Tobacco farms, once an icon of American history, are disappearing from the landscape. For the Kentucky tobacco growers who are the focus of this study, tobacco farming is a livelihood that involves a mastery of traditional skills passed through generations and adapted to changing circumstances—technological, economic, social, and political. In this project, I examine the consequences of the changing status of tobacco and the category “tobacco farmer,” both of which have become stigmatized because of the health effects of tobacco use.
This dissertation examines the current period of transition for Kentucky burley production and the implications for tobacco farmers of the changing contexts of this traditional occupation, often described as “a way of life.” The project is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Central Kentucky, supplemented by the collection of public discourses from multiple sites about tobacco production past and present. It brings folklore research and theory together with historical and archival research, economic data, and rhetorical analysis. In addition to a metahistory of tobacco production in the U.S. and Kentucky, and a fieldwork-based description of the 2007 crop-year, this dissertation examines the movement of the social and occupational category “tobacco farmer” from respect to stigma, and considers the repercussions of this movement on central folkloristic concepts, heritage and tradition.
I argue that institutional heritage discourses ushered tobacco into the past and contributed to the spread of the stigma from the industry to farmers, while expressions of vernacular heritage resist these results and argue “we’re still here.” A major focus of this dissertation is the gendered meanings of tobacco production. Men have had the primary multi-generational relationship with tobacco as a crop, a craft, and a source of occupational identity, through the traditionalized performance of the masculine identity of the tobacco man, which involves the mastery of particular knowledge and skills. It is men who are most (although not exclusively) involved in continuing the tradition. While women have always played important roles in the production of tobacco, as tobacco farming wanes, it is women who are often leading the way in efforts to move to alternative crops, expanding upon their traditional practices of selling farm products in order to supplement family income. “Diversification” discourses currently being deployed in Kentucky ignore both the confluence of economic and symbolic challenges that tobacco growers face when asked to “replace” tobacco, and the roles that women are playing in successful diversification efforts.