• Refine Query
  • Source
  • Publication year
  • to
  • Language
  • 1
  • Tagged with
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

"Three meals a day and a place to stay" : Non-waged labor, household formation and the politics of scale on organic farms in the southeastern United States

Mirabito, Dean January 2023 (has links)
Family farms practicing organic agriculture often struggle to make a profit. Unable to pay wages, farms are increasingly recruiting laborers who agree to work without pay, instead receiving food and accommodation. To date, there has been little research examining everyday life in farm households shared by familial owner-operators and non-waged laborers. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at organic farms in the southeastern United States, this thesis describes how farm work, housework and consumption are organized in these households. Situating my analysis within debates on the agrarian question, I investigate how the recruitment of non-waged labor affects the ability of farm-family households to reproduce themselves. My findings suggest that, though farm owner-operators recruit non-waged laborers with the expectation of solving labor challenges, their recruitment produces numerous conflicts internal to the household. I analyze how farm owner-operators deploy scale constructions to defend and legitimize arrangements of productive and social-reproductive work which preserve the ability to self-exploit. I also show how laborer’s bodies are identified as both the problem and the solution in conflicts over consumption. Through attention to the lived experiences of farmworkers, this thesis contributes to debates concerning the social sustainability of organic farming.

Page generated in 0.084 seconds