Social Class and Agrarian Political Ideology: A Note on Determinants of Political Attitudes Among Full- and Part-Time Farmers

Abstract

Farmers in the U.S. have had an uneven, elusive political history. On the one hand, farmers have historically been the bulwark of support for largely leftist movements such as Populism and the Southern Farmers' Alliance. However, farmers have traditionally been members and supporters of conservative organizations such as the American Farm Bureau Federation and are often regarded as the center of gravity of traditional rural conservatism. Finally, observers such as Angus Campbell and his Michigan Survey Research Center colleagues have painted a picture of farmer politics as being alternatively apathetic and volatile. The highly influential Campbell et al. account of agrarian politics depicted agrarian political behavior as shortterm and transient-prone to evaporate on solution of immediate grievances. The focus of this paper is on extending the debate over the proper categoric designation (e.g., conservative vs. liberal, stable vs. volatile) of agrarian political behavior by exploring the factors that shape politicalideological differences among farmers. While there have been a number of important changes in U.S. agriculture during the post-World War II period, two structural changes appear to be of particular relevance to this inquiry into agrarian political ideology. First, there has been a growing degree of differentiation among farmers as some farms have grown in size and scale while others have remained relatively small. Related to this trend toward differentiation is the growing prominence of part-time farming in which one or more farm family mem-