To not be sorry

This dissertation investigates the racialized constitution of citizenship and moral status among differently positioned tobacco farmers and farmworkers in North Carolina. It is based on 16 months [2004-2007] of ethnographic field study in Wilson County, the country's largest and most active tobacco producing region. Challenging romantic portraits of tobacco farming as a static "way of life" found in media accounts, the popular culture, and even scholarly work, this dissertation emphasizes concrete historical and social processes that have structured tobacco farming and shaped what it means to be a tobacco farmer. While smoking is a big part of this picture, also highlighted are shifting modes of production, the changing relationship of rural North Carolinians to the state, the globalization of leaf production, the rise of Mexican and Latino migrant farm labor, and the challenges of antismoking advocacy and neoliberal reform. Much of the story centers on how 2004's "Tobacco Buyout," landmark legislation that ended the system of production restraints and generous price supports established in the New Deal, impacts the culture and economy of tobacco farming. A particular focus is the swift end of the traditional public auction system and the rise of a new system of private, one-year contracts between farmers and multinational cigarette firms. This economic transition is framed in terms of the concept of "biocapitalism," emphasizing the shared participation of multinational cigarette firms and public health groups in a model of liberal consumer rights and the privatization of product safety. This dissertation provides an ethnographic account of everyday life on today's industrial tobacco farms, including farmers' views about smoking, the cultural meanings associated with management versus manual labor, and the racialized social positioning of multiethnic employees with respect to white farmers. The dissertation's central thread is an analysis of deeply racialized, vernacular meanings of the word "sorry" (lazy or wretched). Farmers frequently and strategically call each other "sorry farmers" and pejoratively refer to workers as "sorry workers." Farmers invest in not being sorry and this discourse of "sorriness" constitutes a core aspect of tobacco farmer citizenship and moral life.