Farm Communities at the Crossroads: Challenge and Resistance

Terry A. Crowley is a professor of history at the University of Guelph,
and the former editor of the journal, Ontario History. He is the author
of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality and Canadian History to
1967, and the co-author of The College o

Few institutions are more dedicated to promoting an understanding of the
rural and agricultural past than the Canadian Plains Research Center.
Now that the actual practitioners of farming—especially those pursuing
agriculture full-time—have been reduced to a very small number of
people, the focus of scholarly attention has changed to the social and
economic aspects of rural life. “Community” has developed as a word
around which to organize treatments and interpretations, although it is
hard to believe that farmers were ever a community in a geographical or
social sense. Farmers are connected as much by specialty as by location,
economic interest, and political affiliation.

Community is one of seven topics around which the 26 thoughtful essays
in this collection are organized. Following an introduction written by
sociologist Joann Jaffe, the other topics concern work, land,
transportation, chemicals, machinery, and globalization and the state.
The contributors include a variety of agriculturalists and academics,
especially sociologists. They generally present the most recent research
or their own findings on diverse aspects of rural life as it applies to
the Canadian and American plains. This, then, is a varied assemblage to
be sampled primarily by those interested in the social and economic
dynamics of the rural West as it confronts a radically changing world
that is creating a whirlwind as cyclonic as that experienced during the
20th century.