Debt and Dispossession: Farm Loss in America's Heartland [Paperback]

Kathryn Marie Dudley (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226169138 | ISBN-13: 978-0226169132 | Publication Date: May 15, 2002 | Edition: 1

Winner of the Margaret Mead Award of the Society for Applied Anthropology

The farm crisis of the 1980s was the worst economic disaster to strike rural America since the Depression—thousands of farmers lost their land and homes, irrevocably altering their communities and, as Kathryn Marie Dudley shows, giving rise to devastating social trauma that continues to affect farmers today. Through interviews with residents of an agricultural county in western Minnesota, Dudley provides an incisive account of the moral dynamics of loss, dislocation, capitalism, and solidarity in farming communities.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dudley presents a subtle, insightful, and nuanced treatment of the rural 'community' itself, emphasizing its divisions and contradictions.... [A] very good and enlightening book. With Debt and Dispossession, Kathryn Dudley joins the ranks of such anthropologists as Jane Adams, Deborah Fink, and Sonya Salomon." - David Danbom, Rural History; "Dudley writes with rare skill and passion. This is a mid-stream account of America coming of age. Midwesterners are protagonists who may yet wrest a more satisfactory resolution, thanks to this superb contribution." - Deborah Fink, Annals of Iowa

From the Inside Flap

By the winner of the Margaret Mead Award of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology

The farm crisis of the 1980s was the worst economic disaster to strike rural Americans since the Depression. Thousands of farmers lost their land and homes, irrevocably altering their communities and, as Kathryn Marie Dudley shows, giving rise to devastating social trauma that continues to affect farmers today. Through interviews with residents of an agricultural county in western Minnesota, Dudley provides an incisive account of the moral dynamics of loss, dislocation, capitalism, and solidarity in farming communities.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 211 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226169138
• ISBN-13: 978-0226169132
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,284,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars painful descriptions of loss in the heartland, July 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Debt and Dispossession: Farm Loss in America's Heartland (Hardcover)

If you've ever gone through hard times and felt like the world was standing in judgement, you have a sense of what the people in this book went through losing their farms. I grew up in farmland and have some sense of how fully peoples lives were tied up in their farms. For all those who see the modern economy as cool darwinian survival of the fittest, Dudley offers up a more plausible alternative: failure is often arbitrary or--worse--prompted by poorly thought out policies. The resulting pain of failure for those who experience the judgement is profound because so many see failure and success in moral terms. I'm still mulling the final message--that the unsympathetic judgement of those who get the short end of the economic stick *is* the American way. I can think of some counter-examples, but for the most part it rings true. Curious what others think.