Apr 3, 2025
This week I had architecture students reading about rural and remote spaces. Among other things, they looked at the terrific work of Rural Studio, Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, and essays by Wendell Berry. I also included this interview with Berry, which cites an abbreviated version of his “agrarian values.” I asked students to identify the ideas that are not explicitly environmental, in the familiar green-rhetoric sense, and to speculate about why they might be part of Berry’s wider vision. We had one of the best conversations all semester thanks to the provocations below:
An elated, loving interest in the use and care of the land.
An informed and conscientious submission to nature.
The wish to have and to belong to a place of one’s own, as the only secure source of sustenance and independence.
A persuasion in favor of economic democracy; a preference for enough over too much.
Fear and contempt of waste of every kind, and its ultimate consequence in land exhaustion.
A preference for saving rather than spending.
An assumption of the need for a subsistence or household economy.
An acknowledged need for neighbors, and a willingness to be a good neighbor.
A living sense of the need for continuity of family and community life.
Respect for work, and (as self-respect) for good work.
A lively suspicion of anything new, contradicting the ethos of consumerism and the cult of celebrity.