Agrarianism
Encyclopedia
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy
or political philosophy
which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values. It stresses the superiority of a simpler rural life as opposed to the complexity of city life, with its banks and factories. The American Thomas Jefferson
was a representative agrarian who built Jeffersonian Democracy
around the notion that farmers are “the most valuable citizens” and the truest republicans
.
The philosophical roots of agrarianism include European and Chinese philosophers. The Chinese School of Agrarianism was a philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism
and egalitarianism. This influenced European intellectuals like François Quesnay
, an avid Confucianist
and advocate of China's agrarian policies, forming the French agrarian philosophy of Physiocracy. The Physiocrats, along with the ideas of John Locke
and the Romantic Era, formed the basis of modern European and American agrarianism.
Secondly, the term "agrarianism" means political proposals for land redistribution, specifically the distribution of land from the rich to the poor or landless. This terminology is common in many countries, and originated from the "Lex Sempronia Agraria" or "agrarian laws" of Rome in 133 BC, imposed by Tiberius Gracchus
, that seized the lands of the rich and distributed them to the poor. This definition of agrarianism is commonly known as “agrarian reform.”
In societies influenced by Confucianism
, the farmer was considered an esteemed productive member of society, whereas merchants who made money were looked down upon.
In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, the word identified any land reform movement that sought to redistribute cultivated lands equally. Today, the word has largely shed this radical political meaning. Instead, agrarianism points to a collection of political, philosophical, and literary ideas that together tend to describe farm life in ideal terms.
defines agrarianism by the following basic tenets:
(農家/农家; Nongjia) was an early agrarian social and political philosophy in ancient China
that advocated peasant utopian communalism
and egalitarianism
. The philosophy is founded on the notion that human society originates with the development of agriculture
, and societies are based upon "people's natural prospensity to farm."
The Agriculturalists believed that the ideal government, modeled after the semi-mythical governance of Shennong
, is led by a benevolent king, one who works alongside the people in tilling the fields. The Agriculturalist king is not paid by the government through its treasuries; his livelihood is derived from the profits he earns working in the fields, not his leadership. Unlike the Confucians, the Agriculturalists did not believe in the division of labour
, arguing instead that the economic policies of a country need to be based upon an egalitarian self sufficiency. The Agriculturalists supported the fixing of prices
, in which all similar goods, regardless of differences in quality and demand, are set at exactly the same, unchanging price.
They encouraged farming and agriculture and taught farming and cultivation techniques, as they believed that agricultural development was the key to a stable and prosperous society. The philosopher Mencius
once criticized its chief proponent Xu Xing (許行) for advocating that rulers should work in the fields with their subjects. One of Xu's students is quoted as having criticized the duke of Teng
in a conversation with Mencius by saying:
‘A worthy ruler feeds himself by ploughing side by side with the people, and rules while cooking his own meals. Now Teng on the contrary possesses granaries and treasuries, so the ruler is supporting himself by oppressing the people’.
(1694–1774) and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781). The Physiocrats were partially influenced by Chinese agrarianism; leading physiocrats like François Quesnay
were avid Confucianists
that advocated China's agrarian policies.
the idea that all wealth originates with the land, making farming the only truly productive enterprise, agrarianism claims that agriculture is the foundation of all other professions. Philosophically, European agrarianism reflects the ideas of John Locke
, who declared in his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690) that those who work land are its rightful owners. His labor theory of value influenced the thinking of Thomas Jefferson
, who in turn shaped the way many nineteenth-century American homesteaders understood ownership of their farms. Jefferson wrote in 1785 in a letter to John Jay
that
Richard Hofstadter
has traced the sentimental attachment to the rural way of life which is "a kind of homage that Americans have paid to the fancied innocence of their origins. Hofstadter notes that to call this a "myth" is not to imply that the idea is simply false. Rather the myth so effectively an agrarian ethos that it profoundly influences people's ways of perceiving values and hence their behavior. He emphasizes the importance of the agrarian myth in American politics and life even after industrialization had revolutionized the American economy and life. He stresses the significance of the writings of Jefferson and his followers in the South, such as John Taylor of Caroline
in the development of agricultural fundamentalism.
In the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, agrarianism felt the influence of the European Romanticism
movement. Romantics focused attention on the individual and described nature as a spiritual force. At a time when pristine wilderness was becoming scarce in many parts of Europe, what constitutes “nature” was confused with the last remnants of wilderness—cultivated fields, managed woodlands, and cultivated livestock and crops. As someone in constant contact with (this watered-down version of) “nature”, the farmer was positioned to experience moments that transcend the mundane material world. In doing so, these thinkers managed to redefine nature in man's image, accommodating enclosure
with a new “domesticated” version of nature.
In the 1910s and 1920s, agrarianism garnered significant popular attention, but was eclipsed in the postwar period. It has been revived somewhat in conjunction with the environmental movement
, and has been drawing an increasing number of adherents.
