Editor's Introduction

• Date: 01 November 2014
• Published date: 01 November 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12083

The AMERICAN JOURNAL of

ECONOMICS and SOCIOLOGY

Published QUARTERLY in the interest of constructive

synthesis in the social sciences, under grants from the FRANCIS

NEILSON Fund and the ROBERT SCHALKENBACH FOUNDATION.

Founded in 1941

Volume 73 November 2014 Number 5

Editor’s Introduction

Evan Leonard has produced a thought-provoking look into the poten-

tial for an agrarian world that maximizes biological diversity across the

landscape, rather than relying on specialized enclaves to preserve

nature. By “agrarian,” he does not mean we should abandon cities and

all live on farms, although the number of people engaged in farming

would certainly increase. An agrarian culture is one in which the

dominant metaphors that guide behavior derive from the complexity

and diversity of life, as opposed to the mechanistic and managerial

metaphors of industrial culture. The ways in which we think about

food, where it comes from, and how we allow its production to shape

our lives are the most important forms of conflict between these two

cultural patterns. Agrarianism used to be conservative, but it is not

inherently so. Leonard shows that the New Agrarianism can help

humans learn how to adapt to nature, both on the farm and in the city.

Overcoming Dualism

At present, the lives and habits of people in cities throughout the

world are deeply imbedded in industrial culture. That culture provides

a space for species diversity, but only on special reservations set aside

for that purpose. The wilderness model of wildlife protection is often

presented as a concern for nature. But it is, in fact, based on a dualistic

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 73, No. 5 (November, 2014).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12083

© 2014 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

view of the world, in which controlled and managed industrial

systems are given moral primacy, and self-organizing organic systems

are tolerated at the fringes.

Setting aside a few areas of pristine wilderness that are protected

from the ravages of industrial culture leaves the rest of world open

for plunder and exploitation. The logical conclusion of our present

course is a barren landscape, in which a small number of humanly-

useful plants and animals are sustained through high-intensity cul-

tivation. Species diversity will continue, but only in wilderness

areas, zoos, and laboratories. That bifurcated model cannot work.

Diversity is the basis of biological stability over time, and without it,

civilization will eventually collapse. That means our cultural prac-

tices, particularly our agri-culture, need to be designed to promote

greater diversity in every part of the landscape, not just in a few

designated wildlife areas. The need to develop a network of inter-

connected uses of land across every bioregion is the central thesis

that Evan Leonard sets forth here. That is the means by which city

and countryside could be bound together in an increasingly

complex “landscape matrix.”

Readers of Wendell Berry ([1977] 1996, 1990, 1993, 1995) will be

familiar with many of the arguments for diversity that Leonard makes.

Since Berry is a traditionalist, it is unlikely that he views any of his

thoughts as entirely original. In a similar fashion, much that Leonard

presents is part of a centuries-old effort to resist those elements of the

machine age that distract us from the full development of our char-

acter or spirit. But unlike most of the prior writing on these questions,

this work goes beyond philosophical generalizations about the virtues

of country life to explain concretely the ways in which city and

country need to work together to create new institutional arrange-

ments that support ecological diversity across the entire landscape.

The intellectual debt to Aldo Leopold and J. Baird Callicott is clear in

this volume, but Leonard does not merely repeat their ideas. He

advances their work with an effort to determine what practical steps

need to be taken to implement a matrix of diverse land uses across the

landscape.

Forms of eco-philosophy that ascribe equal moral worth to all forms

of life may seem more radical than the work at hand because they

990 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

shatter every existing moral premise. However, creating a moral

republic of diverse species actually does nothing to achieve the

implied end of preserving all species. Eco-philosophy often leads

students to positions that seem “radical” in the classroom, but that

amount to little more than pushing humans to one side, either

physically or metaphorically, in order to save nature from ourselves.

That bifurcation between “good nature” and “bad humans” leads to a

further division in practice between “good humans” (who never harm

nature) and “bad humans” (the rest of us). When this becomes

associated with beliefs in overpopulation (too many “bad humans”),

the result can easily turn into a virulent form of racism of a kind that

I have witnessed firsthand from some conservationists. (By “virulent,”

I mean expressing a desire to wipe out Africans in order to “save” that

continent for animals.)

North and South

As Leonard is clearly aware, the agrarian philosophy has its own

ambiguous legacy. Based on Leonard’s own account, the northern

agrarians made peace too easily with industrial agriculture. It was the

southern agrarians who held out for agriculture that was shaped by

the land, rather than insisting that the land conform to the needs of

standardization. As a movement that supports the diversity and

autonomy of small farmers, the southern agrarians have much more to

offer than their tepid northern counterparts. However, the southern

agrarians also brought with them distasteful elements of the Old South

that celebrated plantation agriculture, the gentleman farmer, and

manual labor carried out under a caste system that was regarded as

part of the “natural order.” This legacy will be more difficult to

overcome than many New Agrarians realize, but at least they explicitly

repudiate those values.

As if to emphasize the new face of agrarianism in American political

life, Ralph Nader (2014) devotes an entire chapter in Unstoppable to

the work of Allen Tate and Herbert Agar, two prominent southern

agrarians of the 1930s. The central point of agreement between Nader

and the agrarians is not on a “way of life” as a yeoman farmer, but on

the need to decentralize power. At least one strand of agrarian

Editor’s Introduction 991