The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
Allan C. Carlson
232pp.
This is the kind of book we love to recommend, a brief but comprehensive examination of an important school of thought. In 232 pages Allan Carlson examines each phase in the short history of twentieth century agrarianism, identifying both strengths and weaknesses.
Agrarianism is important to Carlson because it is a valiant effort to protect and preserve the family from the encroachments of a modern industrial society which needs consumers and laborers, not independent producers. Carlson's important contribution is his argument that the new agrarianism failed due to two critical mistakes—an unjustified faith in salvation through education and technological progress, and a surprising disdain for Christianity.
Best of all, Carlson is able to present a living, thriving example of agrarianism that succeeds because it avoids these two mistakes: the Amish people, which is guided by a skepticism about modern technology and an emphasis on building a God-centered community. Throughout the book Carlson points out important differences between New Agrarian and Amish thinking, and he concludes with a chapter that show how the Amish have accomplished many of the goals that the New Agrarians hoped to reach but failed to achieve.
The publisher's blurb for this book is pretty good, so we include it here.
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 book examines the rise of a distinctive agrarian intellectual movement to combat these trends. The New Agrarian Mind synthesizes the thought of twentieth-century Agrarian writers. It weaves together discussions of major representative figures with myth-shattering analyses of the movement's cultural diversity, intellectual influence, and ideological complexity.
Chapters are devoted to botanist and country-life advocate Liberty Hyde Bailey, rural sociologist Carle Zimmerman, economist Ralph Borsodi, novelist and farmer Louis Bromfield, the "Twelve Southerners" of Vanderbilt University, historian Herbert Agar, Iowa priest and rural activist Luigi Ligutti, and the poet-novelist-essayist Wendell Berry. 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 story of these independent thinkers remains significant. The New Agrarians represented a serious attempt by modern America to create a "third way" in politics, one not easily fit onto the conventional left-right spectrum. Agrarian influences can be traced in the crafting of 1950s conservatism as well as the forging of the environmental movement in the 1970s. This book will be of significant interest to political scientists, economists, literary scholars, and sociologists
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