Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / The purpose of this thesis, "Agrarianism in James Fenimore Cooper," is to examine the social criticism of Cooper, as expressed chiefly in his novels, with the hope of showing that Cooper's mature political philosophy springs from the Jeffersonian branch of the Federalists and supports the social, cultured leadership of the wealthy agrarian rather than a business autocracy, the basic principle of Hamiltonian Federalism. To effect the purpose of this thesis requires evidence from Cooper's books that he accepted the main tenets of the Federalists at the time when they established the American Republic, but that he followed the landed branch of the Federalists rather than the business one in the schism that occurred in working out the problem of the new nation. To trace Cooper's views that root in Federalism involves a consideration of the kind of government that he approves. In discussing governments, Cooper divides them into governments of men and governments of law or principle. The governments of men divide into those in which the one, the few, or the many control the affairs of the nation. To explain Cooper's meaning, an absolute monarchy may represent the rule of the one; an oligarchy, the rule of the few; a certain limited monarchy and democracy, the government of laws, Cooper's conclusions on the republics of Italy, and more particularly upon the Venetian polity, as shown in The Bravo, show his opinions of the government of the few, and, incidentally, of the government of the one. His theories on England and the United States clarify his views on the governments of law, and his comments on the common-man majority of Jackson's time and later, illumine his conceptions of the government of the many [TRUNCATED].

The aim of this bachelor´s thesis ist to analyze the idea progress in the party programs in the swedish Centre-party during the time 1910-1959. The progress in the party program is compared with the evolution of society during the same period.The bachelor´s aim is also to analyze how each new program is described in newspapers, two newspapers were chosen to make the comparison; Arbetet (a social-democratic newspaper), and Skånska Dagbladet (a centre-party newspaper). The result shows that the party in the beginning was conservative and against both capitalism and socialism. The start of the party was a reaction against the new electionsystem which was introduced in Sweden in 1909.The party took a clear standpoint for the Swedish farmers, but after 1933, they were standing for the whole countryside. In the 1940´s and the 1950´s the party became more like a social liberal party rather than an agrarian party only for the farmers. The party programs are not given much space in the two newspapers. in the 1933 they only give short stories about it, and in the 1959 Arbetet and Skånska Dagbladet mostly writes about the new partycommittee. In newspapers from 1919 it´s not written at all about the new party program. The reason is that the end of the WWI just was happening and was the greatest news at the time.

Taking the lives and work of writers from the Upland South, this dissertation seeks to find out how agrarian thinkers understood the place and meaning of rural life in the twentieth century. Scholars have underscored the degree to which southern agrarians both drew upon and shaped conservative, even reactionary, intellectual currents in the region. In doing so, however, they have flattened the contours of southern agrarian ideas, leaving the mistaken impression that a single set of values defined it. This study argues that no single point of view, set of beliefs, or value system shaped agrarian thought in the South, but rather, such thinking was made up of a host of different perspectives that collectively point to the continued significance of rural life to American life. Agrarian thinking is worth studying because it reveals the significance of rural life to American identity in a way that helps us understand how ideas about rural life continued to shape the American imagination in the midst of a national decline in rural communities.

Thesis (M.A. in Political Science)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2006. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Small-scale, conservation-based agrarianism provides a model for sustainable human habitation within heterogeneous landscapes. Thoreau's Transcendentalism and the historical roots of American Agrarianism are explored as influences for wilderness preservation and the New Agrarian movement. Idealizing a distant wilderness too often means overlooking the ecological and socio-economic environment where people live. Middle landscapes between nature and culture, or between wilderness and cities, can either increase or reduce ecological and social functioning within the landscape matrix. Managing middle landscapes by agrarian principles helps move both nature and culture towards ecological, economic, and social sustainability. This thesis ends with a discussion of agrarian themes, such as supporting decentralized local economies and increasing community connectivity, applied in urban, rural, and wilderness landscapes.

This thesis considers the influence of agrarian thought on contemporary food movements.

