Sociology Unearthed #13: Mammoths, Glaciers

There are mammoth bones under the Iowa farms. We know this because they have been found. Last December, a farmland auction in Muscatine County received some local media attention after sellers revealed that they had once discovered a mammoth femur by a creek after flooding. According to that article, “Archeologists confirmed the discovery, yet refrained from further excavation given the commonality of mammoth remains in the region.” Mammoths are just one of many Pleistocene mammals whose remains have been unearthed in Iowa, including saber-tooth cats, mastodons, 8 ½ ft. long American cheetahs, dire wolves, and giant ground sloths. The result of paleontology going back more than a century, “over a million specimens” are now held at the University of Iowa Paleontology Repository.

I wonder: is Iowa culture at all shaped by the knowledge that there are mammoth bones under the Iowa farms? What does it mean for a society to know this? How might it change behavior, reasoning, values, or other social factors? If I am cooking in a kitchen, I won’t often actively remember that there is a fire extinguisher tucked out of sight under the sink, but it does make me less afraid of a stovetop fire. Children can’t really see or hear monsters under the bed, but they can still lose sleep when haunted by them. When the ancient bones of lost megafauna shake themselves loose from the Iowa soil, what impact is had on Iowa culture?

Replica woolly mammoth at the Mahaska County Conservation Board’s Environmental Learning Center, Oskaloosa, IA, March 2024

I have a thought. It’s not a theory, not even a hypothesis, just a thought. Are mammoth bones one of a handful of factors that contribute to Iowa culture being more concerned with glaciation, “Ice Ages”, and the idea of dramatic, cyclical climatic change? It’s anecdotal, but interviewing farmers around Iowa, one thing that has been remarkable to me is the frequency with which long-melted continental glaciers are raised in conversation, particularly regarding climate change.

Of course, we know that understanding both the shape of the Iowa’s regional landscapes and its soil composition requires recognition of “glacial activity,” ~2 million years of ice episodically advancing and melting that most recently occurred 12,000 – 14,000 years ago and ultimately formed the Des Moines Lobe among other foundations of Iowa. To reckon with the geological scales on which the term “glacial dynamics” makes sense is boggling and humbling. Yet, it’s essential knowledge. Iowa was made by ice.

There is a decent bit of social scientific research on the cultural significance of glaciers. The Iowa ice may be long melted, but elsewhere, rapid glacial retreat alongside the Earth’s warmest recorded annual temperatures raises alarm about the transformation of landscape and therefore the transformation of local culture. Allison (2015) writes, “the loss of glaciers represents not only a loss of water and livelihoods, but also a rupture in the social and moral fabric of society. […] such changes can have profoundly dislocating and long-lasting negative effects.” (p. 502). As Carey et al. (2016) simply put it, “Ice is not just ice” (p. 787).

It’s estimated that humans followed the retreating glaciers into Iowa about 11,000 years ago, and it’s thought that these populations were sustained by mammoth hunting. In other words, for thousands of years, Iowa was home to people for whom mammoths and glaciers would have been among the foremost objects of cultural significance. That cultural significance, constructed over the same timescale, still exists for many cultures for whom local ice is now threatened with disappearance. Consider for example that the ice atop the western summit of Kilimanjaro is known as the “house of god” (Allison 2015) or that the agricultural practices of Peru have long relied on the ice atop the Andes mountain range. You might imagine the cultural sorrow and alarm at rapid change to these systems, especially if that change is understood to be anthropogenic.

Spring Beauties in an Iowa wood, March 2024

 “Ice is not just ice.” Melting is not just melting. So, Iowa mammoth bones are not just mammoth bones…? Maybe it’s a stretch, but I do wonder if the Iowa of melting ice and woolly mammoths that geology and paleontology gives us a window into doesn’t provide a context in which climatic change seems normal, inevitable, cyclical, even passively benevolent. Again, it’s anecdotal, but much (not all) of what I’m hearing from farmers so far in Iowa about climate change isn’t sorrow or alarm. It’s sort of wistful and resigned, like a headshaking shrug.