In 1930 the Southern Agrarians
wrote in the "Introduction: A Statement of Principles" to their book I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition that
Recent agrarian thinkers are sometimes referred to as neo-Agrarian and include the likes of Wendell Berry
, Paul B. Thompson
, and Gene Logsdon
. They are characterized by seeing the world through an agricultural lens. Although much of Inge's principles, above, still apply to the New Agrarianism, the affiliation with a particular religion and patriarchal tendency have subsided to some degree.
and Virgil
in ancient Rome. European theorists include Pyotr Stolypin
(1862–1911) and Alexander Chayanov
(1888–1939) in Russia; Adolf Wagner
(1835–1917), and Karl Oldenberg in Germany, and Bolesław Limanowski (1835-1835) in Poland.
, president of the United Farmers of Alberta
(UFA) during that movement's time as the governing party of the province (1921–1935). He, like many Canadian farmers of the era, conceived of farmers as a distinct social class in the midst of a class struggle
against capitalists who owned the banks, railways, and grain trading companies
which profited from the efforts of farmers. His solution was a kind of corporatism
called "group government". In this scheme, people would be represented in government by a party or organization that defended the interests of their particular occupation or industry, not a particular ideology. On the basis of this philosophy the UFA, as the representative of the farmers as a class, ran candidates only in rural area and not in the cities. Instead they urged their urban sympathizers to vote for Labour
candidates, as the representatives of the urban working class. This type of farmer-labour co-operation became common throughout Western Canada
, leading to the creation of the short-lived Progressive Party of Canada
in the 1920s, and the more durable Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Farmer-Labour-Socialist) in Calgary, Alberta, in 1935, precursor to Canada's modern-day social democratic party, the New Democratic Party
. Demeritt (1995) argues that in British Columbia (and Canada generally), there were three overlapping agrarian viewpoints. Arcadianism was based on nostalgic memories of rural England, and led to the widespread creation of orchards and gardens. Agrarianism claimed agriculture was the source of all wealth and called for the wide distribution of land as the foundation of democracy and freedom. The Country Life Movement was a loose grouping of social reformers, church leaders, and urban progressives; they sought solutions for rural economic decline, social stagnation, and the depopulation of the countryside.
, Thomas Jefferson, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (1735–1813), and John Taylor of Caroline
(1753–1824) in the early national period. In the mid-19th century important leaders included Transcendentalists
such as Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau
(1817–1862). After 1890 came philosopher Josiah Royce
(1855–1916), botanist Liberty Hyde Bailey
(1858–1954), the Southern Agrarians
of the 1920s and 1930s, novelist John Steinbeck
(1902–1968), historian A. Whitney Griswold (1906–1963), environmentalist Aldo Leopold
(1887–1948), Ralph Borsodi
(1886–1977), and present-day authors Wendell Berry
(b. 1934), Gene Logsdon
(b. 1932), Paul Thompson
, and Allan C. Carlson
(b. 1949).
Leopold was born in 1887 and educated at Yale University. He developed the field of game management and introduced an ecological ethic that replaced an earlier wilderness ethic where human dominance is stressed. In addition, he included the farm as a place of conservation and is considered an agrarian scholar. Leopold believed that harm was frequently done to natural systems out of a sense of ownership and this idea eclipsed community.[18] He expanded the idea of community to include the environment and the farm. Leopold is the author of several essays and is perhaps best known for his book A Sand County Almanac (1953).
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry is an author of several books, essays, and poems whose writing often illustrates his values which center around sustainable agriculture, healthy rural communities, and a connection to place. He is a prominent defender of agrarian values and has an appreciation for traditional farming. Rod Dreher writes the following: “[Berry's] unshakable devotion to the land, to localism, and to the dignity of traditional life makes him both a great American and, to the disgrace of our age, a prophet without honor in his native land."[29]
J. Baird Callicott
Callicott is, perhaps, best known for his research which explores an Aldo Leopold ethic as a response to global climate change. Callicott supports a holistic, non-anthropocentric environmental ethic which is in accordance with Leopold's view that "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise"[15] He holds the view that an adequate environmental ethic — one that addresses actual environmental concerns — must be intrinsically holistic.
Paul B. Thompson
Paul Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University. He has published extensively on the social and environmental significance of agriculture and a number of volumes and papers on the philosophical significance of farming, notably The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics (1995) and The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism (2000). His most recient publication called The Agrarian Vision focuses on sustainability and what agrarian philosophy can offer when we conceptualize what sustainability actually means.
) and, later, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party
developed a theoretical basis for a peasant movement, building a rich, well-developed humanistic ideology which influenced eastern Europe, especially the Balkans. It never attained the international visibility among peasants that socialism did among the urban workers.
Peasant parties rarely had any power before World War I, but some became influential in the interwar era, especially in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. For a while in the 1920s and 1930s there was a Green International (International Agrarian Bureau
) based on the peasant parties in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Serbia. It functioned primarily as an information center that spread the ideas of agrarianism and combating socialism on the left and landlords on the right, and never launched any significant activities.
