A. Eugene Havens - Studies In The Transformation Of U.S. Agriculture

In recent years, the consensual view of rural society has been challenged by theorists identifying the conflict, exploitation, and power relations in rural society. Beyond this theoretical challenge, empirical studies of the sociology of agriculture have provided a fresh understanding of the dynamics of U.S. agriculture. This book contributes to the growing literature by providing a historical perspective. The contributors explore historical developments in U.S. agriculture within the context of the larger political economy.

The book opens with a review of the similarities and differences between the critical rural sociology of today with that of the 1930s and moves on to a study of the accumulation process in U.S. agriculture. Other issues covered include the erosion of the southern class structure during and after the 1930s, the landed aristocracys reassertion in the post-bellum south, changes in the class structure and locus of agriculture in the midwest, and historical developments in the labor process and in capitalist agriculture in California. The concluding chapter provides a framework for studying both the origins and the consequences of state agriculture policies.

Until his death on June 28, 1984, A. Eugene Havens was professor and chairman of the Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He served as director of the Center for Developing Nations Program from 1968 to 1970 and was a consultant to the Ford Foundation on agriculture and rural development in Latin America from 1975 to 1979. He also consulted with CIERA in Nicaragua on many aspects of post-revolutionary agricultural adjustment and planning. Gregory Hooks is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Indiana, Patrick H. Mooney is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky, and Max J. Pfeffer is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology/Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin.

Editorial Board

Chairman, Frederick H. Buttel, Cornell University

Associate Editor, Charles Geisler, Cornell University

Rabel Burdge, University of Illinois

Frederick Fliegel, University of Illinois

Jere L. Gilles, University of Missouri

Steve Murdock, Texas A&M University

David L. Rogers, Colorado State University

Rural Studies Series, Sponsored by the Rural Sociological Society

First published 1986 by Westview Press

Published 2019 by Routledge

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Copyright 1986 by the Rural Sociological Society

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Main entry under title:

Studies in the transformation of U.S. agriculture.

(Rural studies series)

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. AgricultureSocial aspectsUnited State

Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. United StatesRural

conditionsAddresses, essays, lectures. I. Havens,

A. Eugene. II. Series: Rural studies series of the

Rural Sociological Society.

HD1765.S78 1986 307.72097385-3308

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28907-2 (hbk)

It is fitting that Gene Havens, the youngest of eight children, grew up on a small farm near Coming, Iowa, the site of much agrarian unrest, including the founding of the National Farmers Organization. In many ways, Genes life was a struggle to reconcile poverty, exploitation, and injustice with the belief structure of his origins. He began life immersed in the American Gothic" idealthat rugged individualism and hard work would provide equal opportunity for all, that rural society was classless in nature, that authority deserved unquestionable respect, that the freehold family farmer was a keystone of democratic capitalist society.

Early in his career, Gene used the agrarian rules to succeed within the system. He earned a bachelor of science degree from Iowa State University, where he was a student leader, and later a master of science and a doctorate of philosophy from The Ohio State University in 1960 and 1962, respectively. Enrico L. Quarantelli (social psychology), Everett M. Rogers (adoption-diffusion), Raymond F. Sletto (statistics) and A. Raymond Mangus (social interaction theory) were influential in his early intellectual development. Gene was a key collaborator in Everett Rogers early works on innovativeness and was greatly influenced by the social behaviorists and social psychologists, as were nearly all graduate students of this era. In reality, 1960s rural sociology was synonymous with adoption-diffusion of innovations. The McCarthy era still weighed heavily on the field of sociology and even the writings of C. Wright Mills, mild by todays standards, were considered too extreme, value-laden, and non-quantitative for most graduate programs in the land grant system. Gene and his fellow graduate students from OSU and other universities began, however, to question inquiries that started by considering individuals before the social totality was understood. This generation of rural sociologists was recruited mostly from small farms and small towns and often from families who did not prosper under the rapidly changing technological and social conditions of rural life at mid-century. These individuals did not share the ministerial backgrounds of the earliest rural sociologists nor, more important, did they share the notion that cultural and personal defects of rural people were responsible for the farm problem. Instead they believed that the farm problem was connected to the rural non-farm problem and to the small town problem. They did not seek to adapt the individual to inevitable changes in the agricultural and social system. They traded the social problems orientation for a social structural bent; they wondered about the basic worth and designs of programs instead of the organizational details that might make ordained programs perform more smoothly. Genes dissertation, however, was in the tradition of adoption-diffusion and social psychology models, and its published version received the Cornell University Rural Social Award for best article in the field of change and development.