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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 th...
Economists have described the upcountry Georgia poultry industry as the quintessential agribusiness. Following a trajectory from Reconstruction through the Great Depression to the present day, Monica R. Gisolfi shows how the poultry farming model of semivertical integration perfected a number of practices that had first underpinned the cotton-growing crop-lien system, ultimately transforming the poultry industry in ways that drove tens of thousands of farmers off the land and rendered those who remained dependent on large agribusiness firms. Gisolfi argues that the inequalities inherent in the structure of modern poultry farming have led to steep human and environmental costs. Agribusiness f...
Farm women of the twentieth-century South have been portrayed as oppressed, worn out, and isolated. Lu Ann Jones tells quite a different story in Mama Learned Us to Work. Building upon evocative oral histories, she encourages us to understand these women as consumers, producers, and agents of economic and cultural change. As consumers, farm women bargained with peddlers at their backdoors. A key business for many farm women was the “butter and egg trade” — small-scale dairying and raising chickens. Their earnings provided a crucial margin of economic safety for many families during the 1920s and 1930s and offered women some independence from their men folks. These innovative women show...
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In the 1980s, The Nature Conservancy began work on the fast-growing Outer Banks by protecting Nags Head Woods. One of the last intact maritime forests on the East Coast, the Woods was in danger of becoming a housing development. In the late nineteenth century Nags Head Woods was home to about forty families and to this day remnants of their time there can be seen during a walk in the preserve. Based on oral histories, "Everyone Helped His Neighbor" documents the social and cultural history of a community that worked the land and waters of this unique place. Originally published in 1987, this reissue edition contains a foreword by David S. Cecelski and an afterword by the authors.
A Louisiana native reared in the state's sugarcane region, Caffery's photographs depict Louisiana's sugar fields and workers; Polly, an African-American woman who lives near Caffery's home; and Caffery's family and community. Two essays place Caffery's work in the context of southern history as well as Louisiana's culture. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Those personal accounts resurrect the essential experience of children's work, play, education, family relations, and coming of age from their own perspectives. Steering a middle path between the myth of wholesome farm life and the reality of work that was often extremely dangerous, Riney-Kehrberg shows both the best and the worst that a rural upbringing had to offer midwestern youth a time before mechanization forever changed the rural scene and radio broke the spell of isolation. Down on the farm, truancy was not uncommon and chores were shared across genders. Yet farm children managed to indulge in inventive play---much of it homemade---to supplement store-bought toys and to get through the long spells between circuses.
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Contains over 70 new plays never before covered in a Masterplots series, from previously missed classics to contemporary award winners. Each article lists principal characters, describes the play, and analyzes themes and meanings, dramatic devices, and critical content.
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