, Bulgarian Agrarian National Union
(BZNS) was organized in 1899 to resist taxes and build cooperatives. BZNS came to power in 1919 and introduces many economic, social, and legal reforms. However conservative forces crushed BZNS in a 1923 coup and assassinated its leader, Aleksandar Stamboliyski
(1879–1923). BZNS was made into a Communist puppet group until 1989, when it reorganized as a genuine party.
(1873–1933) was prime minister several times. The party was banned.
made proposed reforms impossible. The Communists dissolved the party in 1947, but it reformed in 1989 after Communism collapsed.
(1845–1926) and his Radical Party dominated Serbian politics after 1903; they also monopolized power in Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1929; during the dictatorship of the 1930s, it furnished the prime minister.
Social philosophy
Social philosophy is the philosophical study of questions about social behavior . Social philosophy addresses a wide range of subjects, from individual meanings to legitimacy of laws, from the social contract to criteria for revolution, from the functions of everyday actions to the effects of...
or political philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values. It stresses the superiority of a simpler rural life as opposed to the complexity of city life, with its banks and factories. The American Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
was a representative agrarian who built Jeffersonian Democracy
Jeffersonian democracy
Jeffersonian Democracy, so named after its leading advocate Thomas Jefferson, is a term used to describe one of two dominant political outlooks and movements in the United States from the 1790s to the 1820s. The term was commonly used to refer to the Democratic-Republican Party which Jefferson...
around the notion that farmers are “the most valuable citizens” and the truest republicans
Republicanism in the United States
Republicanism is the political value system that has been a major part of American civic thought since the American Revolution. It stresses liberty and inalienable rights as central values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, supports activist government to promote the common good, rejects...
.
The philosophical roots of agrarianism include European and Chinese philosophers. The Chinese School of Agrarianism was a philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism
Communalism
Communalism is a term with three distinct meanings according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary'.'These include "a theory of government or a system of government in which independent communes participate in a federation". "the principles and practice of communal ownership"...
and egalitarianism. This influenced European intellectuals like François Quesnay
François Quesnay
François Quesnay was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing the "Tableau économique" in 1758, which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats...
, an avid Confucianist
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
and advocate of China's agrarian policies, forming the French agrarian philosophy of Physiocracy. The Physiocrats, along with the ideas of John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
and the Romantic Era, formed the basis of modern European and American agrarianism.
Secondly, the term "agrarianism" means political proposals for land redistribution, specifically the distribution of land from the rich to the poor or landless. This terminology is common in many countries, and originated from the "Lex Sempronia Agraria" or "agrarian laws" of Rome in 133 BC, imposed by Tiberius Gracchus
Tiberius Gracchus
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was a Roman Populares politician of the 2nd century BC and brother of Gaius Gracchus. As a plebeian tribune, his reforms of agrarian legislation caused political turmoil in the Republic. These reforms threatened the holdings of rich landowners in Italy...
, that seized the lands of the rich and distributed them to the poor. This definition of agrarianism is commonly known as “agrarian reform.”
In societies influenced by Confucianism
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
, the farmer was considered an esteemed productive member of society, whereas merchants who made money were looked down upon.
In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, the word identified any land reform movement that sought to redistribute cultivated lands equally. Today, the word has largely shed this radical political meaning. Instead, agrarianism points to a collection of political, philosophical, and literary ideas that together tend to describe farm life in ideal terms.
Philosophy
In the introduction to his 1969 book Agrarianism in American Literature, M. Thomas IngeM. Thomas Inge
M. Thomas Inge is an American writer, who is an authority on popular culture and comic art history. He is the author or editor of over 50 books.Odyssey Press published his Agrarianism in American Literature in 1969...
defines agrarianism by the following basic tenets:
- Cultivation of the soil provides direct contact with nature; through the contact with nature, the agrarian acquires the virtues of "honor, manliness, self-relianceSelf-sufficiencySelf-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...
, courage, moral integrity, and hospitality" and follows the example of God when creating order out of chaos.
- The farmer "has a sense of identity, a sense of historical and religious tradition, a feeling of belonging to a concrete family, place, and region, which are psychologically and culturally beneficial." The harmony of this life checks the encroachments of a fragmented, alienated modern society that has grown to inhuman scale.
- In contrast, farming offers more independence and self-sufficiencySelf-sufficiencySelf-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...
. It has a solid, stable position in the world order. But urban life, capitalismCapitalismCapitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, and technology destroy independence and dignity while fostering vice and weakness. The agricultural community can provide checks and balances against the imbalances of modern society by its fellowship of labor and cooperation with other agrarians, while obeying the rhythms of nature.
Agriculturalism
AgriculturalismAgriculturalism
Agriculturalism, also known as the School of Agrarianism, the School of Agronomists, the School of Tillers, and in Chinese as the Nongjia , was an early agrarian Chinese philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism...
