Contemporary Authors

• Leaving the Land Behind: Struggles for Land Reform in U.S. Federal Policy, 1933-1965 University of Wisconsin, Madison (Madison, WI), 1996
• Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2015

1. Planning democracy : agrarian intellectuals and the intended New Deal https://lccn.loc.gov/2014033414 Gilbert, Jess Carr. Planning democracy : agrarian intellectuals and the intended New Deal / Jess Gilbert ; foreword by Richard S. Kirkendall. New Haven [Connecticut] : Yale University Press, [2015] xx, 341 pages ; 25 cm. HD1761 .G54 2015 ISBN: 9780300207316 (cloth : alkaline paper) 2. Leaving the land behind : struggles for land reform in U.S. federal policy, 1933-1965 https://lccn.loc.gov/98125235 Gilbert, Jess Carr. Leaving the land behind : struggles for land reform in U.S. federal policy, 1933-1965 / by Jess Gilbert and Alice O'Connor. Madison, Wis. : Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin--Madison, c1996. iii, 17 p. ; 28 cm. HD1333.U6 G55 1996

• Edge Effects - http://edgeeffects.net/jess-gilbert/

  QUOTED: "After graduating college, I received an early National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study agricultural reform in the south, focusing on the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union. Soon I discovered Theda Skocpol’s work, and was attracted to both history and social science. I’d always loved history, and so I was delighted to discover historical social science. And Theda, of course, was an excellent example of that at the time. Some of her major claims, though, I found questionable, and so, in the mid-80s, soon after I got here, I wrote a critique of her work with a grad student, focusing on her work on the New Deal and especially on agricultural policy. But I became very interested in some of the characters she highlights: M. L. Wilson and Howard Tolley and others in the Department of Agriculture, policy intellectuals. And so I applied and received a Hatch grant from the UW Agricultural Experiment Station to study in more detail the whole sweep of New Deal agricultural policy and planning. I got into that work in earnest, went to the National Archives in the early 90s for the first time, and was blown away by the work of these people that I now call the “agrarian intellectuals”: Henry Wallace, M. L. Wilson, Howard Tolley, and others. I revised my critique and kept reading more and more of their unpublished speeches, memos, and letters."

  Planning with the People: Jess Gilbert on the “Intended” New Deal

  By: Garrett Dash Nelson
  Posted on: April 2, 2015
  Jess Gilbert is a professor and chair of the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a founding faculty member of the Center for Culture, History and Environment, and was the CHE Director from 2011 to 2013. He’s retiring this summer after 31 years teaching in Madison.

  Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal

  Jess’s new book, Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal is out this month from Yale University Press’s Agrarian Studies Series. In it, Jess draws from over two decades of research on the policy intellectuals who shaped the New Deal’s agricultural programs. Focusing on six reformist “agrarian intellectuals” in the Department of Agriculture, he argues that their “Third New Deal,” in which federal planners worked closely with local communities in thousands of rural counties, forces us to reconsider the dichotomy between top-down planning and bottom-up participatory democracy. Though they managed vast federal programs, those planners articulated a robust vision of democracy that included not only local participation but also economic equality as core goals. I sat down with Jess to talk about the book and what its lessons entail for both academics and the broader public.

  Garrett Nelson: Reading through the publications on your CV, I noticed how much Planning Democracy seems to tie together a number of different themes that have interested you throughout your career. Could you say a bit about how you came to write the book?

  Jess Gilbert: After graduating college, I received an early National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study agricultural reform in the south, focusing on the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union. Soon I discovered Theda Skocpol’s work, and was attracted to both history and social science. I’d always loved history, and so I was delighted to discover historical social science. And Theda, of course, was an excellent example of that at the time. Some of her major claims, though, I found questionable, and so, in the mid-80s, soon after I got here, I wrote a critique of her work with a grad student, focusing on her work on the New Deal and especially on agricultural policy. But I became very interested in some of the characters she highlights: M. L. Wilson and Howard Tolley and others in the Department of Agriculture, policy intellectuals. And so I applied and received a Hatch grant from the UW Agricultural Experiment Station to study in more detail the whole sweep of New Deal agricultural policy and planning. I got into that work in earnest, went to the National Archives in the early 90s for the first time, and was blown away by the work of these people that I now call the “agrarian intellectuals”: Henry Wallace, M. L. Wilson, Howard Tolley, and others. I revised my critique and kept reading more and more of their unpublished speeches, memos, and letters.

  GN: The New Deal, and the FDR presidency in general, are probably two of the topics most well-covered by American historians. Yet this book feels very fresh, and I think it offers an important critique of the predominant portrayal of the New Deal. It also treats a handful of people who have been mostly ignored. Why do you think it took until now for the story of these agrarian intellectuals to be told as a critical component of the New Deal?

  JG: The discipline of history, like all disciplines, has fads, and ideological predispositions. My book’s focus goes back fifty years, to Richard Kirkendall’s 1966 Social Scientists in Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt. It was his dissertation book, done here under Merle Curti in the History Department. It deals directly with the same things I do. He’s got two chapters on what most of my book is about.

  What happens after that, in the 60s, is a sort of revolution, so to say, in historical studies, with bottom-up history, and the New Left historians, loosely speaking. And that work, which appeared in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s—the intellectual progeny of the New Left historians—had as one of its predispositions an antipathy toward big states, big government projects. They coined the idea of “corporate liberalism,” which they formulated as a critique of Woodrow Wilson and Progressivism. But what I think they really disliked was their current president: Lyndon Johnson! The New Left historians and those influenced by them, I think, over-reacted by not looking closely at what some New Dealers had in mind and actually did on the ground, especially at the end of the ’30s.

  In some cases they did. Pete Daniel has written many books on the agricultural policy of the New Deal, and he’s absolutely right about the early New Deal’s impact on sharecroppers. And others—Jack Temple Kirby has work along the same line. But that’s not the full story; there’s more to say. Importantly, almost all historians stop their treatment of New Deal agriculture in 1937–38. That makes sense. What became known as New Deal agricultural policy ran from 1933 to 1937: that’s the subsidy program, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration; the Soil Conservation Service; the poor people’s agencies, the Resettlement Administration and later Farm Security Administration; the Rural Electrification Administration; the Farm Credit Administration; and others. All of these were early or mid ’30s, and they all survived the war, except for FSA.

  “The farmers of the Nation look to these men to solve their many problems”: left to right, M. L. Wilson, Henry A. Wallace, and Howard R. Tolley. Image: Library of Congress
  The program I’m looking at didn’t even get formulated until 1938 and didn’t get started until 1939. A couple of historians over the past few years have talked about a “Third New Deal” that started in ’37 or ’38, with several characteristics, the main one being: they all failed. They never went anywhere. These programs had to do with planning, administration, coordination—not new economic policies or new social initiatives. That fits in perfectly with what I’m doing. I’m looking at an initiative of the USDA in the very late 1930s that tried to coordinate and integrate the previous New Deal programs—the AAA, the FSA, and others. Its distinctive characteristic was that it actually got off the ground. It was operative in three-quarters of all rural counties in the country, over 2200 rural counties working with 200,000 local farm people on county and community committees to do what was called “land use planning.”

  That term was chosen because the AAA, FSA, SCS—all the New Deal agencies of the previous five years—had some impact on land. So land use was the common denominator. The idea was to get local farm people, 15 or 20 per county, together with decentralized administrators of these New Deal programs, and with scientists from land grant institutions, in order to coordinate, integrate, unify, and—crucially—localize these programs to fit the needs of a particular county.

  So this program really got going in 1939, but it was killed in early 1942. I really think it was the culmination, or as I call it, the “intended” New Deal in agriculture. I think this is what Wallace, Tolley, Wilson, and a couple of others envisioned: a comprehensive, integrative planning. They called it “planning;” today we would call it “rural development” or “community development.”

  GN: You describe this brief period of time, this flowering of an ideal where state, expert-led planning is carried through a localized, democratic process, as “low modernism.” Could you talk more about that term? It’s a provocative twist on James Scott’s critique of “high modernism.”

  JG: Yes, in his 1998 book Seeing Like a State, Scott develops the term “high modernism” and he became associated with it. Scott’s subtitle is “How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed.” Everything he says in that book is about failed big-government projects. I remember talking to him as he was working on it; he wanted to include a chapter on the TVA—though it didn’t “fail” in the same way as his other cases. So “high modernism” to Jim Scott is an extreme reliance on science, rationality, technology, and a diminution of folk culture, religion, rural livelihoods, family farming. “High modernist” agriculture was industrial, large-scale agriculture, not diversified, small-scale farms. Scott almost always prefaces the phrase “high modernist” with “authoritarian.” He says it doesn’t have to be—the TVA wasn’t necessarily authoritarian—but almost all his examples are about high modernists who are technocratic, bureaucratic, top-down planning elites who are imposing projects on hapless rural citizens. One reason they’re able to do that, as he says, is because civil society in these episodes—war, depression—is “prostrate.” You have to have an administrative state and a leadership willing to make those impositions. That’s his idea of “high modernism,” and the book has had a big influence.

