Space and Culture

http://sac.sagepub.com/

Embeddedness in Place : Its Role in the Sustainability of a Rural Farm Community in

Iowa
Janel M. Curry-Roper
Space and Culture 2000 3: 204
DOI: 10.1177/120633120000300402
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://sac.sagepub.com/content/3/4-5/204

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Embeddedness in Place:
Its Role in the

Sustainability of a Rural Farm

Community in Iowa

Janel M.

Curry-Roper

Recent scholars, spanning the many fields that impact on the study of rural places, from economics
to ethics, have rediscovered place and the importance of embedded relationships. All these scholars are similar in that they call for a shift in the way we approach our understanding of society, of
community, and of our relationships to the nature world. The purpose of this article is to lay out
their arguments and highlight those areas of thought that seem to be converging across disciplines.
The origins of my exploration of these ideas is grounded in more than a decade of empirical research. This research, of both a comparative and in-depth nature, led me to see theoretical gaps in
theory relating to conceptualizations of society. The search to understand what theory seems not to
explain has resulted in this new synthesis of ideas. The concept of place around which these ideas
center, will be contextualized within the issue of sustainable agriculture and with examples drawn
from a year-long study of rural farm communities in Iowa (Curry-Roper 1997). The examples are
not definitive, but only shadows of what may be open for discovery with this new direction of
thought emerging from across the natural and social sciences.
The Problem of Place

The concept of place is intertwined with assumptions on the nature of humans and of communal
bonds. It also involves the problem of meaningful theory-building that can move from the individual level to the social level. Typically in the social sciences, communal bonds, if existent, are
usually viewed as a backdrop against which individuals play out their own self-interests in a relatively placeless world (Miller 1992, 29). Furthermore, theory is inclined to reject purpose at the
level of the system, but not at the level of individual actors (Coleman 1986, 1312). Most who try
to overcome this view of society characterize social influences as merely acquired customs, habits,
or norms that individuals follow without much thought or sense of choice, while also assuming the
focus of the individual, atomized actor. Once someone can be characterized by social class or some
other measurable variable, all other behavior is predictable and automatic. All sense of embeddedness

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205

in relationships as the result of choice is absent. Behavior is seen rather as the result of a set of
roles where decisions involving more than one individual are the result ofrote-prescribed behavior

(Granovetter I985, 486-487).

The empirical challenge of separating the effects of individual attributes from the effects of
social context in the determination of individual outcomes is yet another problem. The potentially
rich notion of social structure tends to become diluted into mere aggregations of individual attributes or into group-level properties measured in mean scores. Such studies do not provide a
rationale for mechanisms that connect individual outcomes with group composition, let alone group
structure or to concepts of place (Erbring and Young 1979, 397). Kathleen Stewart states that
culture is not reducible to a fixed set of social values or beliefs but rather grows into places that
take on lives oftheir own (Stewart I996, 210). Places reflect a hard-to grasp quality and a sense of
something more in culture than can be described in &dquo;averages&dquo; or totally abstract theoretical conceptions (Stewart 1996, 5). In line with Stewarts perception, in a study across Iowa, I found
evidence for the existence of distinct community-wide world-and-life-views that were grounded in
common belief systems and physical places. These worldviews were community-wide, concerned
fundamental commitments, included elements of commitment to place and relationship to the natural world, and affected agricultural worldviews and patterns of farming. These worldviews were
not attributable to class, gender, or educational level. Perhaps place is a nonreducible piece of

reality (Curry-Roper 1998; Curry-Roper 1997)?

An Alternative

Conception of Society

Our understanding of community, broadly construed, is inseparable from our perception of the
human person. A positivistic, Western view alleges that communities come into being through the
collective will of individuals and may cease to be through this same collective will. Personhood is
defined by personal individuality. An alternative view is that individual personhood blosssoms
through membership in a community and atrophies if detached from the community. This is different from saying organized group activities can be a measure of communal life (Fowler 1993, 202I). A community is a group with whom one regularly interacts and shares space. Individualism
leads to equating community with organization (Fowler 1993, 25). A good organization is one that
serves well the persons involved. Community, on the other hand, is something we are; it is a property of our personhood. To clarify this further, we may say that an organization is a rule-governed
framework of human invention for ordering human affairs. A community is a human organism
constituted by the shared life of a number of persons (Fowler 1993, 26).

Underlying this strong drive for communal inclusivity is the human desire to experience wholein social relations. The human person finds self-fulfillment only as life is directed towards a
source of meaning beyond the self, whether as individual or as communal self. This inclusive
wholeness is expressed in human society in a rich diversity of communal types, with no single type
ness

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206

dominating. Thus, rather than saying that a human person is an individual, it is preferable to say
that the human person has individuality and a quality of communality, both of which belong to all
human persons (Fowler 1993, 22-24; Dooyeweerd 1986).
The social contract model of community, with its assumption of the self-interested nature of
humans, has become so thoroughly accepted that the establishment of a true and satisfying community as described by Fowler is dismissed as regressive thinking (Cordella 1991, 30). Central to
this recognition of commitment, community, the whole, and the relational aspects of reality is the
concept of covenant. Robert Bellah has pointed out the conflict between the Lockean, reductionistic
notion of society and covenantal conceptions of society. The covenant is a relationship between
parties that, unlike the parties in the Lockean contract, have a prior relation. The covenant is not a
limited relation based on self-interest, but an unlimited commitment based on loyalty and trust personal relationship. It involves obligations to each other that transcend self-interest, while it
promises a deeper sense of self-fulfillment through participation (Bellah 1990, 11).

