“Domesticated Outlaws”: Indigenous Species and Monocultural Capitalism in the American South Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

In tracing the habitat losses and decreased biodiversity caused by cotton and other monocultures throughout the southern U.S., this dissertation turns to the fringes of ecologically disturbed agrarian landscapes where native plants and animals that Euro-Americans designated as “weeds” and “pests” survived and sometimes thrived amid the devastation of settler colonialism and extractive capitalism. By shifting the perspective away from dominant cash crops to these “domesticated outlaws”—a term borrowed from sociologist Rupert Vance—I reveal the ways in which a diverse array of human practices supported a few marginalized species. I provide historical-geographical narratives of three organisms: pokeweed (Phytolacca americana)—an herbaceous perennial growing along fences and clearings whose young leaves can be boiled with pork to make “poke sallet;” muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia)—a grapevine that grows along forest edges and in open woods whose large, thick-skinned, distinctively sweet berries can be used to make dumplings, juices, jellies, and wines; and opossum (Didelphis virginiana)—an omnivorous scavenger thriving in farmlands, woodlots, and swamps whose meat was typically roasted with sweet potatoes and consumed with persimmon beer. My dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach by combining food studies with environmental, cultural, and political history. Drawing largely upon nineteenth- and twentieth-century newspapers, I examine nostalgic discussions of foods typically omitted from agricultural journals. I also use these sources to reveal some of the hidden economies of “unimproved” agricultural lands that provided supplementary food for both people and the wildlife they hunted. I show how pokeweed, muscadine, and opossum were important, initially in human survival, through foraging and diversifying diets, and later in pursuing economic gain through capitalist production. These histories offer insights into the politics of social relations and economics, especially during times marked by economic depressions, anxieties over industrialization, displacement, urbanization, white terror, and the disenfranchisement of Black citizens. Though at times strategically claimed by the affluent and socially influential, these foods provide glimpses into everyday agrarian and working-class lives of daily necessity. They also provide an understanding of the emergence of the sectional “South” from the Civil War and the reunion of white power in state and national body politics. 

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Pokeweed Knowledge: Of Waste Places, Fence Corners, and Turning Rows

Chapter 2: Among the Muscadines and Scuppernongs

Chapter 3: “The Emblem of North American Fraternity”: Opossums and Jim Crow Politics

Conclusion

Bibliography

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	History
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	History, United States
Palavra-chave	south foodways politics environment agriculture
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Allen E. Tullos, Emory University
Committee Members	Peggy Barlett, Emory University Thomas D. Rogers, Emory University Joseph Crespino, Emory University

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