Stewards, Businessmen, and Heroes?: Role Conflict and Contradiction Among Row-Crop Farmers in an Age of Environmental Uncertainty

Comito, Jacqueline; Wolseth, Jon; Morton, Lois Wright

doi:10.17730/humo.72.4.j422740156v16602

Cited by 9 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 8 publications

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“…It also provides an ironclad ideological explanation for the state's sheer scale of production. To this point, Comito et al (2013) argue that Iowa grain farmers can feel trapped between two competing identities: 1) farmers as stewards of the land, and 2) farmers as shrewd businessmen. Good stewards take care of the land for future generations, good businessmen maximize profits.…”

Section: Has the World Been Fed?mentioning

confidence: 99%

"We feed the world": the political ecology of the Corn Belt's driving narrative

Rissing

2021

Journal of Political Ecology

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Industrial grain production occupies most of Iowa's farmland. Around the edges of corn and soybean monocultures, however, small-scale, diversified farmers establish alternative agricultural operations and sell to local markets. One narrative, "we feed the world", stretches across these two spheres; its roots lie in post-World War II geopolitics, and its contemporary iterations reflect the actions of private agricultural interest groups. As a rhetorical strategy, asserting "we feed the world" invokes neo-Malthusian fears to reposition differences in agricultural production systems within a moral framework where yield primarily determines agricultural legitimacy. This article ethnographically analyzes how this narrative intersects the lives and livelihoods of conventional and alternative farmers alike. Today, the narrative serves three functions: defending industrial agricultural systems against criticisms,justifying the pursuit of ever-higher yields on moral grounds, and gatekeeping agricultural legitimacy. Examining this discursive mechanism yields insight into the diversity of strategies through which actors within the industrial agricultural system reproduce particular land use practices in service of their own interests.

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Section: Has the World Been Fed?mentioning

confidence: 99%

"We feed the world": the political ecology of the Corn Belt's driving narrative

Rissing

2021

Journal of Political Ecology

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Performance, Linguistic and Communicative

Comito¹

2020

The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology

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Scholars tend to study two types of performance. One is performances of theater, dance, and other art forms as social interactions that are highly prominent and set apart from daily life, both of which rely on the patterned use of language. This entry surveys the other, the scholarship of linguistic and communicative performance – individual and social behavior in everyday interactions as performances where social actors create and recreate their identities with specific intents through framing and keying. Individuals as social actors put ordinary activities – from community meetings to preparing family dinners – into social, political, and historical contexts as they evaluate the event and change their representations. The situation, the setting, other participants, even the individual's age and experience affect the social actor's ability to be understood and influence others' perceptions. Analyzing social interactions as performances allows us to understand more fully the ways in which individuals invent themselves as they seek not only self‐actualization, but also immortality.

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