THE AMERICAN AG·RICULTURE MOVEMENT: MANIFEST AND LATENT PARTICIPANT ATTRACTIONS IN A SOCIAL MOVEMENT

Abstract

This paper will focus on the recently organized American Agriculture Movement (AAM) in the context of a social movement. Upon approaching the AAM as a topic of research) one is immediately confronted by the paucity ofliterature in theprofessional sociology. and agricultural economics journals. This is not to suggest that the AAM has been rejected as an area worthy of research, but is probably due to research lag. Indeed, the 1978 Wisconsin Farmer Survey conducted by the University of Wisconsin's Department of Rural Sociology t among other data collection, solicits information .addressiJlg support of the AAM (Wilkening, 1978:7). Of necessity then, most of the data addressing the AAM have been drawn from news periodicals, newspapers, and various agriculturaland farm journals.