Buch, Englisch, 300 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 514 g
Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California's Santa Clara Valley
Buch, Englisch, 300 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 514 g
ISBN: 978-0-19-973478-8
Verlag: Oxford University Press
Nearly a century before it became known as Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara Valley was world-renowned for something else: the succulent fruits and vegetables grown in its fertile soil. Virtually all farms were owned by whites, but the soil was largely worked by Asian immigrants. In Harvesting the American Dream, Cecilia Tsu tells the overlooked and intertwined histories of the land of the Santa Clara Valley and the Asian immigrants who cultivated it. Weaving
together the story of the three overlapping waves of Asian migration from China, Japan, and the Philippines in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Tsu offers a comparative history that sheds light on white and Asian Californians' understandings of race, gender, and national identity.
From the mid-nineteenth century on, white farmers had an increased need for labor, and Chinese immigrants willingly and disproportionately filled it. Despite this common labor arrangement, the idea of the independent family farm, worked solely by family members, became even more deeply entrenched, particularly in the West. Farm owners justified the labor of Chinese men as sojourning immigrants disconnected from family, capable of only menial agricultural work. They also viewed Asian crops as
marginal, which justified their increasing reliance on foreign workers. Popular belief that the Chinese lacked a coherent family structure was later extended to the Japanese, even though immigrant families began settling in the Valley in the late 1910s. As the earlier family farm framework divided
along crop and family lines fell apart, it was adapted, this time barring women from field work. The direct threat of Japanese family farming to the white family farm ideal, Tsu argues, played a significant role in the rise of discrimination against Asians through immigrant exclusion, denial of citizenship, and alien land laws. However, the mutual dependence that characterized Asian-white relations in the Santa Clara Valley prevented the area from becoming a hotbed of racial tension. Efforts to
hold on to the white family farm ideal during the Depression led nonwhite laborers, primarily Filipino and Mexican, to be eyed suspiciously, as red-sympathizing foreigners whose involvement in labor militancy revealed a dormant anti-Americanism.
Tsu simultaneously tells the story of this agricultural world from the perspectives of the Asian workers who sought to create their own American dream. They saw farming as not just a source of income, but also a way to bolster their community standing. Although they did not share a common heritage, the groups interacted with each other constantly and peacefully, patronizing each others' shops, working for the same landowners, sometimes living in the same area, and encountering many of the same
stereotypes.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie Wirtschaftsgeographie
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
- Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
- Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Primärer Sektor Agrarökonomie, Ernährungswirtschaft
- Naturwissenschaften Agrarwissenschaften Agrarwissenschaften