Taylor has also seen how the concept of covenantal relationships is counter to our
societys positivist perspective. Though, according to him, such relationships are indispensable to
any understanding of the historical structures which we occupy, the inability to understand them by
the scientific rigors of proof reduces them to being viewed as arbitrary conventions -fictions
made up by self-interest (Taylor 1966,7). On the contrary, he emphasizes, they are fundamental to
our understanding of ourselves, our worldviews, and our society. Taylor draws on the biblical
image from Job 29:14, &dquo;I put on justice, and it clothed me.&dquo; In these words Taylor sees the whole
burden of the Hebrews sense of history: in community, he is clothed; cut off, he is naked; and there
is no other nakedness (Taylor 1966, 23). Such a sense of community can only be realized in a
place, where day to day relationships can develop.
John F.A.

The concept of covenant offers an alternative to the hyper-focusing on the individual and the
view of collective life as fictions of rationalized interests (ONeill 1994, 39). Yet liberal theorists
claim that such a covenant order is a primary or primitive institution because it is familized and
gendered. This ideological hierarchy of contract over covenant is assumed in all the social sciences (ONeill 1994, 51). Thus the social contract model with its assumption of self-interest appears to fail the most important test of rationality, an openness to re-analysis (Cordella 1991, 30).
A Farm

Community in Iowa

What do these concepts mean in reality? Let us look at a place where these concepts can be made
concrete. I will use one rural community
Hull, Iowa in order to flesh out the meaning of
these concepts as applied to real places as well as aid in understanding social processes. The Dutch
Reformed community of Hull is located in the open country of northwest Iowa (Figures 1 and 2).
Hull is part of a large Dutch Reformed settlement region that is now expanding its boundaries and
influence beyond Sioux County, Iowa. Com and beans dominate, but some farms maintain hay,
-

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207

pasture, and a variety of livestock including sheep, cattle, hogs, and dairy cows. Hull, and most of
Sioux County, Iowa, was settled after 1869 by Calvinist colonists from the Netherlands via Pella,
Iowa (Nieuwenhuis

1983, 61).

All communities have their own view of the world arising from their history, their ethnic and
religious origins, and their experiences living in a place and era (Curry-Roper 1997; Curry-Roper
1998). One of the main elements of the Hull Dutch Calvinist worldview is their commitment to
this community and place. In a discussion with a group of farmers in Hull, I presented a story of a
situation where a farmer was faced with selling his farm due to development pressures. However,
he knew that if he did so the whole community would follow, because he was the largest farmer,
rented and worked the acreages of others, thus helping sustain the community. His turmoil over the
decision focuses on the knowledge that, as the largest land owner, he will affect the entire community by his decision. The Hull group response to the narrative focused on the community as a
whole. Participants spoke of the similar desire of people in Hull to stay in the community. They
spoke critically about the heirs of this farmer, who would probably value money over the preservation of the community. Discussants also referred to the respect this farmer surely must have enjoyed in the community for putting the communitys needs first. This communal vision of life
arose throughout discussions in this community.
The origins of this communal vision relate to their most basic commitments. For John Calvin,
the major source of Reformed theology and tradition, redemption, meant bringing all things, secular and sacred, into proper order (Gingerich 1985, 265). This meant building a society where
particular rules governing the conduct of life could be obeyed literally, such as keeping the Sabbath
(Bjorklund 1964, 228). Later immigrants to Hull were influenced by the thought of Abraham
Kuyper, a late 19th century Reformed thinker in the Netherlands. Kuyper believed that Christians
and non-Christians understand the world in radically different ways (Stob 1983, 253). The natural
working out of this idea led to Kuypers call for the development of independent Christian centers
of higher education where evangelical insights could direct research. In addition, Christian schools,
colleges of higher education, Christian labor associations, Christian agriculture societies, etc., have
developed out of this vision (Stob 1983, 256; Paterson 1987). This communal vision was evident
from a study done in Wisconsin. Van Den Ban found that Dutch farmers were reluctant to leave
their community and more willing to pay a considerably higher price for a nearby farm than were
other farmers (Van Den Ban 1960, 314). The Kuyperian vision stresses that no calling or occupation is less sacred than any other, so young people have not been discouraged from entering a
variety of other occupations from teaching to banking. Thus the Calvinist communal vision has
led to economically varied and institutionally rich communities built up under the motivation to
build a society that lives under the laws of a Chistian God and institutions that are founded on
Christian principles, but not controlled by the institutional church.