If (1) there are patterns in cultural responses to exogenous forces like climate change and (2) these patterns are directly or indirectly informed by the historical and environmental conditions from which a culture emerges, then just as we should expect communities living under retreating glaciers to express a contextually rational alarm, we might also expect communities living where transformative past climatic change appears to resemble current climatic change to express a contextually rational unworried knowingness. Do the ghosts of Iowa’s ancient mammoths subtextually impose themselves? Do they collectively murmur something inaudible yet nevertheless evocative about the impermanence of the Holocene and the inevitability of a return to ice? And does this evocation, in however small a way, shape contemporary Iowa discourse about climate change?

-Jon Dahlem

References

Allison, Elizabeth A. “The spiritual significance of glaciers in an age of climate change.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 6.5 (2015): 493-508.

Carey, Mark, et al. “Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research.” Progress in Human Geography 40.6 (2016): 770-793.

New Podcast Connects Nature, Culture and Wonder

Curious Planet is a new podcast produced and hosted by Jacqueline Comito. In the first season of seven episodes, Curious Planet explores connections between us and nature through stories, emotions, a sense of place and our desire to belong – melding history, personal experiences and the words of others to ignite interest and wonderment in how anyone might be invigorated to heal and protect the earth.

Curious Planet offers a chance to imagine, learn and seek inspiration and question our understanding and knowledge about and through nature. The first season is now live at www.curiousplanetpodcast.com, with links to listen on many popular streaming platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora and iHeartRadio.

Comito draws on her personal quiver of skills as an anthropologist, artist, writer and accidental environmentalist to tell stories which illustrate concepts that have been formulated, gathered, discussed and percolated through decades of conversations, observations and interactions with children and adults, farmers and urban dwellers, politicians, researchers and educators.

Asking questions and seeking perspective from Jane Goodall’s earthshaking discoveries about apes to her own adventures in urban and rural Iowa, Hawaii, Ireland and beyond, Comito weaves together thought-provoking commentary that illuminates and inspires.

Reflecting on the creation and purpose of Curious Planet, she said, “This podcast is all about asking questions, inviting listeners to consider their own stories, their own questions and their own experiences in nature as we try to find a way forward to heal the Earth amidst a changing climate. Curiosity is our guide and hope is our language.”

Take a break and spend some time wandering, wondering and feeding your curiosity about our planet. I think you will find it to be a worthwhile trip.

–Ann Staudt

Sociology Unearthed #12: Getting into Ethnomycology

Within Osage’s Milton R. Owen Nature Center, among educational displays and taxidermized local wildlife, is a sizable chunk of illustrated Artist’s Conk (Ganoderma applanatum). It’s a perennial fungus found across North America, and if you find one in the wild, it might be worth stooping to check its underside for hidden messages, as it famously can be readily drawn into with any pencil-like tool. Alternatively, the fungus can be harvested and the art made more permanent by drying and/or finishing. It’s an artifact that starkly demonstrates something often obscured: the relationship between local human culture and local fungi. The systematic examination of this relationship has been the focus of decades of research in ethnomycology, “the study of fungi in folklore, fiction and rituals from prehistoric times to the modern era” (Singh 1999).

Artist’s Conk, donated to the Milton R. Owen Nature Center by the artist David Lacour (Photo: Jon Dahlem, 2024)

I am only recently getting into ethnomycology, but I hope that I might use this blog to improvise a bridge behind for anyone who wants to join me. The thing is, while the roots (or perhaps mycelia?) of ethnomycology trace primarily to popular books by R. Gordon Wasson such as Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1968), most everything produced in the name of the discipline has been written since the late 1990’s. In other words, most of us are only recently getting into ethnomycology.

That knowledge gap is non-randomly occurring. Ethnomycologists use a simple conceptual framework to categorize human cultures as mycophilic (liking/using fungi) or mycophobic (avoiding/fearing fungi). American culture has tended to be mycophobic, evidenced by historical depictions of fungi in art and media, the unpopularity of mushroom foraging here compared with continental Europe and elsewhere, and the 1970 legal classification of the psychoactive psylocibin and psilocin as Schedule I drugs. Even in mycophilic cultures, knowledge about fungi is often maintained through informal practical channels kept especially by women who forage them for food and medicine, creating a common gendered stratification of knowledge that has further contributed to the invisibility of mycology in the mainstream (Garibay-Orijel et al. 2012).

