The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in Twentieth-Century America by Allan C. Carlson


The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
Title : The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0765805901
ISBN-10 : 9780765805904
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 233
Publication : First published March 17, 2000

The self-sufficiency and regional outlook of farm life characterized the United States until the Civil War period. With the triumph of the industrial North over the rural South, the expansion of urbanism, and the closing of the frontier, the agrarian sector became an economic and cultural minority. The social benefits of rural life--a sense of independence, commitment to democracy, an abundance of children, stable community life--were threatened. This volume examines the rise of a distinctive agrarian intellectual movement to combat these trends.The New Agrarian Mind, now in paperback, synthesizes the thought of twentieth-century agrarian writers. It weaves together discussions of major representative figures, such as Liberty Hyde Bailey, Carle Zimmerman, and Wendell Berry, with myth-shattering analyses of the movement's cultural diversity, intellectual influence, and ideological complexity. Collectively labeled the New Agrarians to distinguish them from the simpler Jeffersonianism of the nineteenth century, they shared a coherent set of goals that were at once socially conservative and economically radical.

The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in Twentieth-Century America Reviews

  • Andrew Figueiredo

    I always appreciate Allan Carlson's additions to American history from a decentralist perspective. Here, he goes through various agrarian thinkers of the 20th Century including Carle Zimmerman, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Ralph Borsodi, the Southern Agrarians, Herbert Agar, Luigi Ligutti, Wendell Berry, and more. He provides a sketch of each's life and career. Carlson draws common threads. Each believed in the importance of saving rural America. Similarly, their arguments often focused on stability and fertility. On this note, Carlson seems sympathetic.

    However, Carlson argues that at least through Ligutti and Berry, each thinker's focus on centralized education, transformative change of farmers themselves, scorn towards traditional religion, and faith in technology led them astray. I'm not convinced by his argument on this as applied to each thinker, although there's a strong argument that people like Borsodi and Bailey exemplified the bad side of these trends. Sometimes it feels like Carlson cherry-picks lines here or there to make his point, although he does nuance the argument with his noting that Ligutti and Berry found ways to reconcile their ideas.

    Overall, this is a nice quick history of agrarian thought last century, but with a not-fully convincing central argument about its weaknesses.

  • Ian

    While it is a good introduction to some key names and ideas in the New Agrarians, and the bibliography provides keys to further reading, Carlson is a deeply biased scholar whose observations must be treated with a high degree of skepticism.

  • Matt

    Solid review of 20th century Agrarianism and it's champions in the US. Thoughtful and perceptive.