The notable African-American intellectual, James Baldwin, wrote frequently during the middle of the twentieth century about the social processes by which the "new" immigrants gradually became American. In his estimation, the new immigrants were seduced by the allure of white supremacy as they increasingly loss contact with land and with community. Regimented into the disciplines of industrial work, and having loss previous forms of independence and intimate relationships with land and soil, the new immigrants found white supremacy as the ideal method to gain back the illusion of control in their lives. As Baldwin sees it, white supremacy itself became a confining "factory" for the new immigrants without them even knowing it.
I point to Baldwin's work because it offers us an interesting angle for understanding the social transformations that helped lead to the Dust Bowl in the Southern Plains. Notably, many observers have pointed to this late-nineteenth-century development of American laborers and farmers gradually losing their sense of independence and connections to the land as they were incorporated into industrial and wage-labor sectors. Karita had noted the "suitcase farmers"--who came to the Great Plains to exploit the land but not make a home there-- in her previous post and I want to expand on it here.
Did the farmers of the Southern Plains lose a connection with the land? If they did, as Baldwin suggests about the new immigrants, what did the farmers embrace in order to gain some measure of control over their lives? In the drive to overproduce in excess and overuse the land, did farmers lose a sense of having something more than just capital invested in the landscape? What happens when we, as human beings, only see the land as potential capital?
I saw a really cool exhibit a few years back at the Hirshhorn in D.C. dealing with environmental issues in the west. An artist named John Gerrard created one of the exhibit's piece. He based his work from a single photo taken during the Dust Bowl and made a 3D video of a dust storm approaching. I think the work would help us get in the zone for our reading, so I am including a link to a YouTube video of the work, in addition to a description of it on the artist's website.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvv4ddH3O2s
http://www.johngerrard.net/index.php?sub1=2&wid=15
Very cool stuff. Thanks Brian.
ReplyDeleteI think to a certain extent the farmers of the Southern Plains did lose a connection with the land, or perhaps they didn't lose the connection, but it was significantly altered into a more materialistic connection. Facilitating this were new technologies, like the tractor. I think these new technologies also allowed farmers to feel as if they had some semblance of control over their lives and their relationship with the land--they could now more easily make the land submit to the farmers' perceived wants/needs. In the Adam Rome reading there is a quote which I think effectively describes a large aspect of this new relationship with the land: "Love of nature depended on conquest of nature" (448). The new technologies allowed American farmers to conquer the land, but the "love" of the land was more of an appreciation for what the land could produce, rather than geniune admiration of the land without its yields. In this sense, I think farmers did lose a sense of having more than just capital invested in the land, though not completely. Their entire lives also depended on the land and the productivity of it, so their livelihood was also invested in the land (but that still relies on the amount of capital it can generate, so I guess it's a fine line).
ReplyDeleteWhen we only see land as potential capital the risk runs extremely high for us to take advantage of the land and then over-exploit it, depleting it of valuable minerals and rendering it useless within a few years, like we saw in the South with tobacco and cotton. The considerations of the land's health are essentially put on the back burner in order to capitalize on the opportunity to make money.
Leah,
ReplyDeleteYou made some very good points regarding the new technologies that were available to the farmers and enhanced their abilities to overproduce.
My understanding of suitcase farmers was that they had other means of income, so the dust bowl did not affect suitcase farmers to the extent as it did other farmers who lived within the dust bowl region. Suitcase farmers were also profiting from the government programs more than the local farmer who couldn't afford to stay in the area and continue farming.
Karita--
ReplyDeleteThe suitcase farmers certainly did have other income, thus were not wholly dependent on farming. In one way, think of them as carpetbagging farmers. They arrived to the Southern Plains, renting land and equipment, and then waited to harvest in order to turn a profit. I highlighted them as a way to perhaps get at this idea of not having something invested in the land (beyond pure conceptions of profit).
Leah and Karita--
Why do you think farmers are not able to see the long-term consequences of their practices? Are they so blinded by profits or is there something else to it? It might be similar to why average Americans do not want to face the long term implications of climate change.
I'm not sure that the problem is that the farmers couldn't see the long-term consequences. I think most of them probably knew that there were long-term consequences to their actions and either chose to ignore them for the sake of profiting first, or thought that the ramifications of their actions wouldn't appear in the near future. So yes, I think many of them were blinded by profits and their own more immediate needs rather than the environment's. There are also is the possibility that some of the farmers simply didn't think there would be consequences--not necessarily ignorance...I'm not really sure how to articulate it though. Like the farmers knew there was a possibility of long-term consequences but didn't think anything would actually happen. Kind of like my Dad--he's convinced that climate change isn't happening and that all scientific evidence of it has been fabricated.
ReplyDelete