Milk strike! The politics of dairy farmers' movements.
Item
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Title
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Milk strike! The politics of dairy farmers' movements.
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Identifier
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AAI9510678
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identifier
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9510678
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Creator
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Kriger, Thomas Joseph.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Frances Fox Piven
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Date
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1994
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Political Science, General | Agriculture, General
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Abstract
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This study examines the political participation of New York State dairy farmers from the 1880s to the 1990s. Its focus is on milk strikes, or "holidays," which occurred as farmers battled with milk dealers--and often government officials--for control over the lucrative metropolitan New York milk market. Preliminary chapters present a detailed analysis of milk strikes from 1883 until 1967; subsequent chapters trace the development of contemporary milk strike movements in 1986 and 1991, the "micromobilization contexts" within which these movements arose, and the differences between farmers who joined or opposed these movements.;It is argued that the location of farmers in the political economy of agriculture shapes their political participation. Briefly stated, New York's dairy farmers produce milk within a complex web of power relations involving Congressional and state legislative committees, federal and state department of agriculture bureaucrats, agribusiness, cooperatives, the system of land grant colleges, and other farmers. The farmers' position in this web, or "class position," patterns their political participation by presenting them with a set of limited choices that circumscribe political action. Obviously, not all farmers are alike. Farmers embedded within different relationships offer dissimilar interpretations of their "class position." Farmers with larger operations, on one hand, tend to participate in interest groups. In contrast, small farmers, under certain circumstances--such as an increase in grievances, together with changes in the larger political environment--participate in social movements.;This analysis draws upon both the Resource Mobilization and class analysis perspectives in social movement theory, highlighting the objective factors that account for farmer protest, such as strategies, social networks, interests, and resources. This inquiry, however, rejects the instrumental construction of interests and rationality that RM theory attributed to movement participants, and it rejects the overly structural orientation of some variants of class analysis. Instead, it underscores the farmers' (subjective) interpretations of their class position, through an examination of the competing ideological frameworks offered by participants and opponents of the 1991 milk strike movement. The ideology of large dairy farmers is labelled "competitive, free market individualism;" the ideology of small farmers is termed "self-sufficient, communitarian individualism.".
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