(農家/农家; Nongjia) was an early agrarian social and political philosophy in ancient China
Chinese philosophy
Chinese philosophy is philosophy written in the Chinese tradition of thought. The majority of traditional Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era, during a period known as the "Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and...
that advocated peasant utopian communalism
Communalism
Communalism is a term with three distinct meanings according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary'.'These include "a theory of government or a system of government in which independent communes participate in a federation". "the principles and practice of communal ownership"...
and egalitarianism
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
. The philosophy is founded on the notion that human society originates with the development of agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, and societies are based upon "people's natural prospensity to farm."
The Agriculturalists believed that the ideal government, modeled after the semi-mythical governance of Shennong
Shennong
Shennong , which names mean "Divine Farmer", but also known as the Emperor of the Five Grains , was a legendary ruler of China and culture hero reputed to have lived some 5,000 years ago...
, is led by a benevolent king, one who works alongside the people in tilling the fields. The Agriculturalist king is not paid by the government through its treasuries; his livelihood is derived from the profits he earns working in the fields, not his leadership. Unlike the Confucians, the Agriculturalists did not believe in the division of labour
Division of labour
Division of labour is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and likeroles. Historically an increasingly complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation...
, arguing instead that the economic policies of a country need to be based upon an egalitarian self sufficiency. The Agriculturalists supported the fixing of prices
Price fixing
Price fixing is an agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given level by controlling supply and demand...
, in which all similar goods, regardless of differences in quality and demand, are set at exactly the same, unchanging price.
They encouraged farming and agriculture and taught farming and cultivation techniques, as they believed that agricultural development was the key to a stable and prosperous society. The philosopher Mencius
Mencius
Mencius was a Chinese philosopher who was arguably the most famous Confucian after Confucius himself.-Life:Mencius, also known by his birth name Meng Ke or Ko, was born in the State of Zou, now forming the territory of the county-level city of Zoucheng , Shandong province, only thirty kilometres ...
once criticized its chief proponent Xu Xing (許行) for advocating that rulers should work in the fields with their subjects. One of Xu's students is quoted as having criticized the duke of Teng
Teng (state)
The State of Teng was a small Chinese state that existed during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and was located in the south of modern-day Shandong province. Its territory is now the county-level city of Tengzhou....
in a conversation with Mencius by saying:
‘A worthy ruler feeds himself by ploughing side by side with the people, and rules while cooking his own meals. Now Teng on the contrary possesses granaries and treasuries, so the ruler is supporting himself by oppressing the people’.
Physiocrats
Physiocracy was a French agrarianist philosophy that originated in the 18th century. The movement was particularly dominated by François QuesnayFrançois Quesnay
François Quesnay was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing the "Tableau économique" in 1758, which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats...
(1694–1774) and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781). The Physiocrats were partially influenced by Chinese agrarianism; leading physiocrats like François Quesnay
François Quesnay
François Quesnay was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing the "Tableau économique" in 1758, which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats...
were avid Confucianists
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
that advocated China's agrarian policies.
European and American agrarianism
Borrowing from the French PhysiocratsPhysiocrats
Physiocracy is an economic theory developed by the Physiocrats, a group of economists who believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development." Their theories originated in France and were most popular during the second half of the 18th...
the idea that all wealth originates with the land, making farming the only truly productive enterprise, agrarianism claims that agriculture is the foundation of all other professions. Philosophically, European agrarianism reflects the ideas of John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, who declared in his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690) that those who work land are its rightful owners. His labor theory of value influenced the thinking of Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
, who in turn shaped the way many nineteenth-century American homesteaders understood ownership of their farms. Jefferson wrote in 1785 in a letter to John Jay
John Jay
John Jay was an American politician, statesman, revolutionary, diplomat, a Founding Father of the United States, and the first Chief Justice of the United States ....
that
Richard Hofstadter
Richard Hofstadter
Richard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual of the 1950s, a historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University...
has traced the sentimental attachment to the rural way of life which is "a kind of homage that Americans have paid to the fancied innocence of their origins. Hofstadter notes that to call this a "myth" is not to imply that the idea is simply false. Rather the myth so effectively an agrarian ethos that it profoundly influences people's ways of perceiving values and hence their behavior. He emphasizes the importance of the agrarian myth in American politics and life even after industrialization had revolutionized the American economy and life. He stresses the significance of the writings of Jefferson and his followers in the South, such as John Taylor of Caroline
John Taylor of Caroline
John Taylor usually called John Taylor of Caroline was a politician and writer. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates and in the United States Senate . He wrote several books on politics and agriculture...
in the development of agricultural fundamentalism.
In the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, agrarianism felt the influence of the European Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
movement. Romantics focused attention on the individual and described nature as a spiritual force. At a time when pristine wilderness was becoming scarce in many parts of Europe, what constitutes “nature” was confused with the last remnants of wilderness—cultivated fields, managed woodlands, and cultivated livestock and crops. As someone in constant contact with (this watered-down version of) “nature”, the farmer was positioned to experience moments that transcend the mundane material world. In doing so, these thinkers managed to redefine nature in man's image, accommodating enclosure
Enclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales the term is also used for the...
with a new “domesticated” version of nature.
