The choice of lifestyle for voluntary farmers and the emergence of a pastoral community
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Cheng, Yu-Lin
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
Many contemporaries are tired of their city jobs and dream of getting back to the land. This thesis focuses on the voluntary farmers and their life choice in this tendency. In the view of “how to live”, I try to answer these questions: 1.Why these people choose to be farmers. 2. In what way they can farm for a living and survive from the competitive farm produce market. 3. What kind of social effects is brought out by the farming action of the voluntary farmers, and how it connects the relation of the voluntary farmers and their consumers in modern life.
This study is proceeding by qualitative approach. There are depth interviews with ten voluntary farmers and three consumers. Participant observation in the course of sustainable agriculture and content analysis are also used. From this data the research finds that, for the voluntary farmers, farming is not only just a job, but also a choice of lifestyle. The autobiographical writing wrote by themselves arises city people’s nostalgia, and attracts those who identify with the same ideology or long for the pastoral life to become their consumers. The narration of mass media and the participant experience of the consumers also pastoralize this kind of lifestyle and help to spread it out.
By the model of agriculture cooperation of voluntary farmers and their consumers, they share the risk of production. It helps the voluntary farmers earn living easier, and their consumers can obtain an identity of being a farmer from farming experience. In this way, the choice of lifestyle for voluntary farmers becomes a massed lifestyle, and accelerates the emergence of a flowed pastoral community. Each member in it creates and shares the same emotion and experience.
Besides, they also harvest uncontaminated food to avoid pollution risk. The discourse of “grow it yourself” they stress means not only finding back the initiative of their life and the independence of food production in this consumer society, but also an approach for the minority to against the risk of food pollution. Therefore, the agriculture cooperation and the pastoral community can be viewed as a respond of life politics to the risk society and the consumer society of the day.
Subjects
生活組合
生活風格
生活政治
飲食風險
Lebensfuhrung
lifestyle
voluntary farmer
life politics
risk society
Type
thesis
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