  An Agricultural Adjustment Administration technician works on a land-use map from aerial photography in 1937. Image: Library of Congress
  But he cites “my” agrarian intellectuals as “high modernist”—that is, Wallace, Wilson, Tolley, and so on. Based on the work I had done with them, I just couldn’t agree with that. The term “low modernism” actually started as a joke with a grad student, Cliff Westfall—we were having coffee one day, and joked “high modernism; what about low modernism?” Everybody enjoyed the joke, but then people started taking it seriously. Several young historians, especially in international development, have used it.

  What do I mean by “low modernism”? I deal with six New Deal Intellectuals: Wallace, Wilson, Tolley, Carl Taylor, L. C. Gray, and Bushrod Allin. (Half of those are from the University of Wisconsin!) They all had graduate degrees in the social sciences, and they were Progressives in the 20s and 30s. They believed in big states, they believed in planning, they certainly believed in the positive value of social science. They started all these huge New Deal programs and implemented them. So it’s fair to say they are modernists. That’s half of it.

  If someone hadn’t spent 15 or 20 years reading their memos and unpublished papers, you’d just have a case that they’re simply “high modernists.” But they had this other side to them that did not believe exclusively in science and technology, did not exalt reason or rationality, or the idea of planning. In fact, they were the opposite of technocrats, in my view. I present them as grassroots participatory democrats, while at the same time being federal bureaucrats. A paradox is two statements that seem to contradict each other but are actually true. So “low modernism” means they are in touch with the grassroots—they’re all family-farm boys from the Midwest. I think they retain connections to their families and thousands and millions of people like them. They certainly supported the family farm as opposed to a larger-scale industrial farm. They were close students of cultural anthropology. They took local folk culture very seriously—Ruth Benedict and Robert Redfield were major influences.

  Yes, they were social scientists enacting gigantic programs affecting millions of rural citizens. But, the point of my book is: they wanted to involve farmers in these decisions. They wanted to bring them into, not just the administration, but the planning, the research, educational efforts, and policymaking. I think they have a claim to be called radical democrats—like John Dewey. That’s what they said, and that’s what they did.

  GN: Could you explain the divide between the “low modernists” of your book and the New Deal’s “eastern urban liberals,” who you say better fit Scott’s “high modernist” description?

  JG: Yes, thanks for bringing that up. First, we need to be clear, these are the two progressive groups in the New Deal when it comes to agricultural policy. Rexford Tugwell, who was the first undersecretary of agriculture until 1936, and the group that he had under him, mainly Ivy League lawyers, were called the “urban liberals.” These two groups collaborate in the early New Deal. They do the AAA together, they set up food stamps. But I think Tugwell is much more the top-down technocratic planner. Now, one of his books is called The Battle for Democracy. He always maintained that he was not going against the democratic tradition of the country, but in fact deepening it, and expanding it.

  But Tugwell’s group did not have, I think, as much a sense of participatory democracy. They were more skeptical of traditional rural cultures—not just in the Midwest, but especially in the plantation South. They were absolutely right in that sense: Tugwell had this critique of the plantation South, while Wallace and the agrarian intellectuals were not willing to go that far. It’s arguable—I think you have a point worth discussing—how “grassroots” they are. But for my purposes, and I think overall, they’re just not for decentralization as much; they’re more top-down and less bottom-up. Tugwell’s idea of planning is not M. L. Wilson’s idea of planning.

  GN: Yes, and I think part of why this book is so important is that it reminds us of the existence and influence of this agrarian wing in articulating a progressive vision that was not based in the same political constituencies as the eastern liberals—the constituencies that would become the mainstay of the Democratic party later in the century.

  JG: Yes, the big thing to remember is these were the two reformist groups in the Department of Agriculture. There were other groups, including many conservative representatives of the plantation South. Conservatives dominated large parts of the department. All of these progressive steps had enemies, inside the USDA, in the countryside, and in Congress. It wasn’t a cakewalk. And of course, eventually they were defeated by those very forces.

  I think the agrarian intellectuals’ ideology or vision has been largely lost in our understanding, not just of the New Deal, but in some sense, of American history. They arose at a particular time, between the two World Wars, and disappeared after the Second World War as a major influence on domestic policy. But during those twenty or so years, they had a major impact and had this amazing vision. The reason I think it’s important to recover is that it’s so little known today.

  Let me add one more thing about that on the idea of “top down” and “bottom up.” I think their point, and the agrarian intellectuals say this explicitly, is to try to overcome that dichotomy, and to institutionalize that. You know, Dewey had great ideas, and he set up schools, among other things, but his ideas were not really institutionalized in the way the agrarian intellectuals’ were. These are policy experiments in adult education, action and participatory research, grassroots planning, citizen policy-making. Things that Dewey touted, but he wasn’t in a position, as a professor, to do anything about.

  The agrarian intellectuals saw this bottom-up and top-down not as a dualism which you have to choose between, but a question of how you integrate those two things. They’re federal elites, heading this giant department, but they wanted to work with—and they did work with—local farmer-planners on these committees that they set up.

  That’s important, and that’s not always noticed.

  GN: It seems like, in this ideology, there’s a great optimism and faith in education as the mortar that binds the bottom-up and top-down together. You see that in Dewey as well as your agrarians.

  M. L. Wilson arguing in front of a Senate committee that vocational and extension programs for youth must be expanded. Image: Library of Congress
  JG: Absolutely. Of course, for Dewey, education is his thing. The agrarian intellectuals, they share with Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Dewey the idea that democracy demands an educated citizenry. If we don’t have that, then democracy is severely compromised, and maybe doesn’t deserve the name. The agrarian tradition of American history, back to Jefferson, also talks about a “virtuous” citizenry. They partook of that; that’s the agrarian side of their thinking.

  Perhaps it’s naïve, given where we are, politically, today. On the other hand, one of the chapter epigraphs says that this project that they were engaged in was “as idealistic and as practical as democracy itself.” If you dismiss them as utopian or naïve, it raises a very serious question, and that is, well: is democracy possible? That’s a big question.

  I should say, every time I say “democracy” in this conversation, and in the book, I do not mean the formal, juridical democracy of going to the polls every couple of years and voting for representatives. That is important, but it’s not what they meant. They meant a deeper, thick, strong sense of democracy that includes citizens in the administration, implementation, research, planning, and policymaking—a strong sense of democracy, of citizen participation. Like the New Left in the 60s! Not a light, formal, simply representative democracy. The term used for this deeper sense of democracy, often throughout the twentieth century, is economic democracy: where people affected by decisions have a hand in making those choices.

  Back to education, they did some amazing experiments in adult education. I’ll mention just one: these four or five day schools of philosophy for Extension workers. They had 150 such schools in land-grant institutions, where they got leading intellectuals to catch up Extension workers, who were usually trained in a narrow agricultural discipline, to broaden their horizons, basically. These schools were this amazing experiment in cultural democracy.

  They were certainly optimistic, and thought that they could foment progressive change through education. I guess we’re more jaded these days about those possibilities, but I wanted to present their vision.

  GN: So much of the agrarian intellectuals’ political dream was rooted in a particular vision of a particular working landscape, as you describe: middle-class Midwestern farms. Is it translatable outside of the very specific cultural and historical context?

  JG: The underlying basis of what they were doing—and that’s why I focus on these governmental functions, public administration, education, research, planning, and policy-making—still exist today. These things still have to be done by somebody. The question is how they will be done. And I think there are a lot of policy experiments around. What I’m trying to do here is offer an example of an amazingly integrated and unified effort to do that at the policy level. To actually say that a democratizing state is not just theoretically possible, in John Dewey’s mind, but actually—with warts and all—actually existed on the ground, circa 1941, in much of rural America! It had a lot of problems, but the ideals and the principles underlying it, I think, still hold.

