Abstract
Social scientists have long examined the changing role of the individual, and the influence of individualism in social and economic arrangements as well as behavioral decisions. With respect to co-operative behavior among farmers, however, the ideology of individualism has been little theorized in terms of its relationship to the longstanding virtue of independence. This paper explores this relationship by combining analysis of historical literature on the agricultural cooperative movement with the accounts of contemporary English farmers. I show that the virtue of independence is deployed to justify a variety of cooperative (formal and informal) and non-cooperative practices and that, despite apparently alternative interpretations, independence is most often conflated with individualistic premises. That conflation, I argue, leads farmers to see their neighbors as natural competitors: as those from whom which independence must be sought. This has the effect of masking the structural dependencies which farmers face (such as lenders and large purchasers) and limits the alternatives available to them to realize a view of independence that is maintained, rather than opposed, by interdependent collective action. Thus perceived, individualism is an ideological doctrine that succeeds by appealing to the virtue of independence, while simultaneously denying its actual realization.
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Notes
It is important to stress that this work does not deny the ability of farmers to challenge dominant interpretations. Indeed, it argues that important values are constantly being negotiated in the process of everyday social interaction.
Rew shows that the farmers’ clubs were often perceived to be associations of intemperance and ill-repute but argues that they played an important social function. Rew cites Mr. Clare Sewell Read in 1896 on the loss of the market dinner/tea: “I can remember when 50 or 60 farmers used to sit down at a hotel in Norwich, at three o’clock, and never think of getting up until five. The result was that during these two hours there was an immense amount of information imparted, and a confederation and co-operation resulted among those jolly men which really does not exist now” (Rew 1913: 96–97). One can imagine that the demise of this potentially subversive space, was facilitated by the moral aspersions cast against it.
As Dumont argues, it is not the lack of differences among men that stands individualism apart from holism. Instead it is the nature of the relations between men and things. In holistic society, he argues, it is the relationship between men that is important, whereas individualism places greater emphasis on the relationship between men and things (Dumont 1986, p. 106).
For an interesting and recent overview of the different discourses motivating agricultural cooperation in the US see Stofferahn (2010).
In a different and contemporary context Rossi and Hinrichs (2011, p. 1425) have married both individualism and independence in explaining reluctance of US farmers to cooperate: “Cultural values of individualism and beliefs about the importance of farmer independence could make it difficult to form and sustain effective co-operative farmer organizations.”
Henrich and Henrich (2007) report that in tit-for-tat reciprocal relationships fewer interactants are often favored since it allows for easier accounting of past behaviors.
Maxey (2006) has demonstrated the necessity of an interdependent form of independence in the “alternative” agriculture movement.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the School of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Development at Newcastle University, which funded the initial writing of this paper. The original research on which this paper draws was funded by the Rural Economy and Land Use Program (RELU RES-240-25-0019), and I am grateful to the Principal Investigator of that research—Jeremy Franks—for his support. For comments and discussions on earlier drafts of the paper I thank Maria Kastrinou, Paul Stock, Jérémie Forney, Arshad Isakjee, the Editor, and the three anonymous reviewers. The reviews, in particular, have substantially strengthened the original submission.
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Emery, S.B. Independence and individualism: conflated values in farmer cooperation?. Agric Hum Values 32, 47–61 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9520-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9520-8