Genealogies of Race, Gender, and Place

Abstract

Through a case study of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's interventions into the lives of sharecroppers and tenant farmers in early twentieth-century Alabama, I show how gendered and racialized norms of family and family life were used to keep African American farmers tied to the land, thus uncovering a relatively unexamined geography of containment. At stake for the U.S. government, local and regional leaders, and cotton plantation owners were the extremely large profits generated by dominance of the global cotton market, profits made possible only from the labor of indebted African American sharecroppers and tenant farmers. I document, in other words, how a new technology of racial governance, of keeping people in place, was developed and articulated to maintain U.S. economic power. By doing so, I highlight the importance of understanding the interrelated historical geographies of race, gender, and place in the United States, thus demonstrating the contemporary significance of a critical historical geography.

我透过二十世纪初期美国农业部介入阿拉巴马的佃农与承租农民生活的案例研究, 展现家庭与家庭生活的性别化与种族化常规, 如何用来将美国的非裔农民固着在土地上, 从而揭露了相对而言未受到检视的牵制地理。对于美国政府, 地方与区域领导人, 以及棉花种植场所有人而言, 攸关利害的是透过支配全球棉花市场所获取的暴利, 而该利润仅可能透过深陷债务的美国非裔佃农和承租农民的劳动力才能取得。换言之, 我记录将人们固着在一地的种族治理的崭新技术如何发展并相互接合, 以维系美国的经济力。我藉此强调理解美国的种族、性别与地方相互关联的历史地理之重要性, 从而论证批判历史地理学的当代显着性。

Valiéndome de un estudio de caso de las intervenciones del Departamento de Agricultura de los EE.UU. en las vidas de aparceros y granjeros arrendatarios en el Alabama de principios del siglo XX, muestro el modo como normas de familia y de la vida familiar sesgadas por género y racializadas se utilizaron para mantener a los granjeros afroamericanos atados a la tierra, descubriendo así una geografía de la contención relativamente inexplorada. En riesgo quedaron para el gobierno de los EE.UU., los líderes locales y regionales, y para los dueños de las plantaciones de algodón las ganancias extremadamente grandes que generaba el dominio del mercado global del algodón, ganancias solo posibilitadas por el trabajo de endeudados aparceros y granjeros arrendatarios afroamericanos. En otras palabras, yo documento la manera como una nueva tecnología de gobernanza racial, centrada en mantener a la gente en su sitio, fue desarrollada y articulada para mantener el poderío económico norteamericano. Al hacer esto, destaco la importancia de entender las geografías históricas interrelacionadas de raza, género y lugar en los Estados Unidos, demostrando así la significación contemporánea de una geografía histórica crítica.

Key Words:

• African American
• Alabama
• gender
• historical geography
• race

关键词：:

• 非裔美国人
• 阿拉巴马
• 性别
• 历史地理学
• 种族。

Palabras clave:

• afroamericano
• Alabama
• género
• geografía histórica
• raza

Acknowledgments

I owe a great debt to the many people who have listened to and read various iterations of this article. My fabulous colleagues in the Geography Department at Dartmouth College listened to and commented on this article twice, helping me to focus on what was important. I am particularly grateful for the suggestions of Treva Ellison, Susanne Freidberg, Kate Kindervater, Patricia Lopez, Frank Magilligan, Abby Neely, and Richard Wright. My commentators at the American Association of Geographers session where I presented this work cheered me on, provided important critical feedback, and helped me use my case study to make a broader point. Thank you Derek Alderman, Caroline Bressey, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore for agreeing to participate in the session and for enlarging my story. I found it difficult to transform my original illustrated presentation into a written article and could not have completed it without the help of Paul Jackson and Rod Neumann. Nik Heynen provided very important editorial suggestions that have strengthened this article. I am very grateful to Dana Chandler at the Tuskegee University Archives and Dwayne Cox, John Varner, and Jaimie Kicklighter at Auburn University Special Collections and Archives for their patience and guidance.

Funding

The research for this article was supported by the National Science Foundation (#1262774). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Notes

1. Of course the irony is that at the same time the government was encouraging African Americans to purchase land and homes in the South, local, regional, and federal governments were actively discouraging African American homeownership in the urban North through discriminatory housing practices (see Jackson 1985; Coates 2014; Shabazz 2015).

2. In the urban North, the ideology of racial uplift informs what Shabazz (2015) called the politics of respectability; that is, the ways in which the black middle class disciplined the new, rural, black migrants into the norms of “respectable” patriarchal roles.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mona Domosh

MONA DOMOSH is a Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research is focused on gender, race, and the U.S. empire within the context of the long twentieth century.