• WISC - http://dces.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2013/08/gilbert-cv-2013.pdf

  HOME ADDRESS: OFFICE ADDRESS:
  720 E. Gorham St., #302 Department of Community and Madison, WI 53706
  Environmental Sociology
  Madison, WI 53703 340B Agriculture Hall
  (608) 332-6766 1450 Linden Drive 608–262–6022 (fax)
  University of Wisconsin–Madison gilbert@ssc.wisc.edu
  Madison, WI 53706
  EDUCATION:
  B.A. 1973 Centenary College of Louisiana
  Major: English (magna cum laude)
  M.A.T. 1975 Brown University
  Major: English Education
  M.S. 1979 Michigan State University
  Major: Resource Development
  Ph.D. 1983 Michigan State University
  Major: Sociology
  Dissertation Title: “Class Structure, Property Ownership, and Income Determination: A Study of
  Farmland Owners in the United States.”
  PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT:
  Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Institute of Community and Area Development,
  University of Georgia, 1983–84
  Assistant Professor, Department of Rural Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1984–89
  Associate Professor, Department of Rural Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1989–95
  Professor, Department of Community and Environmental [formally Rural] Sociology, University of
  Wisconsin–Madison, 1995 – .
  Sabbatical Leave, Department of Geography, University of Bristol, U.K., Fall 1995
  Co-Director, Center for Minority Land and Community Security, 2000-05
  Off-Campus Work, Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, Spring 2001
  2
  Sabbatical Leave, Department of Sociology, Columbia University, New York City, Fall 2008-Spring
  2009
  Director, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies Center for Culture, History, and Environment
  (CHE), 2011- .
  BOOKS:
  Gorlach, Krzysztof, Patrick H. Mooney, and Jess Gilbert (editors)
  1998 Socjologia Wsi W Ameryce Północnej [Rural Sociology in North America, Selected
  Readings translated into Polish]. Torun, Poland: Nicolaus Copernicus University
  Press.
  Gilbert, J.
  (in Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal
  progress) in Agriculture.
  GUEST EDITORSHIP OF SCHOLARLY JOURNALS:
  Special Issue of Rural Sociology on “Minorities in Rural Society,” Summer 1991.
  Special Issue of Agricultural History on “Minority Land and Community Security,” Spring 2003.
  RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS:
  Gilbert, J. and C.K. Harris
  1980 “Unemployment, Primary Production, and Population Changes in the Upper
  Peninsula of Michigan.” Pp. 22–55 in F.L. Honart and V.M. Howards (editors), A
  Half-Century Ago: Michigan in the Great Depression. Symposium Proceedings,
  East Lansing, Michigan.
  Gilbert, J.
  1981 “Rural Values and Policy—or Ideology and the State: Notes on Bealer’s Position.”
  The Rural Sociologist 1 (January):31–36.
  Gilbert, J. and S.M. Brown
  1981 “Alternative Land Reform Proposals in the 1930s: The Nashville Agrarians and
  the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union.” Agricultural History 55 (October):351–69.
  Reprinted as pp. 191–209 in M. Dubofsky and S. Burwood (editors), The Great
  Depression and the New Deal, Vol. 4: Agriculture During the Great Depression.
  New York: Garland Publishing, 1990.
  Harris, C.K. and J. Gilbert
  1982 “Large-Scale Farming, Rural Income, and Goldschmidt’s Agrarian Thesis.” Rural
  Sociology 47 (Fall):449–58.
  3
  Gilbert, J.
  1982 “Rural Theory: The Grounding of Rural Sociology.” Rural Sociology 47
  (Winter):609–33.
  Translated into Polish as pp. 39–63 in K. Gorlach, P. Mooney, and J. Gilbert
  (editors), Socjologia Wsi W Ameryce Północnej [Rural Sociology in North
  America]. Torun, Poland: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, 1998.
  Gilbert, J. and C.K. Harris
  1984 “Changes in Type, Tenure, and Concentration of U.S. Farmland Owners.” Pp.
  135–60 in H.K. Schwarzweller (editor), Research in Rural Sociology and
  Development: A Research Annual, Vol. 1. Greenwich, CN: JAI Press.
  Falk, W.W. and J. Gilbert
  1985 “Bringing Rural Sociology Back In.” Rural Sociology 50 (Winter):561–77.
  Harris, C.K. and J. Gilbert
  1985 “Measuring the Social Dimensions of Land Ownership and Control.” Pp. 31–98 in
  D.D. Moyer and G. Wunderlich (editors), Transfer of Land Rights. Chicago: The
  Farm Foundation.
  Gilbert, J. and R. Akor
  1986 “Dairying in California and Wisconsin: An Analysis of Divergent Farm
  Structures.” Wisconsin Academy Review 33 (December):56–59.
  Harris, C.K., J. Gilbert, and J. McAllister
  1986 “The Changing Structure of Farmland Ownership in the South.” Pp. 301–44 in J.J.
  Molnar (editor), Agricultural Change: Consequences for Southern Farms and
  Rural Communities. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
  Harris, C.K., J. McAllister, and J. Gilbert
  1987 “Social Dimensions of Farmland Ownership in Michigan.” East Lansing:
  Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station Research Report 480 (Development and
  Public Affairs).
  Wilkening, E. and J. Gilbert
  1987 “Family Farming in the United States.” Pp. 271–301 in B. Galeski and E.
  Wilkening (editors), Family Farming in Europe and America. Boulder, CO:
  Westview Press.
  Gilbert, J. and R. Akor
  1988 “Increasing Structural Divergence in U.S. Dairying: California and Wisconsin
  Since 1950.” Rural Sociology 53 (Spring):56–72.
  Pfeffer, M.J. and J. Gilbert
  1989 “Federal Farm Programs and Structural Change in the 1980s: A Comparative
  Analysis of the Corn Belt and the Mississippi Delta.” Rural Sociology 54
  (Winter):551–67.
  Mooney, P.H. and J. Gilbert
  4
  1991 “Farmland Tenure Policy.” Pp. 259–69 in C.B. Flora and J.A. Christenson
  (editors), Rural Policies for the 1990s. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
  Gilbert, J. and C. Howe
  1991 “Beyond ‘State vs. Society’: Theories of the State and New Deal Agricultural
  Policies.” American Sociological Review 56 (April):204–20.
  Pfeffer, M.J. and J. Gilbert
  1991 “Gender and Class Dimensions of Off-Farm Employment: Regional Responses to
  Farm Crisis in the Corn Belt and the Mississippi Delta.” The Sociological
  Quarterly 32 (November):593–610.
  Wagner, P. and J. Gilbert
  1991 “Ideologia Farmerow Amerykanskich.” Wies Irolnictwo [Polish] 73(4):201–09.
  Gilbert, J. and T.M. Beckley
  1993 “Ownership and Control of Farmland: Landlord-Tenant Relations in Wisconsin.”
  Rural Sociology 58 (Winter):569–79.
  Gilbert, J.
  1994 “Planificación democrática de la agricultura de Estados Unidos: el programa federal
  de planificación del uso de la tierra por condados, 1938-1942.” Agricultura y
  Sociedad [Spanish] 72 (July–September):45–80.
  Gilbert, J. and T.M. Beckley
  1995 “Land Tenure in Wisconsin Agriculture: Still Keeping the Farm in the Family?”
  Technical Report No. 3, Agricultural Technology and Family Farm Institute,
  University of Wisconsin–Madison.
  Barnes, R. and J. Gilbert
  1995 “Reproduction or Transformation of Family Farming? An Empirical Assessment
  of Wisconsin Farms, 1950–1975.” Pp. 123–38 in Krzysztof Gorlach (editor),
  Family Farming in the Contemporary World: East—West Comparisons. Cracow,
  Poland: Jagiellonian University Press.
  Gilbert, J.
  1996 “Democratic Planning in Agricultural Policy: The Federal–County Land-Use
  Planning Program, 1938–1942.” Agricultural History 70 (Spring):233–50.
  Gilbert, J.
  1997 “A Usable Past: New Dealers Henry A. Wallace and M. L. Wilson Reclaim the
  American Agrarian Tradition.” Pp. 134–42 in Rationality and the Liberal Spirit:
  A Festschrift Honoring Lee Morgan, edited by Department of English at Centenary
  College. Shreveport, LA: Centenary College.
  Gilbert, J. and E. Baker
  1997 “Wisconsin Economists and New Deal Agricultural Policy: The Legacy of
  Progressive Professors,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 80 (Summer):280–312.
  Reprint No. 140, Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1998.
  5
  To be reprinted in Creating Prosperity: A Century of the Wisconsin Idea, ed. Daniel
  W. Bromley (forthcoming 2014).
  Gilbert, J. and A. O’Connor
  1998 “Leaving the Land Behind: Struggles for Land Reform in U.S. Federal Policy,
  1933–1965.” Pp. 114–30 in Harvey M. Jacobs (editor), Who Owns America?
  Social Conflict Over Property Rights. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
  Press.
  Also Land Tenure Center Paper 156, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1996.
  Gilbert, J. and P.H. Mooney
  1998 “Introduction: The Rise of the New Rural Sociology.” Pp. 9-22 in Krzysztof
  Gorlach, Patrick H. Mooney, and Jess Gilbert (editors), Socjologia Wsi W Ameryce
  Północnej [Rural Sociology in North America, Selected Readings translated into
  Polish]. Torun, Poland: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press.
  Gilbert J.
  2000 “Eastern Urban Liberals and Midwestern Agrarian Intellectuals: Two Group
  Portraits of Progressives in the New Deal Department of Agriculture.”
  Agricultural History 74 (Spring): 162-80.
  Wood, S.D. and J. Gilbert
  2000 “Returning African-American Farmers to the Land: Recent Trends and a Policy
  Rationale.” Review of Black Political Economy 27(4), Spring:43–64.
  Also Land Tenure Center Working Paper No. 12, “Re-Entering African-American
  Farmers.” North America Series, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1998.
  Gilbert, J.
  2001 “Agrarian Intellectuals in a Democratizing State: A Collective Biography of
  U.S.D.A. Leaders in the Intended New Deal.” Pp. 213–39 in Catherine McNicol
  Stock and Robert Johnston (editors), The Countryside in the Age of the Modern
  State: Political Histories of Rural America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
  Gilbert, J., G. Sharp, and S. Felin