In the 1910s and 1920s, agrarianism garnered significant popular attention, but was eclipsed in the postwar period. It has been revived somewhat in conjunction with the environmental movement
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
, and has been drawing an increasing number of adherents.
In 1930 the Southern Agrarians
Southern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
wrote in the "Introduction: A Statement of Principles" to their book I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition that
Recent agrarian thinkers are sometimes referred to as neo-Agrarian and include the likes of Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...
, Paul B. Thompson
Paul B. Thompson (philosopher)
Paul B. Thompson is a philosopher currently teaching at Michigan State University where he holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food and Community Ethics. Thompson earned his B.A. at Emory University before going on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony...
, and Gene Logsdon
Gene Logsdon
Gene Logsdon is an American man of letters, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of essays, novels, and nonfiction books about agrarian issues, ideals, and techniques.Gene Logsdon farms in Upper Sandusky, Ohio...
. They are characterized by seeing the world through an agricultural lens. Although much of Inge's principles, above, still apply to the New Agrarianism, the affiliation with a particular religion and patriarchal tendency have subsided to some degree.
Similar social movements
Agrarianism is not identical with the back-to-the-land movement, but it can be helpful to think of it in those terms. Agrarianism concentrates on the fundamental goods of the earth, communities of more limited economic and political scale than in modern society, and on simple living—even when this shift involves questioning the "progressive" character of some recent social and economic developments. Thus agrarianism is not industrial farming, with its specialization on products and industrial scale.Agrarian theorists
The name "agrarian" is properly applied to figures from HoraceHorace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
and Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
in ancient Rome. European theorists include Pyotr Stolypin
Pyotr Stolypin
Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin served as the leader of the 3rd DUMA—from 1906 to 1911. His tenure was marked by efforts to repress revolutionary groups, as well as for the institution of noteworthy agrarian reforms. Stolypin hoped, through his reforms, to stem peasant unrest by creating a class of...
(1862–1911) and Alexander Chayanov
Alexander Chayanov
Alexander V. Chayanov was a Soviet agrarian economist, and scholar of rural sociology and advocate of agrarianism and cooperatives....
(1888–1939) in Russia; Adolf Wagner
Adolf Wagner
Adolf Wagner was a German soldier and high-ranking Nazi Party official born in Algrange, Alsace-Lorraine.He served in World War I as an officer in the German Army...
(1835–1917), and Karl Oldenberg in Germany, and Bolesław Limanowski (1835-1835) in Poland.
Canadians
The most important Canadian theorist on Agranian politics was an American immigrant, Henry Wise WoodHenry Wise Wood
Henry Wise Wood was an American-born Canadian agrarian thinker and activist. He became director in 1914 and was elected president of the United Farmers of Alberta in 1916. Under his leadership the UFA became the most powerful political lobby group in the province...
, president of the United Farmers of Alberta
United Farmers of Alberta
The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary...
(UFA) during that movement's time as the governing party of the province (1921–1935). He, like many Canadian farmers of the era, conceived of farmers as a distinct social class in the midst of a class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
against capitalists who owned the banks, railways, and grain trading companies
Grain trade
The grain trade refers the local and international trade in cereals and other food grains such as wheat, maize, and rice.-History:The grain trade is probably nearly as old as grain growing, going back the Neolithic Revolution . Wherever there is a scarcity of land The grain trade refers the local...
which profited from the efforts of farmers. His solution was a kind of corporatism
Corporatism
Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common...
called "group government". In this scheme, people would be represented in government by a party or organization that defended the interests of their particular occupation or industry, not a particular ideology. On the basis of this philosophy the UFA, as the representative of the farmers as a class, ran candidates only in rural area and not in the cities. Instead they urged their urban sympathizers to vote for Labour
Labour candidates and parties in Canada
There have been various groups in Canada that have nominated candidates under the label Labour Party or Independent Labour Party or other variations from the 1870s until the 1960s...
candidates, as the representatives of the urban working class. This type of farmer-labour co-operation became common throughout Western Canada
Western Canada
Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces and commonly as the West, is a region of Canada that includes the four provinces west of the province of Ontario.- Provinces :...
, leading to the creation of the short-lived Progressive Party of Canada
Progressive Party of Canada
The Progressive Party of Canada was a political party in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. It was linked with the provincial United Farmers parties in several provinces and, in Manitoba, ran candidates and formed governments as the Progressive Party of Manitoba...
in the 1920s, and the more durable Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Farmer-Labour-Socialist) in Calgary, Alberta, in 1935, precursor to Canada's modern-day social democratic party, the New Democratic Party
New Democratic Party
The New Democratic Party , commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada. The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in...