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208
But how does this worldview contribute to the physical making of a place? The Dutch Reformed community has historically had smaller farm sizes than seven other groups studied in Iowa,
including two in the same part ofthe state. The 1960s and 1970s brought dramatic changes in farm
size to the Midwest. A representative Dutch Reformed township near Hull defied the trend toward
extensive expansion of farm holdings. Their largest increases in farm size were in the 1960s -L
twenty seven percent only to slow in the 1970s to ten percent, leaving them with the smallest
farms of all townships in my study (Iowa State Assessor 1917-1980). Between 1982 and 1992,
Sioux County farm size increases continued at the relatively low rate of about ten percent (U.S.
Department of Commerce 1984 and 1994). Likewise, Sioux County saw the lowest decreases in
farm population of all the study areas during the 1980s (19%) (&dquo;Iowa Farm Population Drop&dquo;
1992). The area is known for its intense competition for land and expanding Dutch settlement
boundaries, both the result of the desire of many to stay in the community (Curry-Roper 1998).
-

The physical landscape with its dense settlement pattern

worldview (Figure 3).

is the visible reflection of this underlying

The development of the nonfarm sector has been strong within Dutch communities in general,
fueled by a desire to stay (Curry-Roper and Bowles 1991). Hull is no exception. More options are
thus open to those who wish to stay but not farm. As a result, Hull maintained its population and
increased slightly between 1980 (1714) and 1990 (1724) (Iowa Department of Economic Development

i991).

The Dutch Reformed community of Hull is an example of the desire of people to chose particular places. Blomley (1992) says that, in spite of this reality, legal systems remain tied to the view
that freedom equals individual autonomy, leading to the obliteration of place and the lack of recognition of &dquo;commitment&dquo; in the legal structure. He claims that legal discourse constructs roles for
us, such as owner and employee, and tells us how to behave in those roles. It sets limits on what we
can imagine as practical options. In the midst of doing this the legal system must make sense of
certain geographic notions, such as the nature of the local community. Blomley believes that legal
discourse, in trying to make sense of local community, has become hostile to the claims of the
small rural town in crisis (1992: 238-239).
Left to right: Figure 1. The broad open expanses of northwest Iowa are dominated by farms that grow com
and soybeans. Figure 2. In addition, farms grow hay and maintain livestock. Figure 3. The range of different
types of farm buildings on individual farmsteads is necessary to support the diversity of crops and livestock.

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209

His example come from a comparison of two situations in Canada. In the first, the town of
Kimberley, British Columbia, whose life has been tied to a silver, lead, and zinc mine, is faced with
the mines closure. The residents are left with no choice but to move away in order to survive, but
are reluctant to do so. They have a strong attachment to place, linked with a sense of shared history
(Blomley 1992: 243). In another situation, a court case involves a doctors rights Il practice in
British Columbia in contravention of government regulation of physicians licenses based on provincial need. In both cases the court sees work as bound up in self-worth and esteem, and some
sense of community recognition. Loss of work, in both cases, was regarded not just as a loss of
earnings, but also as the loss of a way oflife. However, one case is concerned with the right to
move to a place, while the other case is concerned with the right to remain. Both court decisions
presuppose what Blomley calls &dquo;the right to geography,&dquo; meaning the right to choose a place to live
and a community to which to belong (Blomley 1992: 244).
In line with Enlightenment liberal notions of freedom, the courts perceived the community and/
state to be the oppressive force, its analysis based on the assumption conceiving of the individual as autonomous and self-sufficient. The courts remain more sympathetic to the doctors who
or

being restricted by government than to the residents of Kimberley. From this perspective the
community is viewed with suspicion as a potentially oppressive force. Rather it is only within the
private sphere, where the individual is left unrestrained by the community and state, that the individual can &dquo;find&dquo; himself or herself- the domain of liberty (Blomley 1992:245).
are

Unsurprisingly, then, the geography described by the courts treated geography in the language
community perspective, conversely, is one of place:

of space. The

The courts geography is one of fsictionless surfaces, reminiscent both of Lewis Carrolls global
chessboard (upon which movement occurs in a frenetic hyperspace); of the mythic isotropic plain of
regional science, upon which self-willed individuals make rational and frictionless moves; and of the
abstract and turbulent spatial geometries of Thomas Hobbes, in which the atomised individual is

incessantly propelled by appetites and aversions...the account is simultaneously a heroic one-of the
lone individual confronting all odds in pursuit of economic advancement or the abstract hierarchies of
central place theory-and a profoundly lonely one&dquo; (Blomley 1992: 246).
From the

a
appears as a surface of opportunity for individuals
frictionless surface on which self-interested individuals make rational moves. A geography that
recognizes ties to real places is in turn tied to images of stagnation ,lack of freedom, and feudalism
(Blomley 1992: 246). This idea of living in places as leading to a lack of freedom permeates the
culture. While it is clearly the case that places can be oppressive, it is also the case that families can
be oppressive and dysfunctional as well. This does not lead us to conclude that we need to do away
with families. Healthy families, like healthy places, at their best produce healthy and mature individuals. Interestingly, Patterson (1982) traces the very concept of freedom, under which the assumption of oppressive small towns arise, to slavery. Before slavery, people could not conceive of

legal perspective, geography

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210

the thing we call freedom. People could not value the removal of restraint as an ideal. Individuals
yearned for security of being anchored in a network of power and authority Belonging was a kind
of freedom, not a faculty or a power to do something (Patterson 1982, 340).