  2002 “The Loss and Persistence of Black-Owned Farms and Farmland: A Review of the
  Research Literature and Its Implications.” Southern Rural Sociology 18 (2),
  December: 1-30.
  Earlier version (“The Decline (and Revival?) of Black Farmers and Rural
  Landowners: A Review of the Research Literature”) appeared as Land Tenure
  Center Working Paper, No. 44, North America Series, University of
  Wisconsin–Madison, May 2001.
  Gilbert, J., S. W. Wood, and G. Sharp
  2002 “Who Owns the Land? Agricultural Land Ownership by Race/Ethnicity.” Rural
  America (USDA Economic Research Service) 17 (4), December:55-62.
  Gilbert, J.
  6
  2003 “Low Modernism and the Agrarian New Deal: A Different Kind of State.”
  Pp. 129-46 in Jane Adams (editor), Fighting for the Farm: Rural America
  Transformed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  J. Gilbert and K. Wehr
  2003 “Dairy Industrialization in the First Place: Urbanization, Immigration, and Political
  Economy in Los Angeles County, 1920-1970.” Rural Sociology 68 (4), December:
  467-90.
  Gilbert, J.
  2004 “Land Use Planning.” Pp. 454-55 in Robert S. McElvaine (editor), Encyclopedia
  of the Great Depression, Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan.
  J. Gilbert and S. Wood
  2004 “Mound, LA,” and “Sabine Farms, TX.” Pp. 31-35 and 41-45 in Pioneering
  Communities: Revisiting New Deal Resettlement and Minority Land Issues– Past,
  Present, and Future. Conference Proceedings (ed. S. T. Warren), Tuskegee
  University, Tuskegee, AL, December 3-4.
  J. Gilbert
  2008 “Rural Sociology and Democratic Planning in the Third New Deal.” Agricultural
  History 82 (4), Fall: 421-38.
  J. Gilbert
  2009 “Democratizing States and the Use of History.” Rural Sociology 74 (1), March:
  3-24.
  J. Gilbert
  2011 “The New Deal and Social Class in the South.” The New Encyclopedia of Southern
  Culture, vol. 21: Social Class (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press), ed.
  Larry Griffin and Peggy G. Hargis, forthcoming.
  Under Review:
  Sinkewicz, M., J. Gilbert, and S. W. Wood
  “Health, Community Development, and Democracy-Building: Lessons from
  a
  New Deal Policy Experiment,” Health Affairs.
  PUBLIC SERVICE AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICE PUBLICATIONS:
  Powers, S.E., J. Gilbert, and F.H. Buttel
  1978 “Small Farm and Rural Development Policy in the U.S.” Pp. 132–51 in Rural
  Research in the USDA. Hearings before Subcommittee on Agriculture Research
  and General Legislation, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. U.S.
  Senate, 95th Congress, 2nd Session, May 4–5, 1978. Washington, DC:
  Government Printing Office.
  Moore, A.B. and J. Gilbert
  1984 “Washington–Wilkes County Community Survey: Final Report.” Athens, GA:
  Institute of Community and Area Development, University of Georgia.
  7
  Gilbert, J. and G.S. Thompson
  1986 “Farm Crisis Response: University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension and
  Research.” Pp. 61–66 in P. Lasley and R. Conger (editors), Farm Crisis
  Response: Extension and Research Activities in the North Central Region.
  Ames, IA: North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, Iowa State
  University.
  Gilbert, J.
  1986 “Land Ownership in Wisconsin and the United States.” As You Sow...: Social
  Issues in Agriculture, No. 4. University of Wisconsin, Department of Rural
  Sociology Cooperative Extension Service Newsletter, April.
  Gilbert, J.
  1986 “Land Reform, American Style?” As You Sow...: Social Issues in Agriculture, No.
  5. University of Wisconsin, Department of Rural Sociology Cooperative
  Extension Service Newsletter, May.
  Harris, C.K., J. McAllister, and J. Gilbert
  1986 “Social Dimensions of Farmland Ownership in the United States.” Pp. 89–97 in
  New Dimensions in Rural Policy: Building Upon Our Heritage. Studies
  prepared for the Subcommittee on Agriculture and Transportation, Joint Economic
  Committee. U.S. Congress, 2nd Session, June 5, 1986. Washington, DC:
  Government Printing Office.
  Gilbert, J.
  1987 “Different Dairy Farm Structures in California and Wisconsin.” As You Sow...:
  Social Issues in Agriculture, No. 15. University of Wisconsin, Department of
  Rural Sociology Cooperative Extension Service Newsletter, March.
  Gilbert, J. and M.J. Pfeffer
  1989 “Farm Household Survival Strategies in the Corn Belt and the Mississippi Delta:
  Regional Considerations in U.S. Farm Policy.” Final Report to the Ford
  Foundation and the Rural Economic Policy Program of the Aspen Institute.
  Gilbert, J. and M.J. Pfeffer
  1991 “Regional Considerations in U.S. Farm Policy.” As You Sow...: Social Issues in
  Agriculture, No. 22. University of Wisconsin, Department of Rural Sociology
  Cooperative Extension Service Newsletter, October.
  Gilbert, J.
  1991 “Guest Editor’s Introduction.” Rural Sociology 56 (Summer):175–76.
  Gilbert, J.
  1993 “Comment on Beale.” Pp. 137–39 in D.L. Brown, D.R. Field, and J.J. Zuiches
  (editors), The Demography of Rural Life. University Park, PA: Northeast
  Regional Center for Rural Development.
  8
  Wood, S.D. and J. Gilbert
  1998 “Re-Entering African-American Farmers: Recent Trends and a Policy Rationale
  [Abstract].” P. 31 in Kim Allen (editor), 2
  nd National Black Land Loss Summit:
  Academic Paper Presentations Report. Tillery, NC: Land Loss Fund/Concerned
  Citizens of Tillery.
  Felin, M.S. and J. Gilbert
  1998 “The Decline of Black Farmers and Landowners in the Rural South: A Review of
  the Literature [Abstract].” Pp. 32–36 in Kim Allen (editor), 2
  nd National Black
  Land Loss Summit: Academic Paper Presentations Report. Tillery, NC: Land
  Loss Fund/Concerned Citizens of Tillery.
  J. Gilbert
  2003 “Guest Editor’s Introduction.” Agricultural History 77 (2), Spring: 255-57.
  J. Gilbert and S.D. Wood
  2004 Three Posters on New Deal Resettlement Communities, Professional Agricultural
  and Workers Conference, Tuskegee University, December.
  R. S. Krannich and J. Gilbert
  2007 “Traditions and Trends in Rural Sociology.” ASA Footnotes 35 (8), November.
  J. Gilbert
  2008 “Agricultural History Talks to Jess Gilbert.” Agricultural History 82 (4), Fall:
  439-44.
  J. Gilbert
  2007-08 “President’s Column,” The Rural Sociologist, Sept., Dec., March, June.
  Hinton, C. and J. Gilbert
  2009 “No Access: Exclusion from Land as a Barrier to Farm Entry,” 2009. A research
  report for USDA NRI project on “Farmland Access, Tenure, and Succession:
  Impacts on Small and Medium-Sized Farms, Land Use, and the Environment.”
  J. Gilbert
  2010 “Foreword” to Julie N. Zimmerman and Olaf F. Larson, Opening Windows Onto
  Hidden Lives: Early Sociological Research and Rural Women in the United States
  (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press/Rural Studies Series), pp.
  vii-ix.
  BOOK REVIEWS:
  1980 New Deal Policy and Southern Rural Poverty by Paul E. Mertz (Louisiana State
  University Press, 1978) and Mean Things Happening in This Land: The Life and
  Times of H.L. Mitchell, Co-Founder of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union by
  H.L. Mitchell (Allanheld, Osmun, 1979). Rural Sociology 45:363–66.
  9
  1981 The Southern Common People: Studies in Nineteenth Century Social History,
  edited by Edward Magdol and Jon L. Wakelyn (Greenwood Press, 1980). Rural
  Sociology 46:165–67.
  1981 “Man Over Money”: The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism by
  Bruce Palmer (University of North Carolina Press, 1980). Rural Sociology
  46:762–63.
  1982 Rural Society and Environment in America by John E. Carlson, Marie L. Lassey,
  and William R. Lassey (McGraw–Hill, 1981). Contemporary Sociology
  11:425–26.
  1985 “Toward a Sociology of Land Ownership: A Review Essay.” Land Reform,
  American Style edited by Charles C. Geisler and Frank J. Popper (Rowman &
  Allanheld, 1984) and Who Owns Appalachia? Landownership and Its Impact
  by the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force (University Press of Kentucky,
  1983). Rural Sociology 50:629–33.
  1986 Citizenship, Gender, and Work: Social Organization of Industrial Agriculture by
  Robert J. Thomas (University of California Press, 1985). Contemporary
  Sociology 15:856–57.
  1987 Locality and Rurality: Economy and Society in Rural Regions edited by Tony
  Bradley and Philip Lowe (Geo Books, 1984). International Journal of Urban and
  Regional Research 11:280–81.
  1991 Agrarian Capitalism in Theory and Practice by Susan Archer Mann (University of
  North Carolina Press, 1990). American Journal of Sociology 96
  (March):1278–80.
  1992 Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919–1981 by John Mark
  Hansen (University of Chicago Press, 1991). American Journal of Sociology 98
  (November):714–15.
  1997 State and Party in America’s New Deal by Kenneth Finegold and Theda Skocpol
  (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995). Contemporary Sociology 26 (January):
  35–37.
  2000 “Black, White, and Blue: A Review Essay on Rural Southern History.” The Rural
  South Since World War II, edited by R. Douglas Hurt (Louisiana State University
  Press, 1998) and Development Arrested: Race, Power, and the Blues in the
  Mississippi Delta by Clyde Woods (Verso Press, 1998). Rural Sociology 65
  (Fall): 515-23.
  2004 Disputed Ground: Farm Groups That Opposed the New Deal Agricultural
  Program by Jean Choate (Jefferson, NC, 2002). Agricultural History Review 52
  (1), June: 232-33.
  10
  2005 Sociology in Government: The Galpin-Taylor Years in the U. S. Department of
  Agriculture, 1919-1953 by Olaf F. Larson and Julie N. Zimmerman (University
  Park, PA, 2003). Agricultural History 79 (2), Spring: 241-43.
  PAPERS PRESENTED AT PROFESSIONAL MEETINGS AND CONFERENCES:
  Gilbert, J. and C.K. Harris
  1978 “Corporate Land Ownership and Rural Poverty: A Center-Periphery Model
  Applied to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.” Rural Sociological Society, San
  Francisco, California, September.
  Powers, S.E. and J. Gilbert
  1978 “Small Farm Policy in the United States.” Rural Sociological Society, San
  Francisco, California, September.
  Gilbert, J. and C.K. Harris
  1979 “Large-Scale Farming, Rural Social Welfare, and Goldschmidt’s Agrarian Thesis.”
  Rural Sociological Society, Burlington, Vermont, August.
  Gilbert, J.
  1980 “Rural Theory: The Grounding of Rural Sociology.” Rural Sociological Society,
  Ithaca, New York, August.
  Gilbert, J.
  1981 “Jeffersonian and Socialist Agrarianism: United States Land Reform Alternatives
  in the 1930s.” Southern Sociological Society, Louisville, Kentucky, April.
  Gilbert, J. and C.K. Harris
  1981 “The Changing Structure of Farm Land Ownership in the United States,
  1946–1978.” Rural Sociological Society, Guelph, Canada, August.
  Gilbert, J. and C.K. Harris
  1983 “The Income Determination Process of United States Farmland Owners.” Rural
  Sociological Society, Lexington, Kentucky, August.
  Falk, W.W. and J. Gilbert
  1984 “Bringing Rural Sociology Back In: Critical Theory and Rural Policy.” Rural
  Sociological Society, College Station, Texas, August.
  Harris, C.K. and J. Gilbert
  1984 “The Structure of Farmland Ownership in the United States.” U.S. Department of
  Agriculture Workshop on Land Transfers, Madison, Wisconsin, September.
  Akor, R. and J. Gilbert
  1985 “Dairying in California and Wisconsin: An Analysis of Divergent Farm
  Structures.” Rural Sociological Society, Blacksburg, Virginia, August.
  Harris, C.K., J. Gilbert, and J. McAllister
  11
  1985 “The Changing Structure of Farmland Ownership in the South.” Southern
  Regional Technical Committee (S-198) Symposium, Atlanta, Georgia, October.
  Harris, C.K., J. McAllister, and J. Gilbert
  1986 “Changing Patterns of Southern Farmland Ownership.” Southern Rural
  Sociological Society, Orlando, Florida, February.
  Bloomquist, L.E. and J. Gilbert
  1986 “The American South as an Internal Colony: Social Consequences of Uneven
  Development.” Southern Sociological Society, New Orleans, Louisiana, April.
  Gilbert, J. and M.J. Pfeffer
  1988 “Divergent Paths of Capitalist Development in Agriculture: Historical and
  Contemporary Comparisons of Labor in the Corn Belt and the Mississippi Delta.”
  Southern Sociological Society, Nashville, Tennessee, April.
  Pfeffer, M.J. and J. Gilbert
  1988 “United States Farm Program Participation and Socio-Economic Differentiation in
  the 1980s.” Seventh World Congress for Rural Sociology, Bologna, Italy, June.
  Wagner, P. and J. Gilbert
  1988 “Contested Ground: Hegemonic and Alternative Ideologies as Lived by
  Contemporary Midwestern Farmers.” Seventh World Congress for Rural
  Sociology, Bologna, Italy, June.
  Howe, C. and J. Gilbert
  1988 “‘State-Centered’ vs. ‘Class Struggle’ Theories of the State: The Case of New
  Deal Agricultural Policy.” American Sociological Association, Atlanta, Georgia,
  August.
  Gilbert, J. and R. Barnes
  1988 “The Reproduction of Wisconsin Family Farming, 1950–1975.” Rural
  Sociological Society, Athens, Georgia, August.
  Pfeffer, M.J. and J. Gilbert
  1989 “Gender and Class Dimensions of Off-Farm Employment: Responses to Farm
  Crisis in the Corn Belt and the Mississippi Delta.” Invited Paper in Special
  Session, “Crisis in the Farm Belt,” American Sociological Association, San
  Francisco, California, August.
  Gilbert, J. and P.H. Mooney
  1989 “Land Tenure Policy in the United States.” Rural Sociological Society, Seattle,
  Washington, August.
  Gilbert, J. and T.M. Beckley
  1992 “Ownership and Control of Farmland: Landlord–Tenant Relations in the
  Midwest.” Rural Sociological Society, University Park, Pennsylvania, August.
  12
  Lachman, D. and J. Gilbert
  1992 “Democratic Ideology in Agricultural Policy: ‘Program Study and Discussion’ at
  the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1934–1946.” Rural Sociological Society,
  University Park, Pennsylvania, August.
  Wood, S. and J. Gilbert
  1992 “Autonomous Expert or ‘Power Elite’ Member?: Rexford G. Tugwell and the
  Creation of the U.S. Resettlement Administration in 1935.” Social Science
  History Association, Chicago, Illinois, November.
  Gilbert, J.
  1993 “Democratic Planning in U.S. Agriculture: The Federal–County Land-Use
  Planning Program, 1938–1942.” Rural Sociological Society, Orlando, Florida,
  August.
  Gilbert, J.
  1994 “The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Debate.” Edgewood College,
  Religious Studies Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, February.
  Gilbert, J.
  1994 “Richard T. Ely and His Students: The Wisconsin Tradition of Land Tenure
  Studies, 1902–1952.” North American Land Tenure Seminar, University of
  Wisconsin–Madison, October.
  Gilbert, J. and A. O’Connor
  1995 “Leaving the Land Behind: The Struggle for Land Reform in Federal Policy,
  1933–1965.” Conference on “Who Owns America?” Land Tenure Center,
  University of Wisconsin–Madison, June.
  Gilbert, J.
  1995 “Democratic Planning in Agricultural Policy: The Federal–County Land Use
  Planning Program, 1938–1942.” Agricultural History Society Conference on
  Twentieth Century Farm Politics, College Park, Maryland, June.
  Christie, M. and J. Gilbert
  1995 “Rural Sociology ‘On the Spot’: Carl C. Taylor and USDA’s Division of Farm
  Population and Rural Life.” Agricultural History Society Conference on
  Twentieth Century Farm Politics, College Park, Maryland, June.
  Gilbert, J.
  1995 “The Struggle for Democratic Planning and Land Reform in U.S. Federal Policy,
  1933–1943.” Rural Sociological Society, Washington, DC, August.
  Christie, M. and J. Gilbert
  1995 “Carl C. Taylor and Critical Rural Sociology, 1919–1952.” Rural Sociological
  Society, Washington, DC, August.
  Gilbert, J.
  13
  1996 “A Usable Past: New Dealers Henry A. Wallace and M. L. Wilson Reclaim the
  American Agrarian Tradition.” Rural Sociological Society, Des Moines, IA,
  August.
  Gilbert, J.
  1996 “Democratic Rationalization: The Ideology of Agrarian Intellectuals in the Third
  New Deal.” Social Science History Association, New Orleans, LA, October.
  Gilbert, J.
  1997 “On the Long-Term Policy Evaluation of New Deal Resettlement Communities.”
  Conference on Black Land Loss, Tillery, NC, March.
  Wood, S.D. and J. Gilbert
  1997 “Black Farmers in a Mississippi Delta County: A Ten-Year Longitudinal Study,
  1986–1996.” Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society; and the Association
  for the Study of Food and Society, Madison, WI, June.
  Gilbert, J.
  1997 “Social Science Leaders in the New Deal Department of Agriculture: A Collective
  Biography of Midwestern Farm Boys Made Good.” Agriculture, Food, and Human
  Values Society; and the Association for the Study of Food and Society, Madison,
  WI, June.
  Wood, S.D. and J. Gilbert
  1997 “Re-Entering African-American Farmers: Recent Trends and a Policy Rationale.”
  Rural Sociological Society, Toronto, CA, August.
  Gilbert, J.
  1997 “Participatory Democracy and Democratic Planning in the Work of Carl C. Taylor,
  New Deal Rural Sociologist.” Rural Sociological Society, Toronto, CA, August.
  Gilbert, J.
  1997 “Organic Intellectuals in the State: A Collective Biography of Midwestern Social
  Scientists in the New Deal Department of Agriculture.” Social Science History
  Association, Washington, DC, October.
  Felin, M.S. and J. Gilbert
  1998 “The Decline of Black Farmers and Landowners in the Rural South: A Review of
  the Literature.” 2
  nd National Black Land Loss Summit. Tillery, NC, February.
  Also presented at Who Owns America? II Conference, Madison, WI, June.
  Wood, S.D. and J. Gilbert
  1998 “Re-Entering African-American Farmers: Recent Trends and a Policy Rationale.”
  2
  nd National Black Land Loss Summit. Tillery, NC, February.
  Also presented at Who Owns America? II Conference, Madison, WI, June.
  14
  Gilbert, J. and K. Wehr
  1998 “Milking L.A.: Urbanization and the Social Origins of Industrialized Dairying
  (Southern California, 1920–1970).” Social Science History Association, Chicago,
  IL, November.
  Gilbert J.
  1999 “Eastern Urban Liberals and Midwestern Agrarian Intellectuals: Two Group
  Portraits of Progressives in the New Deal Department of Agriculture.” Eightieth
  Anniversary Symposium of the Agricultural History Society, Mississippi State
  University, Starkville, MS, June.
  Also presented at Rural Sociological Society, Chicago, IL, August.
  Wood, S.D. and J. Gilbert
  1999 “The Land-Based Struggle for Civil Rights: Race, Property, and Democracy in
  America’s Rural South.” Rural Sociological Society, Chicago, IL, August.
  Also presented, in expanded form and with Savonala Horne, at 30th anniversary
  celebration of African and Afro-American Studies, University of North Carolina,
  Chapel Hill, NC, October.
  Gilbert, J.
  2000 “The Late New Deal as the Intended New Deal in Agriculture.” Organization of
  American Historians, St. Louis, MO, March.
  Gilbert, J.
  2000 “New Dealer Rexford G. Tugwell’s Radical Planning Vision: High
  Modernist–and Democratic?” Rural Sociological Society, Washington, D. C.,
  August.
  Gilbert, J.
  2000 “The New Deal’s Resettlement and Farm Security Administrations: Background to
  Documentary Photography.” Rural Sociological Society, Washington, D. C.,
  August.
  Gilbert, J.
  2000 Response to Olaf F. Larson’s and Julie N. Zimmerman’s Sociology in Government:
  The Galpin–Taylor Years in the U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1919-1953
  (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, forthcoming). Rural Sociological Society,
