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The Perennial Nature of the C atholic W orker Farms: A Reconsideration of Failure
Author(s) -
Stock Paul V.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
rural sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.083
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1549-0831
pISSN - 0036-0112
DOI - 10.1111/ruso.12029
Subject(s) - agrarianism , social movement , agrarian society , context (archaeology) , political opportunity , politics , environmental movement , political economy , sociology , political radicalism , agrarian reform , environmentalism , political science , agriculture , law , history , archaeology , democracy
Contemporary challenges in rural and environmental politics hinge on understanding what success and failure mean. One avenue of studying success and failure of political and social change efforts is to study social movements and intentional communities often equated with how many years such efforts persisted. The C atholic W orker movement's combination of a vision of radical social change, religion, nonviolence, hospitality, activism, and agrarianism involve publications, urban houses, and farms that constitute a movement and a network of autonomous intentional communities. The C atholic W orker movement's communal farms began in 1933 and at various points those efforts were deemed failures. Thus, the story of the C atholic W orker farms is one of impermanence and struggle for a desired ideal. However, what we are missing in condemning the farms to failure is the utter success since the 1970s of a strong agrarian and environmental strain of the C atholic W orker movement based on farm activity, activism, and cooperative economics. This study reconceptualizes failure in the language of process and context. The C atholic W orker farms case study refigures failure such that we can articulate a politics of possibility related to the dramatic challenges not only of society but also of the environment.