And, in fact, Blomley, like others, asks: is it possible to speak of individuals without attention

community and place? He argues that personhood cannot be conceived of in abstract legalistic,
individualistic terms because if it could, where would personhood originate? We all have
personhoods that are grounded in community and place. These places, just like families, have their
strengths and weaknesses. But recognition of this does not do away with their reality. The abstract
concept of geography as space does not mesh with the actual practices of people who dont want to
move in space, but want to be able to choose particular places (Blomley 1992: 247-248).

to

Americas

image as the land of freedom depicts freedom as independence. The counter argugain true understanding of physical systems, such
as agricultural systems, but additionally only through the development of a rooted existence in
family, neighborhood, church, and beyond, and through the development of personal attachments
to and care for a place, do we become individuals. The result is the growing recognition that we
must treat geographical place as a contributing factor to personhood and that human freedom is
only meaningful and fulfilling in community (Campbell 1990, Cordella 1991, Fowler 1993). Our
values are formed and grounded in the context of a community that is place-bound.
ment is that not only in real places do individuals

Economic

Theory and Place

Economic understanding of rural places has been based on the assumption that economies are
collections of atomistic competitors formally aware of one another solely through market signals.
Orthodox economists either assume that relations of production are untouched by cultural considerations, the location and history of ones community, family and ethnic ties, and commitment to
place, or else they ought to be. Thus in classical and neoclassical economic thought, societal
relations, if dealt with at all, are seen as impeding truly competitive markets (Granovetter 1985:

484).
In the economic context, there is again the problem of aggregation. For example, Weber explained the macro-level phenomenon of capitalism through an analysis of the effect of Protestant
doctrine on individual values and, again, the effect of these values on individual orientations to
economic behavior. What he failed to show is how these individual orientations combined to

produce the structure of economic organization that we call capitalism (Coleman 1986, 13221323). How have individuals in Hull, Iowa combined to make a place that individuals want to live
and how has this place become prosperous? Economic theory purports to have an answer. While
economic theory does not pretend to offer an account of the place of the individual in society, in
analyzing the market for private goods, classical economics jumps from individual self-interest to
community interest, to the interest of the society, by invoking the diversionary magic of an invisible hand (Douglas 1989, 41). All sense of embeddedness in relationships is absent.

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211

The atomized view and the role-defined view of human actions fail to include the concept of
amongst individuals. Trust implies relational embeddedness that is chosen and developed
over time, leading back to the alternative concept of freedom arising from such longstanding relationships. In our social theories and in our society, institutional arrangements have been substituted for trust in an attempt to make individuals behave within certain accepted norms, not recognizing the possibility that embeddedness in personal relations itself discourages misbehavior
(Granovetter 1985: 489). Giddens argues that this is our present reality. He says that one of the
results of the process of modernization has been the disembedding of individuals from the trust of
personal relations with those with whom bne shares time and space. This type of trust has been
replaced by the rationalized organization and specialists (1990, 20-2I).
trust

Granovetter is less willing to accept the idea that this type of space-time embeddedness is lost.
He argues that personal relations and the structures of such relations continue to generate trust
which is grounded in information gained from ones past dealings with persons (Granovetter 1985:
490). He gives examples that illustrate the kind of embeddedness that he would argue best reflects
the true nature of society: if problems arise between individuals who have made a contract, those
prior detailed agreements are often not referred to, but solutions are negotiated as if there had never
been a contract (Granovetter 1985: 497). Also, general contractors usually employ only two to
three subcontractors in a given trade area no matter the number of projects, due in part to the
benefit from the investment of learning to work together and the pleasure derived from sustained
social interaction. Such pleasure and benefit could not be obtained if a different subcontractor
were used on each project (Granovetter 1985: 498). This would not represent trust as Giddens
defmes it. For Giddens, trust involves the absence in time and space - trust in the unknown or in
what is beyond ones control (Giddens 1990, 33). Granovetters description of trust is not trust in
the unknown but that which arises out of what is known and experienced.

The kind of trust and embeddedness Granovetter describes can only be based on proximityIt is only within the context of treating space as place, that we recognize the
freedom such embeddedness can provide. Bennett Harrison (1992) attempts to illustrate the importance of community proximity and relationships in his work on prosperous new industrial districts. He claims their existence is not explicable by conventional neoclassical economics (1992:
471). Harrison explains their growth by the emergence of informal ties based on trust. He describes the placement of trust not in abstract systems, as Giddens claims, but based on mutuality

place and community.

and

intimacy (Giddens 1990, 114).

In the standard urban economic

models, which are space-based, proximity facilitates the exwhich

individual
atomistic decision-makers may then act. The placechange
based argument offered by the industrial district theorists -that proximity promotes the digestion
of experience, which leads to trust, which promotes re-contracting, and which ultimately enhances
regional growth is built on a different logic (Harrison 1992: 477). Trust is an expression of
embeddedness
entrepreneurs see one another regularly in social clubs, in churches, and on the
of information

on

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212
1. The contrasts
between the atomic
model of society,
supporting the ideal of
the Enlightenment

&dquo;man,&dquo; as opposed to a
relational model
of society and reality,
have been described at
more

length by philosophers
of gender such as
Elizabeth Wolgast
(1980) and Evelyn Fox
Keller (1985). In
addition, extensive
literature exists on
gender roles in rural
communities. See Fink
1986 for example.
an

advisory boards of local co-operatives and regional government agencies.