  Washington, D. C., August.
  Gilbert, J., G. Sharp, and S. Felin
  2001 “The Decline of Black Farmers and Rural Landowners in the Rural South: A
  Review of the Literature.” Southern Rural Sociological Association, Fort Worth,
  TX, January.
  Gilbert, J. and G. Sharp
  15
  2001 “Fractionated Heir Property: A Comparison of Land Inheritance Problems Among
  Native Americans and African Americans” (with Gwen Sharp). Who Owns
  America? III, Madison, WI, June.
  Also presented to Rural Sociological Society, Albuquerque, NM, August.
  Gilbert, J.
  2001 Discussant for “Exporting the New Deal: The USDA and Postwar
  Internationalism,” Social Science History Association, Chicago, IL, October.
  Gilbert, J., S. W. Wood, and G. Sharp
  2002 “Who Owns the Land? A Racial and Ethnic Analysis of Agricultural Land
  Ownership in the United States.” Rural Sociological Society, Chicago, IL,
  August.
  Also presented to Land Tenure Center, UW-Madison, February.
  Gilbert, J.
  “Land and Democracy: Problems and Persistence of African-American Farmers
  and Rural Landowners.” Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems,
  University of California–Santa Cruz, May 2003.
  Gilbert, J.
  2003 “Democratic Planning: The Vision of New Deal USDA Economists Howard R.
  Tolley and Bushrod W. Allin.” Rural Sociological Society, Montreal, Canada,
  July.
  Gilbert, J. and D. Berman
  2003 “American Indian Land Tenure and Land Use: What Can We Learn from the
  Census of Agriculture, Compared to the Bureau of Indian Affairs?” Rural
  Sociological Society, Montreal, Canada, July.
  Gilbert, J.
  2003 “Carl Taylor and New Deal Rural Sociology.” Rural Sociological Society,
  Montreal, Canada, July.
  S. D. Wood and J. Gilbert
  2003 “A New Deal Experiment in Land Reform and Social Justice: Sabine Farms in
  Harrison and Panola Counties, Texas.” East Texas Historical Association,
  Nacogdoches, TX, September.
  Gilbert, J. and S. D. Wood
  2003 “Securing the Future by Securing the Land: The New Deal State and Local African
  Americans Remake Civil Society in the Rural South, 1935-2003.” Association of
  Public Policy and Management, Washington, D. C., November.
  Gilbert, J. and S. D. Wood
  16
  2003 “Rural Resettlement in Texas and Mississippi: The Sabine Farms and Mileston
  Farms Experience.” Professional Agricultural Workers Conference, Tuskegee
  University, AL, December.
  Gilbert, J. and S. D. Wood
  2004 “Rural Resettlements: New Deal Experiments in Land Reform and Racial Justice,
  1935-2003.” Rural Sociological Society, Sacramento, CA, August.
  Gilbert, J. and S. D. Wood
  2004 Three Posters on New Deal Resettlement Communities, Professional Agricultural
  and Workers Conference, Tuskegee University, December.
  Gilbert, J.
  2006 “Can Government Bureaucrats Foment Democracy? The Case of New Deal
  Agricultural Policy.” Agricultural History Society, Cambridge, MA, June.
  Gilbert, J. “The Intended New Deal in Agriculture.” Rural Sociological Society,
  2006 Louisville, KY, Aug.
  Gilbert, J., S. D. Wood, and Ronnie L. Foster
  2007 “Farming and Living the Racial Margin: A New Deal African-American
  Community in Northeast Louisiana.” American Society for Environmental
  History, Baton Rouge, LA, Feb. 2007.
  Gilbert, J.
  2007 “An Experiment in Land Reform and Community Development: The
  African-American Resettlement Project in Louisiana.” Agricultural History
  Society, Ames, IA, June 2007.
  Gilbert, J.
  2007 “Henry A. Wallace and the Intended New Deal.” Rural Sociological Society,
  Santa Clara, CA, Aug. 2007.
  Gilbert, J.
  2008 “Rural Sociology and Democratic Planning in the New Deal.” Presidential
  Address, Agricultural History Society, Reno, NV, June.
  Gilbert, J.
  2008 “Democratizing States and the Use of History.” Presidential Address, Rural
  Sociological Society, Manchester, NH, August.
  Gilbert, J.
  2009 “Inviting Criticism: The New Deal’s Farmer Discussion Groups and Schools
  of Philosophy for Extension Workers.” Agricultural History Society, Little
  Rock, AR, June.
  Also presented at Rural Sociological Society, Madison, WI, July 2009.
  17
  Sinkewicz, M. and J. Gilbert
  2010 “Rethinking Policy Approaches to the Multiple Determinants of Health: Lessons
  from the New Deal.” 9
  th International Conference on Urban Health, New York
  City.
  Also presented at Rural Sociological Society, Boise, ID, July 2011.
  Gilbert, J.
  2011 Discussant for session on “Reconsidering Jess Gilbert's ‘Low Modernist’
  Moment
  in the USDA: New Perspectives on the Historiography of Rural
  Development,
  State-building, and Democracy.” Agricultural History Society, June.
  Gilbert, J. and S. D. Wood
  2012 “Black Harvest: Sowing the Seeds of Democracy through Federal/Local Land
  Reform in the Rural South, 1935-1997.” Southern Sociological Society, New
  Orleans, March.
  Gilbert, J.
  2012 “M. L. Wilson’s Philosophy of Education.” Agricultural History Society,
  Manhattan, KS, June.
  Gilbert, J. and Katrina Quisumbing King
  2012 “The Meaning of Land: Black Farmland Owners Speak.” Rural Sociological
  Society, Chicago, IL, July.
  King, Katrina Quisumbing, J. Gilbert, M. Sinkewicz, and S. D. Wood
  2012 “Land Matters: The Significance of Black Land Ownership in the Rural
  South.” Black Environmental Thought II, Minneapolis, Sept.
  Gilbert, J.
  2012 “Real-Utopian Lessons from the Agrarian New Deal: The Case of
  Democratic Planning.” American Sociological Association, Denver,
  Aug.
  INVITED SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS:
  1985 Invited Participant in Workshop on “Agriculture and Rural Communities in Eastern and
  Western Europe.” Sponsored by the Vienna Centre, September 10–14, Balatonfoldvar,
  Hungary.
  1987 Guest Lecturer on “United States Agriculture.” Graduate Seminar on Peasantry,
  Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
  1992 Visiting Lecturer on “State Theory in U.S. Sociology: Current Debates on the New
  Deal of the 1930s” and “Ownership and Control of Farmland: Landlord–Tenant
  18
  Relations in the Midwestern United States.” May 18–26, Institute of Sociology,
  Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland.
  1993 Seminar on “Democratic Planning in Agriculture: A New Deal Program Reexamined.”
  Political Economy Workshop, Department of Sociology, Indiana University,
  Bloomington, Indiana.
  1993 Seminar on “Democratic Planning in the New Deal: The Federal–County Agricultural
  Planning Program, 1938–1942.” Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, New
  Haven, Connecticut.
  1994 Seminar on “Democratic Planning in Theory and Practice: The Federal–County
  Agricultural Planning Program, 1938–1942.” Rural History Seminar, Newberry
  Library, Chicago, Illinois.
  1994 Seminar on “Democratic Planning in the Third New Deal.” Department of Rural
  Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
  1995 Seminar on “Democratic Planning and Land Reform in U.S. Agriculture: Policy
  Lessons from the New Deal.” Workshop on Family Farming in the Contemporary
  World: East–West Comparisons, Cracow, Poland.
  2000 Workshop on “The Agrarian Ideals of Henry A. Wallace.” Practical Farmers of Iowa
  Annual Meeting, Ames, Iowa.
  2000 Seminar on “Iowa’s Democratizing Agrarian Intellectuals and Social Scientists in the
  New Deal: A Collective Biography of USDA Secretary Henry Wallace, Rural
  Sociologist Carl Taylor, and Friends.” Department of Sociology, Iowa State
  University, Ames, Iowa.
  2001 Seminar on “The New Center for Minority Land and Community Security.”
  Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University (March).
  2002 Opening Address, “African-American Farmers and the Land: History, Problems,
  Action.” 4
  th National Black Land Loss Summit, Atlanta, GA (February).
  2003 “Land and Democracy: Problems and Persistence of African-American Farmers and
  Rural Landowners.” Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems,
  University of California–Santa Cruz, May.
  2003 Workshop, “The Changing Racial and Ethnic Structure of Land Ownership in U. S.
  Agriculture.” Partnership Diversity Summit, Natural Resources Conservation Service,
  USDA, Washington, D. C. (May).
  2005 “A Land-Reform and Racial-Justice Experiment in the United States: Rural
  African-American Resettlement Communities, 1935-2004.” University of California,
  Berkeley, August.
  19
  2005 “Experiments in Land Reform and Racial Justice: The New Deal State and
  African-Americans Remake Civil Society in the Rural South, 1935-2004.” University
  of California, Santa Cruz, October.
  2008 “A New Deal Experiment in Land Reform and Community Development: The
  African-American Resettlement Project in Northeast Louisiana, 1935-2005.”
  Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, November (with
  Ronnie L. Foster).
  2008 “Rural Sociology as State Knowledge.” Invited paper at workshop on “State
  Knowledge During the Great Depression: Control as Usual?” University of Chicago,
  July.
  2009 “Land Tenure and Democracy,” Opening Plenary Session, Changing Lands, Changing
  Hands: A National Conference on Farm and Ranch Access, Succession, Tenure and
  Stewardship, Denver, CO.
  2011 “A New Deal Experiment in Land Reform: African-American Resettlement
  Communities in the Rural South, 1935-2005.” Inaugural Lecture, Center for the History
  of Agriculture, Science, and the Environment of the South, Mississippi State University,
  Oct.
  RESEARCH GRANTS:
  1976 “Southern Agrarianism in the 1930s.” Youthgrant, National Endowment for the
  Humanities (with Steven M. Brown). $6,000.
  1984–85 “Marginalization and the Small Farmer” (final year only). Hatch Project, Wisconsin
  Agricultural Experiment Station. $13,000.
