Recent global demographic trends suggest that agrarian ways of life are best thought as relics of the past. Urbanization has won the day and will claim our future. At the same time, however, many of the world’s land and water habitats, along with the communities of life they support, are under assault and are being systematically degraded.
In this seminar, Professor Norman Wirzba will argue for the recovery of an agrarian logic that can inspire ecologically-viable practices and policies with respect to land, water, and sustainability. He will explore agrarianism as a social and political philosophy by means of a survey of some of its most important historical transformations, including the enclosure movement, industrialization, and the consolidation of our food industries. He will argue that an authentic agrarianism offers a comprehensive description of what a flourishing contemporary culture can look like, one that nurtures and honours the whole of life, even in urban and non-farming contexts. This will require close attention to the political economies that have most often frustrated and degraded this logic