Proximity leads to experience, to trust, to collaboration, to enhanced regional
economic growth, entwining economic relations into a deeper social fabric
(Harrison 1992: 478). Arendt would describe the attractiveness of such places
as being rooted in the human condition of social embeddedness
a necesfor
live
condition
to
as
whole
We
are
bom
into
commusary
people
people.
nity. We have seen this condition as a restriction that interferes with our
desires, but by trying to overcome it we become more alienated from our
own created human condition (Goudzwaard and de Lange 1995, 103).
-

Power offers

model of economic

growth

that is built

on

this under-

standing of the human condition. He claims that the economic geography of

the U.S. has been transformed, not by people passively relocating for work,
but rather by people actively seeking particular residential environments
(Power 1996, 14). He argues that economic activity follows people who
choose social and natural environments that make life more meaningful, satisfying, and diverse (Power 1996, 19). One may move to a place because of
natural or social environment despite lower wages, fewer employment opportunities and higher cost of living. Lower real wages or higher unemployment rate is not a sign of economic malaise, but of how attractive the place is
to people (Power 1996, 21). Discretionary qualities are not the frosting on
the economic cake, they are the cake (Power 199G, 24). The new population
puts downward pressure on wages, attracting more business activity. With
this population, the role of the export base begins to decline, increasing selfsufficiency. This occurs as residents see opportunities for supplying goods
and services for which the local population would have to go elsewhere,
expanding the circulation of money within the community, and decreasing
dependence on export-based industry. This may explain the economic diversity of Hull, Iowa. The desire for many to stay in the community, reinforced and affrmed by its worldview, may have contributed to its economic
health.

Embeddedness and Sustainable Agriculture

assumptions of neoclassical economics have also had their impact on

conception of agriculture and have underlain many of the changes in
U.S. agriculture of the past one hundred years, affecting communities like
Hull. Those who support conventional agricultural production emphasize
individual farm profitability. Connections of individual farm enterprise to
community and environment are left out of the formula (Lyson and Welsh
1993: 424). On the other hand, proponents of sustainable agriculture articulate the same critiques of the neoclassical approach to farming as Harrison
The

our

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213

and Granovetter do of industrial economics. Sustainable agriculture supporters argue for the reality of embeddedness within the natural environment
and particular social contexts, and emphasize living with nature and within a
rural community (Beus and Dunlap 1990). The conventional agriculture
paradigm emphasizes farming as a business with specialization, capital inputs, efficiency, reduced labor, large-scale processing, and global markets.
The sustainable agriculture paradigm emphasizes farming as a way of life
embedded in nature and community with diversification, environmental
sustainability, decentralized markets, and processing (Beus and Dunlap 1990).

Lyson and Welsh found that increases in expenditures for equipment and
machinery, the prevalence of corporate farms, higher rates of tenancy, and
the prevalence of larger farms are all associated with less diversity of crops
grown. Conversely, there is a greater diversity of crops grown in counties
where farm labor expenditures are higher, where there are more mediumsize farms, and where there is a prevalence of farmers who derive most of
their income from farming (Lyson and Welsh 1993: 433). They conclude
that the range of crops grown in a county is an indicator that can distinguish
conventional agricultural systems from sustainable agricultural systems that
are more oriented toward the inherent link between production, society, and
the environment (Lyson and Welsh 1993: 433). They claim that counties
having farmers who structure their operations to remain flexible and better
able to grow a variety of crops as markets dictate do not conform to the
organizational assumptions of the neoclassical economic paradigm (Lyson
and Welsh 1993: 433).2
Granovetter would connect such trends to social embeddedness. He says
should expect more pressure for vertical integration in a market where
such social embeddedness is missing. On the other hand, where a stable
network of social relations exists, the pressures for vertical integration should
be less (Granovetter 1985: 503).

we

The stable network of social relations in the Hull, Iowa

community may discourage vertical integration in comparison
to other places. The Dutch Calvinist farmers of Hull, like other
communities in my study with strong communal visions, have
more livestock in terms of numbers and diversity per acre than
other communities with a similar land base (Figures 3 and 4).
More research is needed to discern the reasons for this pattern.
Does the pattern reflect the embeddedness of social relations
and the resulting less vertical integration or is it the conse-

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2. This may explain

the easy entrance of
the integrated poultry
and hog businesses
into the southern

U.S. but resistance to

it in the Midwest. My
work and that of
Walter Goldschmidt
certainly point in this
direction (Curry-

Roper 1997,
Goldschmidt 1978).

Figure 4. The
prominence of hay
fields in northwest
Iowa points to farm

diversity.

214

quence of farm intensification necessitated by the desire of so many to stay and share in the local
communal vision? Or does this trend merely reflect advantageous locations of the communities
relative to livestock processors?
Local

Knowledge

Studies by Kloppenburg and Curry-Roper have recognized the commonalities found within the
thinking ofsustainable agriculturalists and feminists (Curry-Roper 1992, Kloppenburg 1991). Feminist concerns for context-dependence mirror the perspective of agroecologists such as Wendell
Berry, and Wes Jackson (Kloppenburg 1991: 539). The reductionism of science based on the
search for universality is in sharp contrast both to sustainable agriculture proponents of local knowledge and to feminist objectivity that emphasizes situated knowledge, limited location, and the
inability to split subject and object (Haraway 1988: 581). Keller claims that the traditional approach of science does not allow us to ask questions about our relationship to natural systems
(1985: 147), and she describes an alternative that has the goal of understanding rather than prediction, empowerment rather than power to manipulate, and reflects and affirms our connection to the
world (1985: 166).
scholars

using grounded theory acknowledge the situated and continually evolving

suggest, not an abandonment of theory, but rather a way to formulate a
more complex and yet tentative theory which more closely addresses questions about social life as
it is most basically understood and is based on what is observed rather than what is deduced (Glaser
and Strauss 1967; Harper 1991, 83). Similarly, Buroways extended case method allows for
specificity through the focusing on those aspects of a situation that do not fit present theory. This
focus allows for the reconstruction of already existing theory (Buroway 1991b).