  1985–90 “Ownership and Control of U.S. Agriculture: A Regional/Commodity Approach.”
  Hatch Project, Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station. $67,800.
  1985 Supplement to above. University of Wisconsin Graduate School. $4,165.
  1987–88 “Household Survival Strategies in the Farm Crisis: The Comparative Regional Impacts
  of Changes in Farm Commodity Policies.” Rural Economic Policy Program, The
  Aspen Institute, Washington, DC (with Max J. Pfeffer). $59,400.
  1987 Supplement to above. University of Wisconsin Graduate School. $1,800.
  1990–91 “Influence of Labor and Tenure on Farm Agrichemical Decisions.” Center for
  Integrated Agricultural Systems, University of Wisconsin-Madison (with Peter J.
  Nowak). $24,946.
  1990–95 “Agricultural Planning and Reform from the New Deal through the Post-War Years,
  1933–1952: Policy Lessons for Today.” Hatch Project, Wisconsin Agricultural
  Experiment Station. $84,000.
  20
  1996-2000 North American Program of the UW Land Tenure Center (with others).
  1997–98 “The Social Origins of Industrialized Drylot Dairying in the United States: Wisconsin
  and California Compared.” Hatch Project, Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station.
  $23,000.
  1997–98 “Maintaining Land and Community: A Planning Grant Proposal for a FRA Center on
  Minority Land Loss and Recovery.” Fund for Rural America, U.S. Department of
  Agriculture (with others). $25,000.
  1997–99 “Black Land Loss and Recovery Efforts.” North American Program, Land Tenure
  Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison. $39,000.
  1999–2000 “African-American Land Ownership and Civic Engagement in the Rural South.”
  University of Wisconsin–Madison Graduate School. $16,965.
  2000–05 Center for Minority Land and Community Security (based at Tuskegee University, in
  collaboration with community-based organizations). Fund for Rural America, U.S.
  Department of Agriculture. $3,500,000. ($1,150,000 to UW-Madison.)
  2002–05 “Assessing the Government Partnership in Rural Community Development: The
  Social and Environmental Dimensions of Black Land Ownership.” 1890 Institution
  Capacity Building Grant Program, Cooperative State Research, Education, and
  Extension Service, USDA, by Tuskegee University, North Carolina State University,
  and University of Wisconsin–Madison. $47,240 to UW–Madison.
  2007-10 “Farmland Access, Tenure, and Succession: Impacts on Small and Medium-Sized
  Farms, Land Use, and the Environment” (with Mike Bell and many others), USDA
  National Research Initiative. $105,540 to UW-Madison.
  TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
  1975 English Teacher, Hope High School, Providence, R.I.
  1982 “Introduction to Sociology,” Department of Sociology, Michigan State University.
  1982 “Introduction to Public Policy Problems,” James Madison College, Michigan State
  University.
  1984 “Urban Sociology” and “Introduction to Sociology,” Department of Sociology,
  University of Georgia.
  1984–88, “Introduction to Rural Sociology,” Department of Rural Sociology, University of
  1991 Wisconsin–Madison.
  1986 “Sociology of Wisconsin Agriculture.”
  21
  1987 “Family Labor Farms: Their Reproduction and Transformation,” Graduate Seminar.
  1991 “Historical and Comparative Methods in Sociology,” Graduate Seminar.
  1994, 1996, “Agriculture and Social Change in Western History.”
  1998-2000,
  2002-07, 2009-13
  1995, 1998, “Marx’s Critical Theory of Society.”
  1999, 2003,
  2007, 2011
  1988-96, “Sociology of Agriculture,” Intermediate Level.
  1998, 2000-05,
  2012
  1985, 1997 “Sociology of Agriculture,” Graduate Seminar.
  2000, 2005
  1990, 1994 “Agriculture and the State,” Graduate Seminar.
  2007, 2010,
  2013
  2010 “Public Sociology,” Intermediate Level.
  SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION:
  1. Committees and Activities
  Member of Program Committee for the Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological
  Society, 1983–84.
  Project Co-Director of Conference on American Farm Women in Historical Perspective,
  Madison, WI, October 1986.
  Member of the Fiftieth Anniversary Planning and Coordinating Committee of the Rural
  Sociological Society, 1984–87.
  Elected Chair of Research Group on the Sociology of Agriculture, Rural Sociological
  Society, 1986–87.
  Organizer of One-Day Conference of Rural Sociological Society Research Group on the
  Sociology of Agriculture, “The Politics and Policy-Relevance of Sociological Research
  on U.S. Agriculture: Past and Present,” Madison, WI, August 1987.
  Program Chair of the Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, 1989–90.
  22
  Member of Rural Sociological Society Council, 1989–90.
  Elected Member of Rural Sociological Society Council, 1991–93.
  Member of Membership Committee of the Agricultural History Society, 1993–94.
  Member of Membership Committee of the Rural Sociological Society, 1993–95.
  Member of Steering Committee of the North American Program, Land Tenure Center,
  University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1996–2002.
  Elected Member of Nominations Committee of the Agricultural History Society,
  1997–2000 (Chair, 2000).
  Chair of University Lectures Committee, University of Wisconsin–Madison,
  1998–2000.
  Member, Advisory Board, “Guidebook to Archives and Manuscripts of Agricultural and
  Rural Life” Project, Mann Library, Cornell University.
  Member of Rural Sociological Society Publications Committee, 2000–03.
  Elected Member of Rural Sociological Society Nominations Committee, 2001-02.
  Elected Member of Executive Committee, Agricultural History Society, 2001-04.
  Member, Search Committee (of Agricultural History Society) for Editor of Agricultural
  History, 2002.
  Chair of Reorganization Committee, Land Tenure Center, University of
  Wisconsin–Madison, 2003.
  Chair of Outreach Committee, Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison,
  2004-06.
  Member, Program Committee, Agricultural History Society Annual Meeting,
  2005-06.
  Member, Local Affairs Committee, American Society for Environmental History,
  2011-12.
  Member, Program Committee, American Sociological Association, 2011-12.
  2. Awards and Offices
  Excellence in Instruction Award, Rural Sociological Society, 2005.
  Spitzer Excellence in Teaching Award, CALS, UW-Madison, 2006.
  23
  Vice-President, Rural Sociological Society, 2005-06.
  Vice-President/President-Elect, Agricultural History Society, 2006-07.
  President-Elect, Rural Sociological Society, 2006-07.
  President, Agricultural History Society, 2007-08.
  President, Rural Sociological Society, 2007-08.
  3. Editorial Consultation
  Manuscript Reviewer for:
  Agricultural History
  American Journal of Sociology
  American Sociological Review Rural Sociology
  Social Forces
  The Sociological Quarterly
  Southern Rural Sociology
  Journal of Rural Studies
  Society and Natural Resources
  Agriculture and Human Values
  Environmental History
  Rural Sociological Society Monograph Series, The Sociology of Agriculture by
  Frederick H. Buttel, Olaf F. Larson, and Gilbert W. Gillespie. New York:
  Greenwood Press, 1990.
  The Agrarian Question by Karl Kautsky, University of Wisconsin Press (unpublished).
  Associate Editor of Rural Sociology, 1985–88.
  Member of Editorial Board, Rural Studies Series, Rural Sociological Society, 1994–97.
  Reviewer of “Land Ownership in American Agriculture,” forthcoming in Conner
  Bailey, Leif Jensen and Elizabeth Ransom. Rural America in a Globalizing World:
  Problems and Prospects for the 2010s.
  4. Research Reviews
  National Science Foundation, Program for Sociology
  University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station
  North Central Region Center for Rural Development, Iowa State University
  National Endowment for the Humanities
  U.S. Department of Agriculture, Small Business Innovation Research Program
  U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Research Initiative Competitive Grants
  Program
  U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute for Food and Agriculture,
  24
  4-day scientific review panel, Washington, D. C., Oct. 2010.
  5. Chair of 50+ Sessions at Professional Meetings (Rural Sociological Society, World Congress
  for Rural Sociology, Conference on American Farm Women in Historical Perspective;
  Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society; Social Science History Association,
  Organization of American History).
  6. Membership in Professional Associations
  American Sociological Association
  Agricultural History Society
  Rural Sociological Society
  PUBLIC SERVICE:
  Co-directed the Center for Minority Land and Community Security, which works with
  rural African-Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics on legal, economic, and
  cultural strategies to address land-loss issues. Various activities.
  Interviewed by journalists on the decline of black farmers and loss of black-owned land.
  Provided data to practitioners and activists in the minority land-retention movement.
  Work with community members in the New Deal Resettlements of Sabine Farms, TX, Mound, LA, and
  Mileston, MS.
  Conceived of and facilitated contacts between journalist and local people for an article in The Nation on
  the New Deal Resettlement community in MS; “Mississippi Growing” by Habiba Alcindor appeared in
  the special issue on Food, September 21, 2009, pp. 31-32.
  Interviewed and quoted in a radio documentary, America’s Black Farmers: Still Waiting for Justice,
  produced by Molly Stentz (WORT) and aired by Free Speech Radio News on over 100 stations
  nationally, Thanksgiving Day, 2010.
  Published Letter to the Editor, “Defend Havens Center, academic freedom.” Isthmus, Feb. 20, 2011.

