Harris Abstract

In this lecture, Professor Angela Harris outlines structural inequities underlying farm ownership in the United States — a history marked by slavery and indigenous and immigrant exclusion from landownership and citizenship in a country in which agriculture has been equated with being 'civilized,' with the expansion of 'property rights,' and with images that define what kind of country the US should be. Deconstructing historical images and meanings of the 'family farm' and 'agrarian ideals,' Professor Harris focuses on signs of reintegration of farming as sustainability becomes a new value that helps connect the growing of food with the 'destabilization of racialized narratives about land, property, and citizenship.'