Similarly,

nature of group life but

In contrast to these attempts by grounded theory and the extended case method to recognize
uniqueness in the social realm, scientists have traditionally sought their explanations in universals
and translocality. They have been interested not in complete understanding of a specifically situated phenomenon, but in partial understandings of widely dispersed but similar phenomena. This
reductionism, according to its critics, has involved loss of context and applicability (Flora 1992,
Kloppenburg 1991, Reisner 1992).

Within the sustainable agriculture community, the critics of agricultural science argue that agricultural research of the sort performed by experiment stations can have only limited applicability
to actual farming operations. The alternative perspective, that of &dquo;local or indigenous knowledge,&dquo;
sees understanding arising only out of real places - turning the agricultural establishment on its
head. This perspective argues that knowledge, just like social and economic life, is embedded in

specific localities.

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215

Reisner (1992: 7) argues that agricultural research in the past fifty years has been characterized
by commitment to an ends-means reductionistic scientific rationality commonly associated with
the physical sciences. That is, scientists assign one end, such as increasing yields, as a deterministic end. They then manipulate various experimental treatments to determine the most effective
method to reach that end in order to produce general universal knowledge. It represents a way of
relating to nature through its goal of control. This scientific rationality is a belief system in the
sense that it establishes a way of looking at the world, including rules on how we judge what is true
(Reisner 1992: 7). Indigenous or local knowledge, generated by the farmer, differs from scientific
knowledge because it has a variety of ends rather than one, is not concerned with universal explanation, is valid only for a particular situation, and includes multiple factors rather than controlling
for one. It allows for practical experience as a valid measure of success and includes detailed
knowledge of local ecological and environmental factors (Reisner 1992: 8).
a

For many feminists, the resulting detachment from nature and the objectification of the natural
are characteristic of traditional scientific methods are seen to be part of the societal
that
system
puts emphasis on power and control, resulting in the domination of both women and
nature (Kloppenburg 1991: 530). Reductionism is seen to involve loss of context which encourages a hierarchical and linear rather than an interactive and ecological view of nature (Kloppenburg

world that

1991: 530).
In contrast to &dquo;scientific&dquo; knowledge, &dquo;local knowledge&dquo; implies that understanding may be
inseparable from a particular place in the sense of being embedded in the natural features of that

place as well in particular labor process environmental and social embeddedness (Kloppenburg
1991: 537). Its emphasis is toward understanding nature rather than dominating nature (Flora
1992). Place-based knowledge that produced from a limited location -provides an alternative
to contemporary science. The acceptance of the idea of the embeddedness of knowledge allows for
the rejection of such space-based assumptions as belief in the location-neutrality of agricultural
technology, a belief that has led to the standardization and subsequent de-skilling of agricultural
laborers who were once necessarily sensitive to place and local conditions (Flora 1992: 93).
-

The concept of locai knowledge is inseparable from its social implications. Local knowledge is
often detailed and local but, as with grounded theory, not particular in that it is transmissible to
others. But more importantly, it requires forms of organizing or practice that provide space for new
kinds of ideas and relationships (Hassanein and Kloppenburg 1995, 723-725). An example in
Iowa is the organization Practical Farmers of Iowa. PFI started as an alternative agriculture farmers group, created to share local knowledge. This organization now does on-farm research and
cooperatives with faculty from Iowa State University. Dordt College, one of the local colleges
founded on the Dutch Calvinist worldview we have discussed, and the faculty of its agricultural
stewardship program, have been active from the very beginning. Does the commitment to place,
out of which Dordt College developed, lend itself to alternative ways of seeing farming? Could it
be that the habit of thinking that developed in this northwest comer of Iowa contributed to early

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216

Kloppenburg also contend that the developexample, change relationships to physical places. These systems are
very complex and demand skill, flexibility, ingenuity, and profound attention to detail. The process of observation, and interpretation of the dynamic system, needed to make decisions about when
pastures need to be grazed, leads to new ways of seeing and thinking.
links with Practical Farmers of Iowa? Hassanein and