At the turn of the century agrarian parties emerged in large parts of Europe. The parties had one thing in common: they stood up for the social, economic, cultural, and political interests of the agrarian society. The Swedish agrarian parties - 1 Bondeförbundet ' and 'Jordbrukarnas Riksförbund1 - were formed between 1913 and 1915.In this study the agrarian parties are not considered to be class parties. Instead, they are described as traditional parties, defending the old agrarian community against expansive industrialization. Their potential voters belonged to various social strata in the agrarian community, and their political programme, often characterized by a markedly negative view of modern society and by cultural protectionism, is summarized here under the term agrarianism. Agrarianism seen as a political theory and an applicable ideology had features in common with Conservatism as well as with Fascism and Socialism. Liberal values, however, were kept in the background.A modernization perspective is adopted in order to demonstrate that the agrarian parties were in fact traditional parties. It is assumed that regional variation in the electoral support of the agrarian parties reflects the modernization process, and, consequently, that the parties were weaker in industrial areas and stronger in socially and economically backward areas.The empirical studies show that the Agrarian parties stand out as traditional parties rather than class parties. Their voter support was stronger in areas where the historical and economic development was characterized by stagnation and conservatism, as well as in areas where social mobilization advanced slowly. In more industrialized and modernized areas conditions were quite the opposite. A study of Swedish interwar agrarianism with special regard to regional variations in party strength proves the agrarian parties to be the inheritors of a way of life formed by centuries of agrarian traditions. / digitalisering@umu

My study challenges our current valorization of movement and flow in readings of African American literature. I do so through an exploration of the representations of the black agrarian masses who either choose to remain or could not afford the spectacular forms of escape to urban life which many essentialized as freedom. In the dramatic and pivotal decades following emancipation, African American leaders attempted to check the growing apartheid by the “combination” of diverse African American communities: North and South, professional and working class. This required that they move beyond the question of whether one was free or slave to the more tangled questions of freedom related to economic class, access to and distinctions of culture, and the opportunities of the city versus the country. Their writing was one means to seek out a more nationally defined community, but their efforts towards racial unity had to resolve the conspicuous differences regarding region and class. A difficult negotiation of difference ensued. In this negotiation, I argue, an agrarian form of freedom manifests itself in the literature of the professional class despite the intraracial pressures of “uplift” ideology which skewed representation toward middle-class life. The politics as well as the values and culture of the agrarian class surface. The agrarian themes of community, remaining, and an environmentalism of the poor contest the valorization of urban industrialism and self-made man ideology which are linked to presentations of a city-life as a life of freedom.

This dissertation examines Robert Penn Warren‘s use of Arthurian legend, Judeo-Christian folklore, Norse mythology, and ancient vegetation rituals in his first four novels. It also illustrates how the use of these myths helps define Warren‘s Agrarian ideals while underscoring his subtle references to these ideals in his early fiction.

La découverte du fonds Petit aux Archives départementales de l’Indre a permis de suivre une famille adepte successivement de trois théories économiques du XVIIIe et du XIXe siècle : la physiocratie, le saint-simonisme et l’agrarisme. Mme Nicolas Petit, par son achat massif de terres et sa philosophie humanitaire, son fils Alexis Petit par son militantisme saint-simonien et son petit-fils Paul Petit par son appartenance efficace à l’agrarisme sont les exemples du passage entre ces trois mouvements. Les dossiers contenus dans les Archives départementales de l’Indre permettent également de suivre le parcours saint-simonien d’Alexis Petit, proche de Prosper Enfantin qu’il accompagna en Égypte à la recherche des vestiges du Canal de Suez. Alexis Petit tentera une expérience de ferme industrielle communautaire dans les vues saint-simoniennes. Paul Petit sera un militant agrarien, secrétaire de la Société d’agriculture de l’Indre. Cette thèse a pour but d’exploiter les nombreuses données sur le saint-simonisme à travers les correspondances inédites et à travers les documents que contiennent les Archives départementales de l’Indre et de donner une version nouvelle de ce mouvement. Son but est également de démontrer que Saint-Simon et les saint-simoniens sont un chaînon notable de la transmission entre la physiocratie et l’agrarisme. / The discovery of the Petit family collection at the archive of the Indre department allowed us to follow their successive experiences of three economic theories—physiocracy, Saint-Simonianism and agrarianism— through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mrs Nicolas Petit (because of her massive purchase of land and her humanist philosophy), her son, Alexis Petit (through his Saint-Simonian militancy) and her grandson, Paul Petit (through his effective membership of agrarianism), are most eloquent examples of the passage from one theory to the next. The files contained in the archive of the Indre department also make it possible to follow the Saint-Simonian way of Alexis Petit, who accompanied Prosper Enfantin in Egypt in search of the remains of the Suez Canal. Alexis Petit attempted an experiment of an industrial community farm in the Saint-Simonian aspects. Paul Petit was an agrarian activist and the secretary of the Agricultural Society of Indre. This thesis aims at making the most of the numerous data on Saint-Simonianism, with unpublished correspondence, and through the documents contained in this collection, in order to present a new understanding of this movement. Its aim is also to demonstrate that Saint-Simonianism is a noteworthy link between physiocracy and agrarianism.