improved, especially for the larger farms, and some operations began to pull
themselves out from under crushing debt loads. This book reveals a chastened
farm sector turning away from ambitious aspirations and dreams of quick wealth.
Besides acknowledging the need for a sober retrenchment in farming methods
and a change in attitudes toward debt, farm families have been forced to reassess
enduring values, their lifetime dreams, and their personal definition of "success."

This book is an anthropological study that connects the detailed reality and ex-
periences in one locale to larger questions of national significance about the farm
crisis. Through my long-term relationships with farm families in Dodge County,
I am able to share with the reader the experiences and opinions of individuals,
honoring their achievements and joining in their disappointments. As I discuss
further in the Introduction and the Conclusion, much of what the farm crisis
brought to the Coastal Plain of Georgia, however, is echoed in the family farm-
ing areas of the Midwest. The microcosm of one county allows us to look deeply
into American rural life and to document the transformation of an agrarian culture
increasingly surrounded and challenged by an industrial society and its values.

Dodge County, Georgia, is a long way from the farming villages of Latin America
where I conducted my previous research on changing rural life. It is also a long
way from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Chicago where I grew up. In
some ways, it is another world from Atlanta, where I currently live, and Dodge
Countians celebrate that difference. But actually it is not a long drive, nor is it a
long stretch in understanding from the pink-tinged marble of Emory University to
the country roads where the nation's food is produced, as I hope this book dem-
onstrates. Since Dodge County is a less familiar world to most readers than the
much-pictured Iowa farm, I will paint a brief picture of the county before outlining
how the project was conducted.

The drive to Dodge County from the scenic Druid Hills neighborhood where
Emory is located takes about three hours, starting at the Anthropology Depart-
ment on the tree-shaded Quadrangle. Driving quickly through several black and
white residential neighborhoods, we enter the expressway from a soaring ramp
that deposits us in the river of cars moving south. We pass tall skyscrapers, the
huge municipal hospital, then the gleaming golden dome of the state capitol. Soon
the stadium slips by, followed by the residential neighborhoods surrounding Spel-

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