ment of grazing systems, for

Hassanein and Kloppenburg say that practitioners transcend the reality of the multiple variables and acquire a wisdom that allows them to know the impact of the interrelationships of those
variables, the weighted average of the forces at work. This wisdom is an irreducible component of
farming (Hassanein and Kloppenburg 1995, 727-728). Such intimate knowledge leads some grass
farmers to question the need for chemicals and to break out of traditional paradigms in modem
commercial farming (Hassanein and Kloppenburg 1995, 732). Local knowledge requires farmers
to think for themselves, but along with others who are doing the same. Together, new ways of
thinking about farming arise. Local knowledge and the practical become intertwined with the
cosmological, with how one sees the world (Hassanein and Kloppenburg 1995, 736).
One farm couple in Hull are becoming grass farmers. They lived in California for seven years
where the husband worked on a large dairy farm. They state that their reasons for moving to Hull,
community of the wifes origins, were both the draw of the community ethos and the desire to farm
on a smaller scale on their own. They indeed farm with few acres but much labor -fifty-one
rented acres and eighty-five dairy cows. Because of the small acreage, they have had to buy feed
in the past. But now, in order to cut costs for feed and avoid the investments in large machinery
needed to do crop farming, this couple is moving toward rotational grazing. In effect, they are in
the process of becoming grass farmers. The move is reinforced by religiously-based environmental convictions
they say that grazing is kinder to the land. Their information for this change in
farm system has come via publications and contacts with farmers in other parts of the country,
especially Wisconsin and Michigan. In addition, local faculty from Dordt College have done some
work on rotational grazing and have been supportive of this couple. The couple has also rejected
the use of growth hormones to increase milk production because of the social impact of increasing
quantities of milk on farm communities, giving some indication of the worldview with which they
approach farming. The couple expect that if they make a success of the new system, many others
will follow. This change, which involves thinking for themselves, also involves new ways of
thinking about nature, but those new ways may not be too foreign to the couple involved.
-

Dutch farmers of Hull, Iowa have a complex view of the relationship between humans and the
nonhuman world. They express a Calvinistic interpretation of the future
that Christs return will
about
a
new
and
new
earth
for
he
will
restore and redeem
heaven
them
that
bring
meaning
nature as well as humans to their pre-edenic state. As one individual stated,
-

there is

a connection between this life and the life hereafter..weve begun our eternal life...the opening
chapter...what we do now has a direct link to our enjoyment of life eternal...The whole thing of
stewardship, is certainly part of now and, or a part of eternity. The comparison between the seed and

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217
the fullgrown tree and our body and our resurrection body
theres a connection, but still, you
wouldnt believe that a huge oak tree could come from a little tiny acorn. And I dont think you can
even begin to fathom what the life hereafter will be, if you think of our cells, now, as the seed.
-

The present physical reality is connected to eternal physical realities making present choices relating to the land into sacred choices. In 1960, Van Den Ban noted that Calvinistic farmers see
themselves as the stewards of God on the farms the Lord has given them (Van Den Ban 1960, 316).
The decision to adopt a new farm practice continues to be a sacred decision.

The Hull farmers also emphasize an additional Calvinistic distinctive -that of the relationship
between obedience to Gods laws (most clearly expressed in the ten commandments) and blessing,
or financial success. This belief leaves them with a strong internal locus of control but rooted in
obedience to Gods laws. Furthermore, they express the belief that disobedience has a direct effect
upon nature. One individual told about the lack of birds during the 1980s, something he attributed
to the state of society rather than to direct actions of humans such as pesticide use. Cosmology,
community, farming, and the land are a seamless garment.
Environmental Ethics

While economists like Granovetter and geographers like Blomley are interested in issues of
embeddedness in human relationships and rootedness in places, the supporters of sustainable agriculture, local knowledge, and feminism expand their vision to include embeddedness in ecological
places. The ethical relationship of humans with nature, Jim Cheney argues, is also best grounded
in such real places where &dquo;an understanding of self and community is an understanding of the place
in which life is lived out and in which an understanding of place is an understanding of self and
community&dquo; (1989: 131). Cheney might have extrapolated that our current abstract, individualistic structure of rights, our emphasis on space rather than place, and our pursuit of universalistic
knowledge may never be able to produce a locally meaningful land ethic.

Raymond Murphy similarly argues that any re-orientation of human relationship with nature
a response to the ecological experience of environmental degradation in the daily lives of
people, not a kind of abstract knowledge about environmental problems. He claims there is an
experiential basis underlying our knowledge of the environment precisely because humans are
themselves embedded in nature and its process. Through experiences which lead to knowledge,
humans begin to identify with nature, not by seeing all of nature as ones self (universalizing), but
by experiencing, in a place, ones self as dependent on and part of nature (Murphy 1994: 244-248).
will be

Similar views were expressed by Christopher Lasch (1991: 36) in the context of human relationships alone, suggesting from his study of the family that the capacity for loyalty is stretched too
thin when it tries to attach itself to something as universal as the whole human race. He concluded
that loyalties must be attached to specific people and places, not abstract ideals. These abstract

ideals, he claims, rest on the fiction that men and women are all alike and, as a result, concern and

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218

loyalty cannot be maintained when differences are discovered. Flesh-and-blood love, on the other
the love of particular women and men, not of humanity in general - is based on complementary differences, not on sameness, and can only flourish by embeddedness in a place.
hand

