In the US, an emergent cultural icon of resistant agriculture, the agrarian heroine, attests to growing popular interest in first-generation women farmers. Drawing on practice theory, historical geographical materialism, intersubjective ethnography and feminist scholarship, this ethnography focusses on three first-generation women farmers growing organic vegetable crops for the Chicago market, with critical attention to the body, the land and their uses. By applying permaculture's theory of ‘the edge’ anthropologically, this study explores the work these women do to cultivate relational spaces that promote fluidity, diversity and solidarity in opposition to industrial agriculture and the homogenising forces of globalisation. The portraits that emerge problematise popular representations of first-generation women farmers.
AdamsJ., 1991. “Woman's place is in the home”: the ideological devaluation of farm women's work. Anthropology of Work Review, 12(4), pp. 2–11.
2.
AdkinsL., and SkeggsB., eds., 2004. Feminism After Bourdieu.Oxford: Blackwell.
3.
BellamyD., 2011. Preface. In BellG., ed. The Permaculture May: Practical Steps to Create a Self-Sustaining World.White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, p. 15.
4.
BerryW., 1996 [1977]. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture.San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
5.
BourdieuP., 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
BrahinskyR., SasserJ., and Minkoff-ZernL., 2014. Race space and nature: an introduction and critique. Antipode, 46(5), pp. 1135–1152.
8.
BregendahlC., and HoffmanM., 2010. Women, Land, and Legacy: Change Agents and Agency Change in Iowa: Evaluation Results.Ames: Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
9.
CarolanM.S., 2012. The Sociology of Food and Agriculture.New York: Routledge.
10.
CaseyJ.G., 2009. A New Heartland Women, Modernity, and the Agrarian Ideal in America.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DeLindL.B., 2014. Coming to terms with urban agriculture: a self-critique. In DomingosN.M., SobralJ.M., and WestH.G., eds. Food Between the Country and the City: Ethnographies of a Changing Global Foodscape.London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 91–106.
18.
DesjarlaisR., and ThroopC.J., 2011. Phenomenological approaches in anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, pp. 87–102.
19.
EnglandP., 2010. The gender revolution: uneven and stalled. Gender and Society, 24(2), pp. 149–166.
20.
GhanemH., and StamoulisK., 2011. Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap.Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
GuthmanJ., 1998. Regulating meaning, appropriating nature: the codification of California organic agriculture. Antipode, 30(2), pp. 135–154.
23.
GuthmanJ., 2015. From forests to styrofoam: the changing socio-nature of strawberry production. Conference paper presented at 2015 AFHVS/ASFS Conference: Bridging the Past, Cultivation the Future, 24–28 June. Chatham University, Pittsburgh.
24.
HarawayD.J., 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.London: Free Association.
25.
HarveyD., 2000. Spaces of Hope.Berkeley: University of California Press.
26.
HolzerS., 2011. Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening.White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing.
27.
HooksB., 1984. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center.Cambridge: South End Press.
28.
HoppeR., and KorbP., 2013. Characteristics of Women Farm Operators and Their Farms, EIB-111.Washington DC: United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
29.
JackZ.M., 2012. The Midwest Farmer's Daughter: In Search of an American Icon.West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.
30.
JacksonM., 1998. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
31.
KaysingB., 1971. The Ex-Urbanites Complete & Illustrated Easy-Does-It First-Time Farmer's Guide: A Useful Book.San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books.
32.
LamontM., and MolnárV., 2002. The study of boundaries in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, pp. 167–95.
33.
LeopoldA., 1989 [1949]. A Sand County Almanac: and Sketches Here and There. Special commemorative edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
34.
LobaoL., and MeyerK., 1995. Economic decline, gender, and labor flexibility in family-based enterprises: Midwestern farming in the 1980s. Social Forces, 74(2), pp. 575–608.
35.
LobaoL., and MeyerK., 2001. The great agricultural transition: crisis, change, and social consequences of twentieth century US farming. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, pp. 103–124.
McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, 1987. 42 U.S.C. 11411-11412, July 22. Washington DC: United States Government Publishing Office.
38.
McNayL., 2004. Agency and experience: gender as a lived relation. In AdkinsL., and SkeggsB., eds. Feminism After Bourdieu.Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 175–190.
39.
Merleau-PontyM., 1962. Phenomenology of Perception.London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
40.
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, 2014a. 2012 Census drilldown: beginning farmers and ranchers.National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, 28 May. Available at: http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/2012census-bfr-drilldown/ [last accessed 29 May 2014].
41.
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, 2014b. 2012 Census drilldown: minority & women farmers. National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, 3 June. Available at: http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/census-drilldown-sda/ [last accessed 4 June 2014].
42.
NearingH., 1990 [1970]. The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living.New York: Schocken Books.
43.
OrtnerS., 1984. Theory in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26(1), pp. 126–166.
44.
OrtnerS., 1996. Making Gender.Boston: Beacon Press.
SmithK.K., 2014. W.E.B. Du Bois: Racial inequality and alienation from nature. In CannavòP.F., and LaneJ.H., eds. Engaging Nature: Environmentalism and the Political Theory Canon.Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 223–228.
54.
SouléJ., CarreD., and JacksonW., 1990. Ecological impact of modern agriculture. In CarrollC.R., VandermeerJ.H., and RossetP., eds. Agroecology.New York: McGraw Hill, pp. 165–188.
55.
SpearsT.B., 2005. Chicago Dreaming: Midwesterners and the City, 1871–1919.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
56.
Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern, 1995. Documentary film. Directed by S. Ascher and J. Jordan. USA: West City Films.
57.
TsingA., 2012. Unruly edges: mushrooms as companion species. Environmental Humanities, 1, pp. 141–154.
58.
TwittyM., 2015. Afroculinaria. Available at: http://afroculinaria.com/ [last accessed 30 June 2015].
59.
United. States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 2014. 2012 Census of Agriculture: United States Summary and State, AC-12-A-51.Washington DC: United States Department of Agriculture.
60.
United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA-NASS), 2016a. Charts and maps: corn: planted acreage by county. USDA-NASS, 21 April. Available at: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Crops_County/cr-pl.php [last accessed 1 November 2016].
61.
United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA-NASS), 2016b. Charts and maps: soybeans: planted acreage by county. USDA-NASS, 21 April. Available at: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Crops_County/sb-pl.php [last accessed 1 November 2016].
62.
van der PloegJ.D., 1993. Potatoes and knowledge. In HobartM., ed. The Growth of Ignorance: An Anthropological Critique of Development.London: Routledge, pp. 209–227.