. Demeritt (1995) argues that in British Columbia (and Canada generally), there were three overlapping agrarian viewpoints. Arcadianism was based on nostalgic memories of rural England, and led to the widespread creation of orchards and gardens. Agrarianism claimed agriculture was the source of all wealth and called for the wide distribution of land as the foundation of democracy and freedom. The Country Life Movement was a loose grouping of social reformers, church leaders, and urban progressives; they sought solutions for rural economic decline, social stagnation, and the depopulation of the countryside.
Americans
In American history important spokesmen included Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
, Thomas Jefferson, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (1735–1813), and John Taylor of Caroline
John Taylor of Caroline
John Taylor usually called John Taylor of Caroline was a politician and writer. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates and in the United States Senate . He wrote several books on politics and agriculture...
(1753–1824) in the early national period. In the mid-19th century important leaders included Transcendentalists
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
such as Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
(1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
(1817–1862). After 1890 came philosopher Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce was an American objective idealist philosopher.-Life:Royce, born in Grass Valley, California, grew up in pioneer California very soon after the California Gold Rush. He received the B.A...
(1855–1916), botanist Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey was an American horticulturist, botanist and cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.-Biography:...
(1858–1954), the Southern Agrarians
Southern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
of the 1920s and 1930s, novelist John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
(1902–1968), historian A. Whitney Griswold (1906–1963), environmentalist Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold was an American author, scientist, ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac , which has sold over two million copies...
(1887–1948), Ralph Borsodi
Ralph Borsodi
Ralph Borsodi was an agrarian theorist and practical experimenter interested in ways of living useful to the modern family desiring greater self-reliance...
(1886–1977), and present-day authors Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...
(b. 1934), Gene Logsdon
Gene Logsdon
Gene Logsdon is an American man of letters, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of essays, novels, and nonfiction books about agrarian issues, ideals, and techniques.Gene Logsdon farms in Upper Sandusky, Ohio...
(b. 1932), Paul Thompson
Paul B. Thompson (philosopher)
Paul B. Thompson is a philosopher currently teaching at Michigan State University where he holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food and Community Ethics. Thompson earned his B.A. at Emory University before going on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony...
, and Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson is a scholar and professor of history at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. He is the president of the Howard Center, a director of the Family in America Studies Center, the International Secretary of the World Congress of Families and editor of the Family in America...
(b. 1949).
Leading American Neo-Agrarian Theorists
Aldo LeopoldAldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold was an American author, scientist, ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac , which has sold over two million copies...
Leopold was born in 1887 and educated at Yale University. He developed the field of game management and introduced an ecological ethic that replaced an earlier wilderness ethic where human dominance is stressed. In addition, he included the farm as a place of conservation and is considered an agrarian scholar. Leopold believed that harm was frequently done to natural systems out of a sense of ownership and this idea eclipsed community.[18] He expanded the idea of community to include the environment and the farm. Leopold is the author of several essays and is perhaps best known for his book A Sand County Almanac (1953).
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...
Wendell Berry is an author of several books, essays, and poems whose writing often illustrates his values which center around sustainable agriculture, healthy rural communities, and a connection to place. He is a prominent defender of agrarian values and has an appreciation for traditional farming. Rod Dreher writes the following: “[Berry's] unshakable devotion to the land, to localism, and to the dignity of traditional life makes him both a great American and, to the disgrace of our age, a prophet without honor in his native land."[29]
J. Baird Callicott
J. Baird Callicott
J. Baird Callicott is an American philosopher whose work has been at the forefront of the new field of environmental philosophy and ethics. He is University Distinguished Research Professor and a member of the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies and the Institute of Applied Sciences at...
Callicott is, perhaps, best known for his research which explores an Aldo Leopold ethic as a response to global climate change. Callicott supports a holistic, non-anthropocentric environmental ethic which is in accordance with Leopold's view that "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise"[15] He holds the view that an adequate environmental ethic — one that addresses actual environmental concerns — must be intrinsically holistic.
Paul B. Thompson
Paul B. Thompson (philosopher)
Paul B. Thompson is a philosopher currently teaching at Michigan State University where he holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food and Community Ethics. Thompson earned his B.A. at Emory University before going on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony...
Paul Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University. He has published extensively on the social and environmental significance of agriculture and a number of volumes and papers on the philosophical significance of farming, notably The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics (1995) and The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism (2000). His most recient publication called The Agrarian Vision focuses on sustainability and what agrarian philosophy can offer when we conceptualize what sustainability actually means.
Russian agrarianism
In Russia the intellectuals of the "Populists" (Narodnaya VolyaNarodnaya Volya
Narodnaya Volya was aRussian left-wing terrorist organization, best known for the successful assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. It created a centralized and well disguised organization in a time of diverse liberation movements in Russia...
) and, later, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
developed a theoretical basis for a peasant movement, building a rich, well-developed humanistic ideology which influenced eastern Europe, especially the Balkans. It never attained the international visibility among peasants that socialism did among the urban workers.
