Journal article
Frustrated farmers and the fee simple: property-stress, settler colonialism and race in the United States heartland
The Journal of peasant studies, Vol.52(5), pp.926-950
07/29/2025
DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2025.2451790
Abstract
The notion that farming is an unusually stressful occupation has become a cultural truism, with calls to investigate ‘root causes’ of stress on the farm. This paper argues the racialized, colonialist foundations of United States fee simple property is a ‘root cause’ of farm stress in the US corn belt. I build on work that sees farm property as not just a vehicle for economic gains, but imbricated in the performance and affective experience of whiteness and settler personhood. Drawing on interviews with Midwestern women farmers, I find many of their concerns fall into a category that I call ‘property-stress’. That is, while most are fiercely allegiant to the sanctity of the fee-simple farm and vigorously ‘defend’ their land rights, the very nature of the fee simple as abstract, commodifiable, and perpetual simultaneously engenders a competitive landscape that generates much stress. I argue that the racialized agrarianist logics undergirding Midwest agriculture produce particular racial and colonialist valences in land as well as a contradictory relationship with the federal sovereign who is ultimately the underwriter of white possession. These dynamics mean when the colonialist-capitalist vision of fee-simple property ‘fail’, it creates existential stress and forecloses opportunities to imagine a Midwest otherwise.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Frustrated farmers and the fee simple: property-stress, settler colonialism and race in the United States heartland
- Creators
- Carly E. Nichols - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- The Journal of peasant studies, Vol.52(5), pp.926-950
- DOI
- 10.1080/03066150.2025.2451790
- ISSN
- 0306-6150
- eISSN
- 1743-9361
- Publisher
- ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
- Grant note
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health: 5 U19 OH008868
This work was supported by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health [grant number 5 U19 OH008868].
- Language
- English
- Electronic publication date
- 02/10/2025
- Date published
- 07/29/2025
- Academic Unit
- Geographical and Sustainability Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984791071502771
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