As further evidenced by the recency of the scientific description of many fungi species, the systematic cultural avoidance of the biological kingdom of fungi has impacted the scientific production of mycological knowledge. In response, ethnomycology sends natural scientists and social scientists alike on anthropological excursions to inventory the ways in which fungi are integrated into human culture and society across the planet, seeking what has been forcibly forgotten. While there are certainly postcolonial overtones to this variety of Western-university-as-ivory-tower knowledge collection, ethnomycology also explicitly engages in the task of listening to and learning from indigenous groups. It is in many ways a collective effort to reclaim information and practices that have been historically ignored and subjugated as superstition, now understood to be wisdom rendered through generations, carrying practical applications for the advancement of agriculture, medicine, nutrition, and more.

One reason why ethnomycology is important is that fungi, and not just the psychoactive kind, seem to have the power to topple paradigms. As mycological knowledge hit the mainstream, a whole new lexicon emerged to describe the ways in which ecosystems, and particularly plants, were understood to function, especially to behave. The scientific literature on fungi is full of verbs affording exciting agency to non-animal life. Far beyond mere parasites, fungi help plants to “speak” to one another and to themselves through mycorrhizal networks, mutualistic symbiotic relationships that can be traced back at least 400 million years in the fossil record (Rhodes 2017). Fungi also seem to pop in and out of existence unpredictably as if to betray a tenuous confinement to linear time. They can carry intrinsic medicinal, nutritional, and, yes, psychoactive properties. There is even research suggesting that mushroom spores have the power to make it rain. In other words, fungi seem magical, which is about as loud an invitation for an evolution in scientific thought as the natural world can pronounce.

If you’re wading in, I suggest Washington State University scholar Frank M. Dugan’s Conspectus of World Ethnomycology: Fungi in Ceremonies, Crafts, Diets, Medicines, and Myths. It’s an academic text, but it’s ~100 pages, full of color photos, written in a personable and frank tone, and agreeably tours ethnomycology by world region. Dugan also reflects candidly on the state of the discipline, arguing that ethnomycology suffers a bit from a “founder effect,” exhibiting a heightened collective attention on the psychoactive properties of fungi, as well as the oft depicted (should we say charismatic?) red-and-white Amanita muscaria mushroom. In addition, all ethnomycological studies published in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine are freely accessible online, and the articles tend to produce charts and lists of practical use. You can, for example, easily use the journal to compare what is known about various cultures’ folk uses for various species of fungi.

Cover of Conspectus of World Ethnomycology (2013) by Frank M. Dugan

I think one can probably understand Iowa agriculture to exhibit these broader trends in mycological cultural significance and knowledge production. Anecdotally and understandably, I have observed that most mentions of fungi in Iowa agricultural spaces tend to describe them as agents of plant disease. However, research and discourse in sustainable agriculture poses a far more open-ended question about mycology. Fungi are now used to promote plant growth, increase plant disease defense, and improve salinity and drought tolerance, among other benefits. A practical resource on this topic is Agriculturally Important Fungi for Sustainable Agriculture (2020), edited by Ajar Nath Yadav, Shashank Mishra, Divjot Kour, Neelam Yadav, and Anil Kumar.

The time of scientific inquiry into agricultural uses of fungi appears to be right now, but because we’ve spent hundreds of years fearing and avoiding molds, toadstools, mildews, and slimes, the assembly of that knowledge will have to rely on anthropological consultation with mycophiles, who are often women and/or indigenous groups from rural areas. Moreover, to “understand” fungi means developing a conception of ecology that affords agency to non-animal life and embraces, rather than fears, mycological magic.

-Jon Dahlem

References

Dugan, F. M. 2011. Conspectus of world ethnomycology: fungi in ceremonies, crafts, diets, medicines, and myths. APS Press.

Garibay-Orijel, R., Ramírez-Terrazo, A., & Ordaz-Velázquez, M. 2012. “Women care about local knowledge, experiences from ethnomycology.” Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine, 8(1), 1-13.

Hassett, M. O., Fischer, M. W., & Money, N. P. 2015. “Mushrooms as rainmakers: how spores act as nuclei for raindrops.” PloS one, 10(10), e0140407.

Rhodes, C. J. 2017. “The whispering world of plants:‘The wood wide web’”. Science Progress, 100(3), 331-337.

Singh, J. 1999. “Ethnomycology and folk remedies: Fact and fiction.” Pgs. 11-17 in: From Ethnomycology to Fungal Biotechnology: Exploiting Fungi from Natural Resources for Novel Products. J. Singh and K.R. Aneja, eds. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York.

