Sociologists tend to view rural culture as an inertial force, committing members to past cultural patterns which, in turn, inform their present courses of action. By emphasizing such cultural stasis, we obscure how members of cultural enclaves negotiate, recommit to, or revise certain cultural traditions. This article explores how rural culture is in dialogue with changing external contexts. Drawing on interviews I conducted among a small group of German-heritage farmers in southern Wisconsin, I find that farmers select legal arrangements, entrepreneurial actions, and traditional male succession in order to fulfill the "yeoman" goal of keeping the farm in the family name. I explore how the narratives farmers develop about the cultural priority of transferring the home-farm to a new generation allow sociological insight into their creative negotiations between cultural traditions and a greatly altered context of agricultural production. I argue that this dialogue between a historically persistent cultural tradition and very present pressures of agricultural production makes a significant contribution to the dynamics of modern rural life.
Researchers are predicting that the spatially uneven distribution of climate change risks will further exacerbate the inequalities of environmental change in the coming decades. This case study of coffee offers a window into the feedback loops of ecological health, agricultural economies, and social well-being on a quickly warming planet. Drawing from a review of research across disciplines, we explore three human-driven factors that have increased the risks of loss for coffee producers in the face of climate change. These three characteristics of the coffee commodity chain—geographical consolidation, genetic variation, and market factors—enmesh social, ecological, and economic expectations of coffee as a high-value agricultural product. Considering the impact of climate change on coffee production sheds light on how climate change interacts with preexisting ecological, social, and economic challenges of global, agricultural production.
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