Nahrung und Nachbarschaft im Hudson Valley, New York 1780–1860

The local food economy in the Hudson Valley between the late 18th and the mid-19th century uncovers the mythical character of the North-American self-understanding rooted in natural abundance and resulting in entrepreneurial individualism and hasty activity (“time is money”). Experience taught the rural population that theirs was not a world of unlimited opportunities, that nature would every so often frustrate human efforts. They developed communal strategies to achieve food security. The circulation of food and work constructed and integrated the neighbourhood as strangers found themselves excluded from such networks. Ritual expenditures for meals proved necessary because the cooperative spirit between neighbours had its limits

Agriculture · Archaeology · Ethnology · Food security · Geography · Individualism · Political science · Population · Sociology · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · Demography · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law