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Resistance to “modernity”: southern Illinois farm women and the cult of domesticity
Author(s) -
ADAMS JANE
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1993.20.1.02a00050
Subject(s) - modernity , cult , resistance (ecology) , sociology , gender studies , history , political science , ancient history , law , ecology , biology
Combining feminist historical analysis with Foucault's interpretation of “modernity” as the development of functional divisions of time and space in utilitarian, rationalized practices, this article examines the 20th‐Century transformation of southern Illinois farm women's lives and domestic architecture. It argues that farm women's integration into industrial capitalism as petty commodity producers, agriculture's unique relationship to nature, and precapitalist social relationships undergirded the persistence of many “premodern” forms of family organization. [women, rural United States, history, household organization, modernization]