Pondering the relevance of New Materialism for agricultural history has been a bit like returning to a familiar childhood home only to find it newly remodeled. Is New Materialism simply wall-papering over existing grooves and contours of agricultural histories? Does it rewire and electrify our inquiries about the past? Does New Materialism simply add a new room onto an older structure? Or does it fundamentally alter the structures through which historians engage the subjects (and objects) of agricultural pasts?
New materialists often launch their case by describing a scholarly world inattentive or ignorant of material forces. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost open their book New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics by discussing the impact of microorganisms and material artifacts on daily life with the comment: “For the most part we take such materiality for granted, or we assume there is little of interest to say about it.”1 Jane...
