continuation

[Guest guest]

Fascinating discussion in recent days. I add further comments.

HOURLY WAGE. I believe it is more common, at least in the journal

literature, to characterize farmwork by annual income, for reasons

described by Alice Larson, Palandati and Hedgren. Caution is

warranted for annual estimates that are unclear on place(s) and duration of

past experience(s) of those in the sample and how this variability may

affect extremes in the range of incomes that produce an estimated annual

income.

There are several ways to consider how farmwork earnings affect way of

life. One is a tactic I've heard labor organizers use: pay per bin, box or

bucket is compared against same pay per unit ten or twenty years ago.

Change in pay is slow to take place where efforts to improve have not been

intense.

LIFE EXPECTANCY. Farmwork is indeed an occupation. For many / some / a

few, farmwork also is a work experience that may occur one or more times

during the course of life. How long does one have to work or have worked in

agriculture to qualify as a farmworker, and to affect, by standards of

research, one's longevity? Conversely, how much work experience outside

farmwork overrides placing one in the category of farmworker but does not

override the effect of farmwork on longevity?

IF first public use of farmworker life expectancy at age 49 was the 1960

airing of " Harvest of Shame " (thanks Greg), neither the pre-broadcast

context of the number 49, nor its post-broadcast popularization for more

than two decades, appears unusual. Estimate of Global Life Expectancy

reached 49 by 1960. U.S. life expectancy estimate more or less reached 49

at the turn of the century (1899--1900) as it continued to increase in the

1900s. Given the theme of lag in progress, introductory references in

" Harvest " liken then-contemporary U.S. farmwork to two Third World places,

followed by scattered reminders to viewer's assumed agrarian past (notably

the quote, " We no longer own slaves, we rent them " ). " Harvest " was

broadcast during a time in which, and through a medium (TV) by which,

numbers and statistics became embedded deeper in American culture (e.g., " 9

out of 10 " as testimonial; concept of ratings). Comparing life expectancy

has been a common technique to distinguish ways of life, especially the

world's poor with wealthy nations (U.S. included). Given the mysterious

attraction held by a cipher ending in nine (consider the sales ploy of

pricing merchandise), and given that " 49 " is the last number before moving

into the second half of 100 (i.e., 50s, 60s, then 70s, as the age to which

modern peoples could expect to live), 49 can be viewed as a maneuver (among

several used in " Harvest " ) to emphasize the point that farmworkers were

unjustly outside the advantages and protections of modern America. It was

no coincidence the medium for constructing and publicizing this message was

TV or that Harvest was broadcast on Thanksgiving Day.

Several discussants over the past week make a good case for retiring the

mythic 49. We should hope, as researchers, that we have not unwittingly

adopted the analytic research technique of replacing a missing value with a

" universal mean, " that originally may have been a journalistic gambit...

V Bletzer. Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Department of

Anthropology, Arizona State University.