Never Seen So Much Hair in Your Life

Abstract

The third of three chapters exploring the history of homesteading, this chapter analyzes the counterculture back-to-the-land movement in the area around Berea, Kentucky. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter illustrates that this is a major social movement, far more enduring and robust than stereotypes of “hippie” back-to-the-landers would suggest. The chapter shows that participants represent a multistranded left with diverse backgrounds, including a high proportion who are from rural Appalachia; that they take subsistence production seriously; and that homesteading represents a specific, “prefigurative” form of social activism. The chapter also explores the complex relationship between counterculture homesteaders and their rural neighbors, and argues the former are unified as a group by high levels of literacy and educational attainment; they represent, in effect, a rural intelligentsia.