Thompson - The agrarian vision sustainability and environmental ethics

This book is a follow-up to my book The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics. In response to an invitation from Norman Wirzba and Stephen Wrinn, I assembled a collection of mostly previously published essays and received extremely helpful comments from University Press of Kentucky reviewers. The result bears little resemblance to that original collection. Several proposed chapters were dropped altogether, and two totally new ones were written. Most of the other chapters have been so thoroughly revised and amended as to constitute new works. But assembling and revising those essays took me back to some that had been written more than twenty years ago. I fear that many of the individuals who helped me with those articles have now faded from memory. But I can name several colleagues who have been frequent interlocutors and have helped shape my thinking on sustainability and agrarian ideas for many years. Foremost are Richard Haynes and Jeffrey Burkhardt, fellow conspirators since the beginning of the quest to invent something called agricultural ethics. At about the same time, I met five people from the rural social sciences who became great friends and had a tremendous and continuing influence on my thought. Three of them, Bill Browne, Fred Buttel, and Glenn L. Johnson, have passed on in recent years. Thankfully, I continue to enjoy my interactions with Larry Busch and Kate Clancy. More recent colleagues who have been informal critics of my work include Gary Comstock, Laura Westra, Clark Wolf, Rob Streiffer, Jennifer Welchman, Bryan Norton, Ben Mepham, Michiel Korthals, Peter Sande, and Ben Minteer. Colleagues who have subjected my work to useful criticism in print include Fred Buttel and Larry Busch, as well as Kathryn George, Mora Campbell, Eric Freyfogle, and Carolyn Raffensperger.

This project really got under way in connection with a National Science Foundation grant awarded in 1992 when I was on the faculty at Texas A&M University. I worked closely with a group of colleagues there in the early stages, and each of them is responsible for some part of my current thinking on sustainability. They are, in alphabetical order, Harry Cralle, Wesley Dean, Bruce Dickson, Susan Gilbertz, Adolf Gunderson, Thomas Hilde, Jimmy Killingsworth, Alex MacIntosh, Tarla Rae Peterson, Gary Varner, and Don Vietor. Additional financial support was provided by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation through its gift of funds to endow the W. K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food, and Community Ethics at Michigan State University. In addition to anonymous reviewers, the manuscript was read (at various stages in its development) by MSU colleagues Sandra Batie and David Wright. All these reviewers made exceedingly helpful suggestions, though I must admit I could not incorporate everyone in the final text. Invaluable technical assistance was provided by Ellen Link, Linda Lotz, and Julie Eckinger. I, of course, maintain responsibility for any remaining flaws.

Although all the previously published materials in this book were extensively revised, I would like to thank the original publishers for permission to reprint portions of the following essays:

: The Reshaping of Conventional Farming: A North American Perspective, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 14 (2001): 21729.

: Agrarian Values: Their Future Place in U.S. Agriculture, in Visions of American Agriculture, ed. W. Lockeretz (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1997), 1730.

: Agriculture and Working-Class Political Culture: A Lesson from The Grapes of Wrath, Agriculture and Human Values 24 (2007): 16577.

: Farming as Focal Practice, in Technology and the Good Life? ed. E. Higgs, A. Light, and D. Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 16681.

: The Philosophical Rationale for U.S. Agricultural Policy, in U.S. Agriculture in a Global Setting: An Agenda for the Future, ed. M. A. Tutwiler (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1988), 3444.

: The Social Goals of Agriculture, Agriculture and Human Values 3, no. 4 (1986): 3242.

: Sustainability as a Norm, Techn: Technology in Culture and Concept 2, no. 2 (1997): 7594.