Agrarian parties
Peasant parties first appeared across Eastern Europe between 1860 and 1910, when commercialized agriculture and world market forces disrupted traditional rural society, and the railway and growing literacy facilitated the work of roving organizers. Agrarian parties advocated land reforms to redistribute land on large estates among those who work it. They also wanted village cooperatives to keep the profit from crop sales in local hands, and credit institutions to underwrite needed improvements. Many peasant parties were also nationalist parties, because peasants often worked their land for the benefit of landlords of different ethnicity.Peasant parties rarely had any power before World War I, but some became influential in the interwar era, especially in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. For a while in the 1920s and 1930s there was a Green International (International Agrarian Bureau
International Agrarian Bureau
The International Agrarian Bureau was founded in 1921 by the Agrarian parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, and Poland growing to 17 political parties in Eastern Europe by 1928. It was sometimes referred to as the "first Green International". The Bureau was a key competitor with the Red...
) based on the peasant parties in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Serbia. It functioned primarily as an information center that spread the ideas of agrarianism and combating socialism on the left and landlords on the right, and never launched any significant activities.
Bulgaria
In BulgariaHistory of Bulgaria
The history of Bulgaria spans from the first settlements on the lands of modern Bulgaria to its formation as a nation-state and includes the history of the Bulgarian people and their origin. The first traces of human presence on what is today Bulgaria date from 44,000 BC...
, Bulgarian Agrarian National Union
Bulgarian Agrarian National Union
Bulgarian Agrarian National Union also tiranslated to English as Bulgarian Agrarian People's Union is a political party devoted to representing the causes of the Bulgarian peasantry. It was most powerful between 1900 and 1923. In practice, it was an agrarian movement...
(BZNS) was organized in 1899 to resist taxes and build cooperatives. BZNS came to power in 1919 and introduces many economic, social, and legal reforms. However conservative forces crushed BZNS in a 1923 coup and assassinated its leader, Aleksandar Stamboliyski
Aleksandar Stamboliyski
Aleksandar Stamboliyski was the prime minister of Bulgaria from 1919 until 1923. Stamboliyski was a member of the Agrarian Union, an agrarian peasant movement which was not allied to the monarchy, and edited their newspaper...
(1879–1923). BZNS was made into a Communist puppet group until 1989, when it reorganized as a genuine party.
Czechoslovakia
In Czechoslovakia the Republican Party of Agricultural and Smallholder People often shared power in parliament as a partner in the five-party pětka coalition. The party's leader Antonin SvehlaAntonín Švehla
Antonín Švehla was a Czechoslovakian politician. He served three terms as the prime minister of Czechoslovakia. He is regarded as one of the most important political figures of the First Czechoslovak Republic; he was the leader of the Agrarian Party, which was dominant within the Pětka, which was...
(1873–1933) was prime minister several times. The party was banned.
Romania
In Romania, in 1919 older parties from Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia merged to become the National Peasant Party. Iuliu Maniu (1873–1953) was prime minister with an agrarian cabinet from 1928 to 1930, but the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
made proposed reforms impossible. The Communists dissolved the party in 1947, but it reformed in 1989 after Communism collapsed.
Serbia
In Serbia Nikola PašićNikola Pašic
Nikola P. Pašić was a Serbian and Yugoslav politician and diplomat, the most important Serbian political figure for almost 40 years, leader of the People's Radical Party who, among other posts, was twice a mayor of Belgrade...
(1845–1926) and his Radical Party dominated Serbian politics after 1903; they also monopolized power in Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1929; during the dictatorship of the 1930s, it furnished the prime minister.
Poland
In Poland Bolesław Limanowski thought deeply about Agrarianism and worked out an eclectic program that fit Polish conditions. His practical experience as a farm manager combined with socialist, "single-tax," and Slavic communal ideas shaped his world view. He proposed a form of agrarian socialism with large state farms to counteract the inefficiency of very small holdings. In independent Poland he advocated expropriation of gentry estates. His observation of with peasant individualism convinced him that Poland should combine voluntary collectivism and individual possession of the leased land. His pragmatism left room even for private peasant ownership, despite his Marxism.Australia
In Australia, the Country Party from the 1920s to the 1970s, promulgated its version of agrarianism, which it called "Countrymindedness". The goal was to enhance the status of the graziers (operators of big sheep ranches) and small farmers, and justified subsidies for them.See also
- Agrarian socialismAgrarian socialismAgrarian socialism is a socioeconomic political system which combines an agrarian way of life with socialist economic policies.When compared to standard socialist systems which are generally urban/industrial , internationally oriented, and more progressive/liberal in terms of social orientation,...
- Agrarian societyAgrarian societyAn agrarian society is a society that depends on agriculture as its primary means for support and sustenance. The society acknowledges other means of livelihood and work habits but stresses the importance of agriculture and farming, and was the most common form of socio-economic oganization for...
- Agrarian systemAgrarian systemAn agrarian system is a concept used to describe the dynamic set of economic and technological factors that affect agricultural practices. It is premised on the idea that different systems have developed depending on the natural and social conditions specific to a particular region...
