Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The Civic/Embedded Economy in the United States
About twenty-five years ago, social scientists in the United States and other advanced in-
dustrial countries “discovered” a thriving civic economy in American cities. 26 Oftentimes,
civic production and consumption activities are embedded in ethnic or racial enclaves. These
activities not only serve as markers of economic well-being but also contribute to social, cul-
tural, political, and environmental aspects as well.
Community and school gardens are a growing part of the civic economy of many Amer-
ican cities. They exist below the radar screens of most official data-gathering organizations
and agencies in the United States. In New York City, for example, it is estimated that there
are a thousand community gardens that operate on about three hundred acres of land. This
“farmland” is used to produce fresh fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs, and other products. No
one has undertaken a comprehensive study of all of the economic, social, and environment-
al benefits that accrue to community gardens. However, from anecdotal evidence, we know
that some of these community gardens provide fruits and vegetables to low-income neighbor-
hoods where access to these products is limited or nonexistent. Community gardens develop
“agricultural literacy” among urban residents who might otherwise have no way of learning
about how their food is produced. And, as places where local residents can come together to
work on a joint, mutually beneficial endeavor, community gardens foster social cohesion and
neighborliness in places that are seemingly inhospitable to community formation. 27
Like their counterparts in the Third World, however, many people in the American under-
class have not been enveloped by the occupational and industrial categories used to define
the formal economy. Most localities contain cadres of self-employed craftsmen and craftswo-
men, entrepreneurs, and individuals whose occupational and industrial profile are not easily
determined. At best, their economic activities are shoehorned into existing analytical frame-
works for macroaccounting purposes. The fact that their day-to-day economic life does not
correspond to notions about regular employment in formal labor markets is almost always
lost in the process.
While the concept of embedded economic activity, especially the informal economy, has
caught the attention of Third World development specialists and urban social scientists in ad-
vanced industrial societies, the concept has been less frequently applied to rural areas in the
United States. 28 This omission is understandable given that the seams of the civic economy
have been covered up by the spread of Wal-Marts, Borders Books, and fast-food franchises of
every stripe and by the rigid occupational and industrial categories that have been laid down
by generations of economists.
If one carefully reads any of a multitude of topics on farming, agriculture, or farm life that
have been published over the past twenty years, however, it is clear that the richness, multidi-
mensionality, and civic qualities of economic life in rural America never disappeared. 29 They
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