Industrial Agriculture and the Potential for Sustainability: An Ethnography of Iowa Farmers

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: This thesis explores how central Iowa mid-sized industrial farmers formed and maintain their ties to the agribusiness industry and through this analysis illuminates possibilities for sustainable alternatives. In the context of widespread debate about the best way our agricultural systems can "feed the world" without sacrificing local autonomy, it examines central Iowa as a case study, in order to examine the way global processes situated within late capitalism create particular experiences and affect in daily life. It shows how the agriculture industry became naturalized in farmers' everyday lives and how this produced a set of dispositions that became evident in farmers' affective responses to the "battle for representation" of agriculture. As farmers connected with favorable industry representations of their work and lauded their own efforts for sustainability, they opened the possibility for unlikely alliances with groups advocating for sustainable agriculture.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 20, 2015

Author	Follmann, Nicole
Primary advisor	Ebron, Paulla
Advisor	Thiranagama, Sharika
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Anthropology

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/jx033xn1051

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Undergraduate Research Papers, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University.

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