- PhysiocratsPhysiocratsPhysiocracy is an economic theory developed by the Physiocrats, a group of economists who believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development." Their theories originated in France and were most popular during the second half of the 18th...
, 18th century French thinkers - International Agrarian BureauInternational Agrarian BureauThe International Agrarian Bureau was founded in 1921 by the Agrarian parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, and Poland growing to 17 political parties in Eastern Europe by 1928. It was sometimes referred to as the "first Green International". The Bureau was a key competitor with the Red...
- Nordic agrarian partiesNordic Agrarian partiesThe Nordic agrarian parties, or Nordic Centre parties, are agrarian political parties that belong to a political tradition peculiar to the Nordic countries...
- YeomanYeomanYeoman refers chiefly to a free man owning his own farm, especially from the Elizabethan era to the 17th century. Work requiring a great deal of effort or labor, such as would be done by a yeoman farmer, came to be described as "yeoman's work"...
, English farmers
Agrarian values
- Danbom, David B. "Romantic Agrarianism in Twentieth-Century America," Agricultural History, Vol. 65#4 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 1–12 in JSTOR
- Grampp, William D. "John Taylor: Economist of Southern Agrarianism," Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 11#3 (Jan., 1945), pp. 255–268 in JSTOR
- Hofstadter, RichardRichard HofstadterRichard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual of the 1950s, a historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University...
. "Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Oct., 1941), pp. 391–400 in JSTOR - Kolodny, Annette. The Land before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860 (1984). onlin edition
- Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (1964).
- Murphy, Paul V. The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (2000)
- Parrington, Vernon. Main Currents in American Thought (1927), 3-vol online
- Quinn, Patrick F. "Agrarianism and the Jeffersonian Philosophy," Review of Politics, Vol. 2#1 (Jan., 1940), pp. 87–104 in JSTOR
- Thompson, Paul, and Thomas C. Hilde, eds. The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism (2000)
Europe
- Bell, John D. Peasants in Power: Alexander Stamboliski and the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, 1899–1923(1923)
- Donnelly, James S. Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821-1824 (2009)
- Donnelly, James S. Irish Agrarian Rebellion, 1760-1800 (2006)
- Gross, Feliks, ed. European Ideologies: A Survey of 20th Century Political Ideas (1948) pp 391–481 online edition, on Russia and Bulgaria
- Narkiewicz, Olga A. The Green Flag: Polish Populist Politics, 1867–1970 (1976).
- Oren, Nissan. Revolution Administered: Agrarianism and Communism in Bulgaria (1973), focus is post 1945
- Paine, ThomasThomas PaineThomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
. Agrarian Justice (1794) - Patterson, James G. In the Wake of the Great Rebellion: Republican, Agrarianism and Banditry in Ireland After 1798 (2008)
- Roberts, Henry L. Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (1951).
- Zagorin, Perez. Rebels and Rulers, 1500-1660: Volume 1, Agrarian and Urban Rebellions : Society, States and Early Modern Revolution (1982)
North America
- Goodwyn, Lawrence. The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (1978), 1880s and 1890s in U.S.
- Lipset, Seymour Martin. Agrarian socialism: the Coöperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan (1950)
- McConnell, Grant. The decline of agrarian democracy(1953), 20th century U.S.
- Mark, Irving. Agrarian conflicts in colonial New York, 1711-1775 (1940)
- Ochiai, Akiko. Harvesting Freedom: African American Agrarianism in Civil War Era South Carolina (2007)
- Robison, Dan Merritt. Bob Taylor and the agrarian revolt in Tennessee (1935)
- Stine, Harold E. The agrarian revolt in South Carolina;: Ben Tillman and the Farmers' Alliance (1974)
- Summerhill, Thomas. Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism in Nineteenth-Century New York (2005)
- Szatmary, David P. Shay's Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (1984), 1787 in Massachusetts
- Woodward, C. Vann. Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (1938) online edition
- Woodward, C. Vann. "Tom Watson and the Negro in Agrarian Politics," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Feb., 1938), pp. 14–33 in JSTOR
Third World
- Ginzberg, Eitan. "State Agrarianism versus Democratic Agrarianism: Adalberto Tejeda's Experiment in Veracruz, 1928-32," Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 30#2 (May, 1998), pp. 341–372 in JSTOR
- Handy, Jim. Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944-1954 (1994)
- Jacoby, Erich H. Agrarian unrest in Southeast Asia (1949)
- Paige, Jeffery M. Agrarian revolution: social movements and export agriculture in the underdeveloped world (1978) 435 pages excerpt and text search
- Sanderson, Steven E. Agrarian populism and the Mexican state: the struggle for land in Sonora (1981)
- Stokes, Eric. The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (1980)
- Tannenbaum, Frank. The Mexican Agrarian Revolution (1930)
External links
- "Agrarianism" in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia
- "Agrarian Valhalla: The Vanderbilt 12 and Beyond" by Joseph Scotchie, Southern Events
- Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian
- The New Agrarian
- Agraripedia