Yadav, A. N., Mishra, S., Kour, D., Yadav, N., & Kumar, A. (Eds.). (2020). Agriculturally important fungi for sustainable agriculture. Cham: Springer.

Sociology Unearthed #9: Sarah Gillespie Huftalen

Recently, I am looking to the past, trying to better understand which experiences faced by Iowa farmers are new, which are old, and which are shared across time. It’s often been pointed out by sociologists that social institutions can be slow to change, persisting over generations. To investigate this, I researched publicly available diaries, which can be a valuable source of sociological data, though one that carries the uncanny sensation of delving into a human experience somehow both remarkably similar to and different from one’s own. As Irish author Elizabeth Bowen once cryptically wrote, “Everything one unburies seems the same age.”

“Tues. June 16^th [1942]  A week gone,— too busy to keep tab. hoeing garden yesterday & some before. Hoed the raspberry & strawberry rows; peas, 2 rows, 35 melon hills & far out over all ground, yesterday. Today hoed corn, 5 rows, 4 rows potatoes, Swiss chard, Salsify, beets, lettuce, etc., a big hard job. Have to weed each row by hand; mostly grass in the rows. Have mended some & made nightgown & usual house duties. I am very tired & back aches hard tonight…” – From the diaries of Sarah Gillespie Huftalen, as collected in “All Will Yet Be Well”: The Diary of Sarah Gillespie Huftalen, 1873-1952 edited by Suzanne L. Bunkers.

The cover of ‘All Will Yet Be Well‘, featuring a photograph of Sarah Gillespie Huftalen

Published by University of Iowa Press, Suzanne L. Bunkers’ curated diary of Sarah Gillespie Huftalen is a kind of time capsule written by an Iowa teacher who was raised on and returned to a farm in Manchester, Iowa. Sarah was born in 1865, a few months after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and died in 1955, having lived through both world wars and countless other earthshaking events. While history is recorded in passing, Sarah’s diary is mostly concerned with the details of her life on an Iowa farm: snow, rain, mud, chores, food, injuries, gifts, and memorable interpersonal encounters.

All Will Yet Be Well is nothing less than the real diary of a woman. Sarah begins writing as a girl, recording a slow reckoning with her father’s addiction and abuse. In young adulthood, she pursues a career in education while caring for her ailing mother. In her late twenties, Sarah marries a husband in his late 60’s. A widow twenty years later, she becomes caretaker to her brother, and in a variety of ways, he and her father use law and cultural customs to force upon her a thankless, laborious domesticity. Once, she calls herself a “serf,” and another time, compares her life to the Jim Crow south.

Sarah’s diary is also full of private moments, including copied letters, guest entries snuck by her mother, and Sarah’s original poetry, which is fantastic. On her 25^th birthday, two years before marrying, she writes:

1/4 of a Century.

1/3 of a Life.

Happy & content

& Nobody’s wife. S. G.

As described by Bunkers, Sarah’s poems were once assembled in a collection called “Poems of the Prairie,” which includes the following poem, Memories:

When I think of the year agone

And trace the sunny side,

The dearest thoughts that come to me;

That lend the sweetest charm,

Are those that hallow my memory

Of the dear old days at the farm.

And oft in fancy I wander

To the place where I was born;

The wood, the orchard and the meadow,

And fields of tasseling corn;

Just a lowly home by the wayside

That to youth could give no harm;

So my heart goes back without divide

To the dear old days at the farm.

Bunkers writes: “Given Sarah’s detailed description of discord and discontent on the farm, what accounts for the sanitized and romanticized vision of farm life in ‘Memories’?”[…] Sarah was like many women coming of age in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American life. Economics dictated that she earn a living throughout her life; at the same time, she intensely needed to feel that she had done her duty as a daughter, wife, and sister […].”

The essential tension between Sarah the Teacher and Sarah the Daughter does not resolve over her life course as it might if Sarah were a character in a story. Instead, she dedicates her life to caring for her mother, father, husband, and brother, while also teaching and working as an advocate of the suffrage and temperance movements, simultaneously holding the family together and lifting herself up against the constraints of 19^th century gender inequality. Perhaps one lesson is in the variability and unreliability of first-hand accounts. If one read only Sarah’s poems, one might miss the realities of her condition. If one read only her diary, one might miss the expression of a deep connection with the natural environment built through a life on an Iowa farm.

