog- rapher Raymond Crist, this essay traces intellectual traditions of race and nation as early organizing principles in the social and political projects of agricultural development in the Caribbean that laid the foundations for the Green Revolution in Latin America.
Book Reviews
Featured Review
Other Reviews
Sleeper-Smith, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690–1792, by Kristalyn Shefveland
Bushman, The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Cultural History, by Benjamin R. Cohen
Saavedra, Pasadena Before the Roses: Race, Identity, and Land Use in Southern California, 1771–1890, by Warren C. Wood
Spengler III, Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods that We Eat, by Tiffany Earley-Spadoni
Bess, Routes of Compromise: Building Roads and Shaping the Nation in Mexico, 1917–1952, by Jesus Perez
Henson, Agrarian Revolt in the Sierra of Chihuahua, 1959–1965, by Marc Becker
Derr, The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt, by Katherine Blouin
Graham, Braided Waters: Environment and Society in Molokai, Hawaiʻi, by Hiʻilei Julia Hobart
Bivar, Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France, by Robert W. Lewis
Grossman, Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands, by Diane L. Krahe
Hightower, 1889: The Boomer Movement, the Land Run, and Early Oklahoma City, by Ginette Aley
Black, The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power, by Kristin L. Ahlberg
Baker, Bulldozer Revolutions: A Rural History of the Metropolitan South, by Tore C. Olsson
Riley, The Political History of American Food Aid: An Uneasy Benevolence, by Susan Levine
Hampton and Ontiveros, Copper Stain: ASARCO’s Legacy in El Paso, by Kent Curtis
Previous Issues
93.4 (Fall 2019)
93.3 (Summer 2019)
93.2 (Spring 2019)
93.1 (Winter 2019)