Southern Farmers and Their Stories: Memory and Meaning in Oral History
- ISBN-10
- 0813171504
- ISBN-13
- 9780813171500
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 344
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2006-09-01
- Publisher
- University Press of Kentucky
- Author
- Melissa Walker
Description
The industrial expansion of the twentieth century brought with it a profound shift away from traditional agricultural modes and practices in the American South. The forces of economic modernity—specialization, mechanization, and improved efficiency—swept through southern farm communities, leaving significant upheaval in their wake. In an attempt to comprehend the complexities of the present and prepare for the uncertainties of the future, many southern farmers searched for order and meaning in their memories of the past. In Southern Farmers and Their Stories, Melissa Walker explores the ways in which a diverse array of farmers remember and recount the past. The book tells the story of the modernization of the South in the voices of those most affected by the decline of traditional ways of life and work. Walker analyzes the recurring patterns in their narratives of change and loss, filling in gaps left by more conventional political and economic histories of southern agriculture. Southern Farmers and Their Stories also highlights the tensions inherent in the relationship between history and memory. Walker employs the concept of “communities of memory” to describe the shared sense of the past among southern farmers. History and memory converge and shape one another in communities of memory through an ongoing process in which shared meanings emerge through an elaborate alchemy of recollection and interpretation. In her careful analysis of more than five hundred oral history narratives, Walker allows silenced voices to be heard and forgotten versions of the past to be reconsidered. Southern Farmers and Their Stories preserves the shared memories and meanings of southern agricultural communities not merely for their own sake but for the potential benefit of a region, a nation, and a world that has much to learn from the lessons of previous generations of agricultural providers.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2006-09-01
- 344 pages
- Ebook
- University Press of Kentucky
Similar books
-
Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Alliance
By Robert C. McMathSignificant as a political, economic, and social organization, the southern Farmers' Alliance was the largest and most influential farmers' organization in the history of the United States until the rise...
-
The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South
By John T. Edge“Argenteuil asparagus” William F. Neal, Bill Neal's Southern Cooking (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 2. his wife, Moreton Neal Claiborne, “For a Carolina Chef, Helpings of History.
-
Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights
By Pete DanielDispossession recovers a lost chapter of the black experience in the American South, presenting a counternarrative to the conventional story of the progress achieved by the civil rights movement.
-
The Southern Farmers
By Edward PhillipsThe Southern Farmers
-
All We Knew Was to Farm: Rural Women in the Upcountry South, 1919-1941
By Melissa WalkerArthur Tipton's father was the head dairyman on the farm of a state senator in Loudon County during the early 1930s . In return for his $ 60 salary each month , Tipton and his sons were expected to work on the farm , and his wife and ...
-
Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980
By Gilbert C. FiteElizabeth W. Etheridge, The Butterfly Cast: A Social History of Pellagra in the South (Westport, Conn. ... H. Leon Prather, Sr., Resurgent Politics and Educational Progressivism in the New South: North Carolina, 1890-1913 (Rutherford, ...
-
The Southern Farmers'
By E[dward] M[archant] [From Old PhillipsThis work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
-
Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement
By Monica M. WhiteWhereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to ...
-
Farmers in Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Southern Farmers Alliance and People's Party in Texas
By Donna A. BarnesYet despite this support, the decline of the People's party after 1894 was swift. Farmers in Rebellion recounts the compelling story of these two crucial and closely related movements.
-
SOUTHERN FARMERS
By E[dward] M[archant] PhillipsThis work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.