Sarah Gillespie Huftalen is honored among other women of Iowa history at Iowa State University’s Plaza of Heroines outside Carrie Chapman Catt Hall.

January ice on Sarah Gillespie Huftalen’s marker in ISU’s Plaza of Heroines

-Jon Dahlem

Iowa Farms Changing Through the Generations

Dr. Matt Helmers, Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, grew up in Osceola County where his family has been farming for over 100 years. A lot has changed in this time including cropping rotation, equipment, and fertilizer application. Tune into the most recent ILF webinar, Impact of 100 Years of Agricultural Practice Changes on Sediment and Nutrient Loss from One Farm in Osceola County, IA, to see the history, find out progress that has been made, and Dr. Helmers’ recommendations for further progress.

Images from the family farm in 1923, 1958, and the 1980s.

Land use in the 1930s in Osceola County was a diverse cropping system with row crops, small grains, pasture, and hay. Today, over 80% of the land is used in a corn-soybean rotation. In the 1950s-70s tillage increased with the field cultivator and chisel plow, but now most of the county uses conservation tillage (30% of residue is left on the field). These changes have resulted in sediment loss increases and then decreases.

The area is seeing higher amounts of precipitation, especially in the spring with an average 3-inch increase, a yearly 4 to 5-inch increase. This in turn has resulted in the need for more drainage. As a result, runoff amounts have increased.  Nitrate-N losses and concentration have also increased in the past 100 years.

There are solutions (shown in image above) and I encourage you all to tune into the webinar to hear Dr. Helmers explain them more in depth and to keep listening during the Q & A. Tune in to any previous webinars found in our archives.

–Alena Whitaker

100 Years of Farming: Sediment and Nutrient Loss Impacts

Please join us for the Iowa Learning Farms webinar at noon CST, Wednesday, Nov. 22, featuring Matt Helmers, professor and extension agricultural engineer, Iowa State University.  Helmers conducts research and extension outreach programs concerning nutrient management, cropping practices, drainage design and management, and strategic placement of buffer systems to reduce nutrient export from agricultural landscapes.

Matt Helmers (lower right), his father (upper right), and grandfather on the family farm near Sibley, Iowa.

In the webinar, “Impact of 100 Years of Agricultural Practice Changes on Sediment and Nutrient Loss from One Farm in Osceola County, Iowa,” Helmers will discuss various land management approaches utilized on his family’s farm during the past century. He will draw insights from his experiences to provide an overview of the evolution of farming practices over time and examine some of the potential impacts of different practices on sediment and nutrient losses.

“Looking at the ways in which farmers utilize the land and how land management practices have changed over the last 100 years provides an excellent opportunity to increase understanding of how these practices have impacted sediment and nutrient loss,” said Helmers. “Over time, the outcomes of adopted practices were not always predictable or entirely beneficial. It may surprise some people that while some practices may have reduced sediment loss, they also increased nitrate losses. Taking the good with the bad, seeing impacts over a 100-year span provides an excellent backdrop for learning and discussion.”

Webinar participants are encouraged to ask questions of the presenters. People from all backgrounds and areas of interest are encouraged to join.

Webinar Access Instructions

To participate in the live webinar, shortly before noon CST Nov. 22:

Click this URL, or type this web address into your internet browser: https://iastate.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xtAwWXycQZW8iwtNLz34GA#/registration

Or, go to https://iastate.zoom.us/join and enter webinar ID: 999 3709 5398

Or join from a dial-in phone line:

Dial: +1 646 876 9923

Meeting ID: 999 3709 5398

The webinar will also be recorded and archived on the ILF website, so that it can be watched at any time. Archived webinars are available at https://www.iowalearningfarms.org/webinars For a list of upcoming webinars visit https://www.iowalearningfarms.org/events-1

A Certified Crop Adviser board-approved continuing education unit (CEU) has been applied for. Those who participate in the live webinar are eligible. Information about how to apply to receive the credit will be provided at the end of the live webinar.