QUOTED: "the author gives a compelling sense of
constrained possibility. The book extends our understanding of the New Deal era in several senses, reminding us that many issues regarding
economic, social, and political participation that we wrestle with today were also being tackled, rather creatively, three generations ago."

Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the
Intended New Deal
David Ekbladh
Journal of Southern History.
82.3 (Aug. 2016): p711.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text: 
Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal. By Jess Gilbert. Yale Agrarian Studies. (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2015. Pp. [xxiv], 341. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-300-20731-6.)
The New Deal retains remarkable currency in contemporary U.S. and international politics in no small measure because it still retains currency in
contemporary political arguments. But the New Deal also remains compelling because it was an attempt to reckon with questions modern
societies still face. In Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal, Jess Gilbert ably reconstructs the efforts of a cadre
of agrarian reformers and their creation of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The book
shows how these intellectuals, many of whom emerged from rural life themselves, attempted to put democracy at the core of their reforms.
The programs of the BAE sought to include farmers and other rural people in the wide decision-making process about reform. In just a few years
after its creation the reach of the BAE was remarkable, spanning the country and involving hundreds of thousands of people in rural areas. Gilbert
addresses the shortcomings of the program in terms of race and class--those able to participate were often not the poorest or the most
marginalized--but he prefers to focus on the BAE's accomplishments. Gilbert also traces how many people influenced by the democratic planning
efforts of the BAE carried these ideas abroad after World War II. But here the book bumps into one of its limitations. There is little sense of how
New Deal programs and the New Dealers themselves were shaped by the variety of agricultural reform efforts that were in vogue internationally
before the war. The author provides tantalizing glimpses of how the democratic ideals of the BAE's programs were arrayed against totalitarian
societies as World War II approached. However, the book largely stays in a narrow domestic furrow and overlooks the globally interconnected
nature of agricultural science and reform.
2/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486344600900 2/2
What Gilbert does show is that the New Deal retained its firm, even radical, institutional commitments to democratic ideals far later than many
standard narratives recount. His book also shows that democracy was more than just a goal of some BAE and other New Deal programs: it was a
real and effective mechanism to make them work. What is more, while the cases available are limited, the author makes a good argument that the
democratic nature of the programs actually led to economic benefits.
The actual accomplishments of the BAE programs demonstrate that democracy was not a simple or cynical rhetorical device used by the New
Dealers. These accomplishments also suggest that the war effort did not euthanize the New Deal, although in the early phases of American
involvement in World War II the BAE struggled to reconcile wartime planning with democratic participation. Rather, it was hostile groups like
the American Farm Bureau Federation that helped prod Congress into denying funds, which left innovative programs to die on the vine. While
the discussion of how and why this opposition was so effective, particularly in the political realm, is thin, the author gives a compelling sense of
constrained possibility. The book extends our understanding of the New Deal era in several senses, reminding us that many issues regarding
economic, social, and political participation that we wrestle with today were also being tackled, rather creatively, three generations ago.
DAVID EKBLADH
Tufts University
Ekbladh, David
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Ekbladh, David. "Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal." Journal of Southern History, vol. 82, no. 3, 2016, p.
711+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460447802&it=r&asid=fa4a445c9b2b2e765757d0c7839086fb. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460447802

Ekbladh, David. "Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal." Journal of Southern History, vol. 82, no. 3, 2016, p. 711+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460447802&it=r. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.

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