Keith Basso reveals the concrete nature of the relationship that can exist between place and
ethics. Among the Apache, places and their names remind the people of associated stories, which
in turn have morals. Seeing these places daily reminds Apache of the placenames, the stories, and
the morals, creating an ethical system that physically surrounds them. The placenames are used in
conversations to gently make points of morality. The path to wisdom in the culture is tied to ones
ability to use placenames and their associations in making ethical judgments, thus the title, Wisdom
Sits in Places (Basso 1996). The absence of the places would lead to the demise of an ethical
system. Perhaps in a similar, but less concrete way, the nature of the physical landscape of the
Hull, Iowa community becomes part of the ethical system of boundaries. The absence or presence
of wild birds tells of obedience or disobedience; the density of the farmsteads tells of commitment
to community; the prosperity of the town and local institutions is the measure of the coherence of
people, worldview, and nature: the measure of the health of a place.
An attempt at conceptualizing relationships with nature is made with the development of the
concept of community-based agriculture and &dquo;foodsheds.&dquo; Harriet Friedmann characterized the

principal elements of the world food economy as being distance and durability, over against the
particularities of time and place. The objective of those involved in the world food system, according to Friedmann, is to recreate the world into a featureless plain, free of physical or social obstacles to the free flow of money and agricultural commodities (Friedmann 1993). If the attempt to
overcome distance is the central challenge of our modem, global food system, then, say those
interested in alternatives, greater attention to proximity - that which is relatively near - should
be an appropriate response (Crouch 1993, Kloppenburg, Hendrickson, and Stevenson 1996).
What does this attention to place entail? If economic concentration- centralized, verticallyintegrated mass production results from the absence of an embeddedness based on proximity,
the vision of community-based agriculture is thought to lie in small and mid-sized enterprises
capable of responding affirmatively to the opportunities and responsibilities of an emergent
commensal community. In this vision, agriculture is tied to community
eating together. A
second element of the vision of foodsheds and community-based agriculture is an emphasis on
local knowledge that is sensitive to the &dquo;expectations of the land&dquo; and replaces the universalizing
perspectives of agricultural science that treat all places the same (Kloppenburg, Hendrickson, and
-

Stevenson

1996).

Finally, the vision is for an alternative founded on respect for the integrity of particular sociogeographic places. The landscape is treated as a place intricately woven with an individual community, and with human activity conforming to the natural characteristics of that place. The vision
is based on the concept of once again becoming native to a place. The moral economy of the
foodshed will not be based

on

individuals with unrestrained freedom

to pursue

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their

own

self-

219

interest, but shaped and expressed in communities which attempt to build sustainable relationships
amongst themselves and with the land (Kloppenburg, Hendrickson, and Stevenson 1996). Since

vocabulary inevitably reflects the central concerns of a community, in a group with whom one
regularly interacts, values become intertwined with culturally shared outlooks and attitudes. Our
ethical systems are, in their living out, place-based (Kitwood 1977, 85-86).
Conclusions

Throughout this paper I have used Hull, Iowa to illustrate the theoretical arguments coming out of
the place literature. Some readers might argue that a homogeneous rural community is not the best
example to use to bolster the theoretical perspective. I am convinced that the processes at work in
Hull, Iowa are the same everywhere. The homogeneous nature of the place makes them more
evident, but not different. Recently my family and I moved to a new city. In the search for a house
I kept going back to one particular neighborhood. What drew me there? Perhaps something in the
built environment
sidewalks or the small neighborhood shopping center -reflected something
appealing. Or was it the number of children playing on the sidewalks while parents conversed? As
we unpacked and moved into our newly purchased home, multiple neighbors brought food and one
family took our children to play at their home. All the while, these neighbors walked across each
others backyards, unhindered by fences and other obstructions. I knew we had made the right
choice. What leads to an urban neighborhood like this one? I speculate that the habits of living
embedded in a place - the sense of place - that developed during a time when the neighborhood
was more homogeneous have been passed on to the new families who now come from a variety of
ethnic and racial backgrounds. Places continue to develop and come into being through a variety
-

of means.

The concept of place, as described in the wide range of literature cited here, affirms Giddens
contention that time and space are at the core of comprehending the way social reality is constituted. Like Giddens, the place literature shows that space is both a medium of social relations and
a material product that can in turn affect social relations (Raedeke and Rikoon 1997, 148). The
place literature goes beyond his understanding of the relationships between human agency and
social structure, however. The human qualities of both individuality and communality continue to
find expression and remain strong forces. Space becomes the defmer of the outer limits of the
context in which these forces are expressed. And the individuality of that space and the relationship of a community to that space in turn change ways of seeing and ways of responding to larger
forces. These expressions and understandings in turn shape spatial patterns, creating places that
express the fullness of the intertwined nature of community worldviews, legal constructs, relationships with nature, and ethical systems. We must see life at this level as the scale where fundamental theoretical understandings can be fleshed out (Stewart 1996, 4). While each place may have a
unique configuration of these elements, the processes and forces are similar. We need not give up
on the search for theory that can help us understand the processes at work. The abandonment of
generalizations, as often proposed by post-modernists, is not necessary for the addition of the
concept of place into theory (Buroway 199 1 a) However, discerning the forces that create places

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220

begin to stretch our understanding of the processes involved in the formation

of community-wide worldviews, that we become more awareness of the strong mutually formative
relationship of people and places, that we create ways of describing relationships which are more
than cause-and-effect (McTaggart 1993, 312-313), that we begin to understand how ethical values
systems are intertwined with physical place, and that we explore the possibility that place is more
than a social construct. We need more theories, not assertions, on how the local has its own epistemology (Stewart 1996, 5). We need to look beyond our individualistic imagination (CurryRoper and McGuire 1993).
will require that we

Calvin College
Grand Rapids, U.S.A.

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