TY - JOUR TI - Fighting against history, nature and politics DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3R78JBG PY - 2017 AB - My dissertation looks at small-scale farmers on St. Croix U.S. Virgin Islands and their attempts to revive agriculture to mitigate fears surrounding food and financial insecurities on an island severely impacted by the 2008 U.S. economic recession. I argue that it is their determination to be self-sufficient and successful that appear to be the surest path to agriculture’s success. In re-envisioning themselves as independent business men, they have not only recast themselves from the margins of society but have revived farming using narratives of the land to create an alternate sense of their significance and adopted aspects of the US local food movement to create demand for their own locally grown food. It is a deliberate attempt at self-achievement on the one hand but also with intent to make the government realize the potential of agriculture as economically viable rather than continuing to court other industries to alleviate the islands financial issues. My dissertation will add to the recently burgeoning research¬¬ on agricultural renaissances and local food movements in the Caribbean; add ethnographic insight to the literature on stimulating local domestic agriculture in the Caribbean that currently tends to focus on production rather than on the producers; and contribute to the scholarship on neoliberal entrepreneurial self-making. KW - Anthropology KW - Sustainable agriculture--Virgin Islands KW - Farmers LA - eng ER -