Sociology Unearthed #5: Turnover in Conservation Work

In autumn in Iowa, much as the fields are suddenly harvested, the ginkgo turns its leaves golden yellow, then over the course of a day scars over between each leaf and stem, dropping color and becoming bare. Ginkgoes are East Asian trees, the last species of an order that emerged 290 million years ago and one of the oldest known species of tree. Adaptable, cold-hardy, pest- and drought-resistant, and scattered decoratively across Iowa, they are things wandering out of time and place yet nevertheless thriving.

Although, from a cultural standpoint, I suppose ginkgoes in Iowa could be thriving more. After dropping leaves and berries, the female trees emit a foul odor, an anachronistic dinner bell for prehistoric creatures and a nuisance for modern city dwellers. In Ames, where ginkgoes grow downtown, an attempt to turn negative public perception of the trees positive once resulted in an annual summer Ginkgo Festival that ran for five years in the mid-90’s. The festival, which featured a mascot named “Ginkosaurus,” failed to take root.

1996 Ginkgo Festival Advertisement (Source: http://www.AmesHistory.org)

The concepts of context-based fitness, adaptability, hardiness, etc., are of core interest to those who study and care for plants. I’d like to suggest that this idea is at least metaphorically analogous to a critical component of conservation social science: turnover in conservation work. It’s not a glamorous topic, but turnover is a common concern of conservation organizations, who often see it as an obstacle to conservation goals. Other institutions, such as education and health care, have for decades been investigating turnover as a social problem. Indeed, the building of long-term, trusting relationships between caregivers and patients is associated with positive outcomes in general medical care, elder care, and addiction counseling, so obstacles to maintaining those relationships are essentially a public health concern. The same seems to be true of conservation work, especially when operating in places like Iowa where the building of lasting relationships with farmers and landowners is critical to mutual success.

Here is a rapid, non-exhaustive rundown of sociological findings about turnover: Work conditions, environmental conditions, and employee characteristics can be associated with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intent to stay. These variables are also affected by the emotional exhaustion inherent to the type of labor, as well as to coworker support and the presence or absence of strong ties in the workplace. Likelihood of remaining is also linked to group cohesion, task identity, training procedures, perception of employment opportunity structure, and distributive justice. While youth and education are often valued by employers, they are characteristics also associated with employee mobility, leading to a contradictory state in which valued individuals are more likely to move on.

If turnover is a problem, what are the solutions? Better pay is one. More elaborate on-job training, clear evaluation terms, close mentorship, support in reaching goals including those outside of work, and coworker support may increase job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intent to stay. In the 1970’s, American sociologists (and corporations) sought to understand the substantially lower rates of employee turnover in Japan. The collective findings are a bit confusing, but the general gist is that contrary to the idea that Japanese workers are more committed for strictly cultural reasons, Japan simply tends to offer more long-term, incremental, clearly established rewards for longevity.

Ginkgo in Ames, IA (Photo: Liz Dahlem)

As the number of Americans in conservation-based careers continues to grow, turnover is likely to persist as a social problem intimately linked to conservation outcomes, especially in places such as Iowa, where the longevity of relationships is vital to collaboration. The problem is currently exacerbated by a combination of unpaid or low-wage early-career positions and a highly competitive job market, which largely functions to reward those who can rely on external financial security through their early career while forcing those less secure to pivot away. Much of the American institution of conservation is currently set up to encourage turnover as a feature, not to prevent it as a bug.

Biologically, ginkgoes may be able to take root in Iowa, but culturally, at least in Ames, ginkgoes seem to have met local limits to thriving. However, those limits, like most social factors, can be altered. With clear annual goals, material benefits to the community and trees alike, and a codified institutional effort, we could not only have ginkgoes in Iowa, we could have Ginkosaurus.

-Jon Dahlem

Additional References:

Ames History Museum. (2023). Ginkgo Festival. Retrieved from: https://ameshistory.org/content/ginkgo-festival

Ducharme, L. J., Knudsen, H. K., & Roman, P. M. (2007). Emotional Exhaustion and Turnover Intention in Human Service Occupations: The Protective Role of Coworker Support. Sociological Spectrum, 28(1), 81-104.

Hobbs, M., Klachky, E., & Cooper, M. (2020). Job Satisfaction Assessments of Agricultural Workers Help Employers Improve the Work Environment and Reduce Turnover. California Agriculture, 74(1), 30-39.

Ingersoll, R. M. (2001). Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages: An Organizational Analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 38(3), 499-534.

