Saturday, January 8, 2011: 9:40 AM
Room 202 (Hynes Convention Center)
In the first half of the twentieth century, fifteen million rural youth and several hundred thousand adult volunteers participated in 4-H agricultural and homemaking clubs administered by the USDA. Organized by experts from land grant colleges and the USDA and partially funded by agricultural and financial firms, 4-H clubs educated participants on a host of topics: the labor and technology of “modern” agricultural and home making, the appropriate divisions of gendered labor in “farm families,” the cultivation of healthy bodies, and the meanings of “citizenship” in democratic societies. After the Second World War, the USDA developed similar clubs around the globe in coordination with NGOs like the International 4-H Foundation and national organizations like the Indian Mangal Dal and Vietnamese 4-T. From rebuilding Europe to post-Tet Vietnam, 4-H clubs accompanied American power and promoted its vision of rural modernity.
Historians have relegated the 4-H network to the footnotes of a larger rural reform movement in early twentieth century America, ignoring both its popularity, its global reach, and its innovative alliance of statist expertise, commercial capital, and local volunteer labor. In contrast, this paper interprets the 4-H network as a paradigmatic instrument of governance that clarifies the origins and stakes of America's contemporary strategies of international development. The paper analyzes two key discoveries of this sustained experiment in rural governance. First, 4-H organizers developed specific fields of knowledge – “rural youth,” “farm families,” and “rural communities” – to traverse scales of action, manage populations, and sustain “action at a distance,” to quote Bruno Latour. Second, they recognized the strength of civil-state hybrids to naturalize technocratic authority and conceal the political stakes of their interventions. The paper argues that these innovations indelibly shaped the practices of governance in rural America and around the world.
Historians have relegated the 4-H network to the footnotes of a larger rural reform movement in early twentieth century America, ignoring both its popularity, its global reach, and its innovative alliance of statist expertise, commercial capital, and local volunteer labor. In contrast, this paper interprets the 4-H network as a paradigmatic instrument of governance that clarifies the origins and stakes of America's contemporary strategies of international development. The paper analyzes two key discoveries of this sustained experiment in rural governance. First, 4-H organizers developed specific fields of knowledge – “rural youth,” “farm families,” and “rural communities” – to traverse scales of action, manage populations, and sustain “action at a distance,” to quote Bruno Latour. Second, they recognized the strength of civil-state hybrids to naturalize technocratic authority and conceal the political stakes of their interventions. The paper argues that these innovations indelibly shaped the practices of governance in rural America and around the world.