Toward a Civic Agriculture - Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community - page 48

Both neoclassical economics and pragmatism can serve as blueprints for agricultural devel-
opment. 26
When neoclassical economics and pragmatism are applied to issues of agricultural de-
velopment, they are frequently discussed under the rubric of modernization and sustainabil-
ity. Modernization efforts, whether at the community, regional, or societal levels, are clearly
grounded on the precepts of free market, neoclassical economics. 27 The motor of develop-
ment in modernization is the market economy. Modernization processes take root and are
most successful in those societies that have free markets. According to the modernization
scenario, economic globalization is the ultimate and preferred outcome of development. In-
dustrial agriculture, as opposed to civic agriculture, is geared toward producing relatively
standardized, uniform, and homogeneous commodities that can be freely traded in the global
marketplace.
In contrast to modernization, advocates of civic agriculture shed the straitjacket of eco-
nomic determinism and look for an explanation of agricultural development that is driven by
social processes other than economics. Both Karl Polanyi and Alexis de Tocqueville have
provided starting points for inquiries into civic agriculture. 28
Polanyi offers a perspective in which the “economy” is seen as a mechanism to meet the
material needs of a society through a process of interaction between humans and their envir-
onment. As a leading Polanyi scholar, Fred Block notes that prior to the industrial revolution,
“The pursuit of human livelihood was structured by kinship, by religion, and by other cultur-
al practices that had very little to do with the economizing of scarce resources. This means
that models of formal economics in which individuals maximize economic utilities through
competitive behavior cannot easily be applied to such societies.” 29
Tocqueville, on the other hand, shows that the norms and values of civic community are
embedded in distinctive social structures and practices. In particular, Tocqueville points to
civic associations as cornerstones of the civic community. Writing from this perspective, the
political scientist Robert Putnam notes that “… a dense network of secondary associations
both embodies and contributes to effective social collaboration.” 30 Milton Esman and Nor-
man Uphoff, development specialists at Cornell University, also relate civic community to
development when they report that “a vigorous network of membership organizations is es-
sential to any serious effort to overcome mass poverty under conditions that are likely to pre-
vail in most developing countries… . “ 31
In many ways, civic agriculture is the antithesis of free-market, neoclassically based, com-
modity agriculture. Rather than pursue “rational” self-interest and assume that everyone else
will do the same, “citizens in a civic community, though not selfless saints, regard the public
domain as more than a battleground for pursuing personal interest.” 32