Power in Agricultural History
2019 Annual Meeting
Washington, D.C.
June 6-8, 2019
The 100th anniversary meeting of the Agricultural History Society will be held in Washington, DC, an appropriate location to address the theme of “ Power in Agricultural History .” Power, in its multiple guises—whether political, social, economic, or physical—is embedded in every aspect of agricultural production, food and fiber marketing and consumption, and rural society and culture. The organizing theme is meant to encourage historians who refuse to accept that the current and future conditions of farms, food systems, and rural society and culture are the result of autonomous logics. It is worth remembering that among the founders of the Agricultural History Society were rural sociologists and agricultural economists who sought to influence public policy by developing their insights through historical research. The 100 th anniversary meeting offers an opportunity to celebrate and extend the interdisciplinary sensibility and public mission of the society, no small matter given the challenges that confront rural citizens and agricultural policymakers in our own time. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- The political power of farm organizations, electoral processes, policymaking institutions, for-profit firms, and third-sector and nongovernmental organizations
- Social power in rural societies as enabled and/or constrained by gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or religion
- Dynamics of power in rural landscapes, rural and urban ecologies, and between humans and non-human organisms in agricultural systems
- The application of animal, mechanical, or fossil-fuel based power sources to the production and distribution of agricultural goods