Agrarianism

Agrarianism is not identical with the back to the earth movement, but it can be helpful to think of it in those terms. The agrarian philosophy is not to get people to reject progress, but rather to concentrate on the fundamental goods of the earth, communities of limited economic and political scale, and simple living--even when this involves questioning the "progressive" character of some recent social and economic developments. The name "agrarian" is properly applied to figures from Horace and Virgil through Thomas Jefferson to the Southern Agrarians[?] movement of the 1920s and 1930s (alse knows as the Vanderbilt Agrarians) and present-day authors Wendell Berry[?], Alan Carlson[?], and Victor Davis Hanson. In the 1910s and 1920s, agrarianism garnered significant popular attention, but was eclipsed in the industrial boom of the postwar period. It revived somewhat in conjunction with the 1960s environmentalist movement, and has been drawing an increasing number of adherents.

Recent agrarian thinkers are sometimes referred to as neo-Agrarian.