To Think Like An Agroecologist: The Greenhorns And New Agrarian Rhetoric

Abstract

The concept of agrarianism has a deep history in the United States. Beginning withThomas Jefferson’s vision of an ideal society comprised of yeoman farmer citizens, agrarianism’s implications and uses have evolved over time. Initially an ideology of U.S. American settler colonialism, agrarianism was taken up in later decades by farmers themselves in social movements. In recent decades, agrarian ideology has taken another turn towards agricultural sustainability in what scholars and activists call “new” agrarianism. New agrarianism is concerned with the wellbeing of the entire living system and has shifted towards an ideology that anyone can apply to their lives. Capturing the character and significance of the discursive transformation of agrarianism is an open scholarly project that this dissertation aims to join. I examine how one social movement organization, the Greenhorns, enters into this discourse and uses agrarianism in their efforts to support the movement for sustainable agriculture and changes the nature of agrarian discourse. Through a rhetorical analysis of a variety of their materials, I analyze how agrarianism figures in the Greenhorns’ recruitment, education, and maintenance. My assessment of these materials reveals that agrarian ideology functions as a central discourse as they recruit people and support a broader movement for sustainable agriculture, educate potential recruits to cultivate an activist agrarian farmer, and maintain the social movement they support by harnessing communication as a resource and stewarding an agrarian rhetorical ecology. Despite drawbacks such as the complexities of relying on an ideology with a brutal history and the difficulty of addressing multiple audiences, the Greenhorns’ use of agrarianism demonstrates the utility of the concept in movements that aim to ameliorate environmental degradation. In addition to furthering academic understanding of the rhetorical dimensions of new agrarianism, this dissertation advances understandings of various threads of scholarship in environmental communication and social movement rhetoric.