The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics

Chapter 5: Farming as a Focal Practice

Chapter 5 Farming as a Focal Practice Albert Borgmann developed the ideas of focal things and focal practices in the final stages of his inquiry into the failed promise of technology. His book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life is a philosophical study of why life in modern society has become so disjointed, frenetic, and unsatisfying, despite the hope of previous generations that science and technology would free humanity for more satisfying and ennobling pursuits. Focal things and focal practices encompass a broad array of objects and activities that give meaning to people’s lives. They are capable of addressing the failure of technology because they unify and harmonize fragmented experiences into a more satisfying whole. They do this because they overcome technology’s tendency to overwhelm us with consumable commodities, goods whose sheer commodiousness undercuts the ends to which consumption is intended to be a means. Writing before the fall of the Soviet Union, Borgmann stressed the point that fragmentation is not solely a product of capitalism. Citizens of socialist and capitalist societies alike feel trapped in an order of life dictated by the terms of technological production, distribution, and consumption. A careful and philosophically informed appreciation of focal things can, Borgmann thinks, end this entrapment. Only then can technology truly serve the ends worthy of human lives. Borgmann’s analysis of focal things originated in reference to technology , but it also applies to land. The deeper philosophical meaning of agrarian ideals can be articulated when farming and what Borgmann calls “the culture of the table” are understood as focal practices, as established habits of living that impart broader meaning and purpose to people’s lives. This is not to say, of course, that everyone should farm. As in previous chapters, we must understand agrarian ideals partially 112 The Agrarian Vision as symbols or narratives that provide guidance for sustainability. So it is partially in the contemplation of farming that the notion of focal practice is fulfilled. But it is also true that everyday habits and practices matter a great deal. This is where Borgmann’s culture of the table, introduced in his book Real American Ethics, complements the contemplation of farming and completes sustainability as a set of practices in which everyone can actually engage. This is also how popular social movements associated with eating locally and organically grown food or shopping at farmers ’ markets can be integrated with agrarian ideals. The notion of focal practice is thus central to the entire argument of this book. Focal Practice and the Commodification of Life Borgmann tells us that “a focal practice, generally, is the resolute and singular dedication to a focal thing. It sponsors discipline and skill which are exercised in a unity of achievement and enjoyment of mind, body, and the world, of myself and others, and in social union.”1 Borgmann develops the idea of focal things in contrast to commodities, and he sees the failure of technology consisting in the commodification of focal things. The terms commodification and commoditization have been used widely, broadly, and interchangeably in social theory for a long time. They often convey a vague sense of disapproval with very little exposition of what commodification is, the mechanisms by which it is alleged to occur, or the rationale for regarding it as a bad thing. In some cases, the term refers to the way goods once reserved for exchange through gift or patronage come to be bought and sold on markets. Or it may be a pejorative reference to things that an author thinks should never be bought and sold: human affection, bodily organs, and sexual favors come readily to mind. Human capabilities such as skills, labor itself, or, more recently, courteous or friendly behavior (referred to as “emotional labor”) can become more or less valued and traded through market relations. As Borgmann notes, economists who see the expansion of market relations as a good thing hardly ever use this term. In Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, the theme of commodification is introduced as a function of the device paradigm, another of Borgmann’s wonderfully evocative conceptual inventions. As an example of the device paradigm, Borgmann contrasts the hearth with the modern central heating system. Both technologies provide warmth to an interior space, but the hearth does so in a manner that centers and Farming as a Focal Practice 113 directs a wide variety of materials and social...