Based on six years of extended ethnography in multiple agricultural areas of the Eastern United States, Down Country Lanes, Behind Abandoned Houses is a monograph which explores the lives of migrant and seasonal farm workers. The six-year study secured multi-setting field data in primary, secondary and casual sites, and audio-taped narrative life stories from men and women who harvest and perform the related tasks that help to make the many foods which we enjoy in abundance. The study presented in this book elaborates vignettes from field observations with a focus on workers who use drugs and alcohol, and is complemented by formal (narrative life stories) and informal interviews. The author explores diverse field data that reveal the hardships, exclusion and social adversities that migrant farm workers experience many times more often than any other social group with considerable susceptibility to drug / alcohol use. Down Country Lanes, Behind Abandoned Houses gives readers a perspective about farm workers’ social vulnerability across multiple agricultural areas, while comparing willful neglect and social non-existence experienced by farm workers to a gray zone of contemporary horrors in the way that these men and women have been viewed and treated over many decades. The monograph is an invaluable reference for the study of social problems, substance abuse, trans-national migratory experiences and field methods in sociology. The book also serves as a contemporary handbook on the anthropology of American agricultural labor.
This book covers the author’s field experiences as an ethnographer in one country of Central America and an applied anthropologist in four US regions. A range of social fields are examined, which include: constructing a work experience table as a composite job resumé; correspondence with a maximum security prisoner for more than ten years; design features for multiple choice testing; farmworker sero-prevalence reports; health-seeking behavior among the Ngöbé (indigenous people in Central America); HIV/AIDS education in rural farm labor camps; Latinx naming practices for grocery stores and restaurants in agricultural areas; organizational capacity building assistance training; and teaching students in a community college and three secondary schools, among others. The book highlights the importance of incorporating ethnography in the completion of work tasks across a range of social fields, which represent diverse socio-cultural groups and immigrant populations.
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