Marsh, R. M., & Mannari, H. (1977). Organizational Commitment and Turnover: A Prediction Study. Administrative Science Quarterly, 57-75.

Ruhe, M., Gotler, R. S., Goodwin, M. A., & Stange, K. C. (2004). Physician and Staff Turnover in Community Primary Care Practice. The Journal of Ambulatory Care Management, 27(3), 242-248.

Taylor, C., & Pillemer, K. (2009). Using Affect to Understand Employee Turnover: A Context-Specific Application of a Theory of Social Exchange. Sociological Perspectives, 52(4), 481-504. https://doi.org/10.1525/sop.2009.52.4.481

Sociology Unearthed #3: If They Say It’s MAA-drid, It’s MAA-drid

When you’re new to Iowa, you are almost guaranteed to mispronounce a local town. The correct pronunciations can defy expectations: Madrid is “MAA-drid,” Nevada is “neh-VAY-duh,” Tripoli is “trih-POE-luh,” Buena Vista is “BYOO-nah VIH-stuh,” and Des Moines is somehow pronounced in neither English nor French. Iowa Public Radio has a 100-entry audio guide on how to pronounce Iowa places! Driving around the state, I’ve been thinking about these unexpected town names, and I wonder if they don’t hold a small sociological lesson about the value of setting aside outsider expectations and listening to locals about their own communities. If they say it’s MAA-drid, then it’s MAA-drid… right?

It’s not that Iowa is alone. New England’s blend of warped indigenous American and European place-naming results in town pronunciations almost totally divorced from their spelling (for example, Worcester, MA is famously pronounced “wuss-ter”). The common pronunciations of California’s Spanish place names defy the expectations of both non-Spanish speakers and native Spanish speakers alike. Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania all contain their own locally famous versions of towns with familiar names and unfamiliar pronunciations—places with one spelling and two names: one for insiders, one for outsiders.

Missouri is an interesting example. “Missourah” is the historical original, yet the outsider pronunciation of “Missouree” became popular enough through the 1900’s that it became taught as correct, leading to a divide by which urban and educated Missourians were more likely to use “Missouree.” Today, Missourians remain divided in common pronunciation but also sometimes choose to vary usage based on context. For example, politicians have been known to switch between pronunciations as they tour the state (Duncan 2022).

The view entering “Mon-tih-SELL-oh”, Iowa, not to be confused with Thomas Jefferson’s “Mon-tih-CHEL-oh” plantation.

Iowa’s own state name isn’t immune. Until the early 1900’s, residents called it “Ioway,” reportedly because this is closer to the pronunciation of the indigenous Iowa, or Báxoje, people. In “The Basis of Correctness in the Pronunciation of Place-names” (1933), etymologist Allen Walker Read makes this example, quoting an Iowan: “I was born in Iowa. My father was a pioneer of the state. Being to the manner born, I have always pronounced the name of the state Ioway. This may be provincial, but it is correct. Iowuh is the pronunciation of the outlanders” (p. 43).

So, is marking insiders from outsiders the point of these unexpected pronunciations? Though undoubtedly a consequence, I’m not sure it’s the cause. In fact, though apparently common, I’m not sure these variations in pronunciation were ever intended by anyone.

For etymologists, the spelling of a place, though generally much slower and more difficult to change, is ultimately secondary to how it is pronounced, and the way it “should be” pronounced is determined by how the locals pronounce it. As Read writes, “Students of language […] realize that the spoken sound is the primary form and that the written form is but a clumsy reflection of it.” Read goes on to express frustration with those who would seek to use dictionaries as an authority on place name pronunciation, quoting Noah Webster of Webster’s Dictionary fame: “The true pronunciation of the name of a place, is that which prevails in and near the place” (1933, p. 44). In other words, regardless of spelling, namesake pronunciation, or the existence of any similarly spelled place, the only real authority on the pronunciation of a place lies with those who live in that place.

So, perhaps the explanation for Iowa’s unexpected town names lies not in how things are named but how we form frameworks for trying to pronounce things that we don’t know how to pronounce. After all, on a global scale, most of us might take some practice to correctly pronounce the names of foreign towns and cities, as well as people. To learn, we imitate the locals. When the setting is more familiar, we expect proper nouns to conform to grammatical rules or to tradition, but they don’t do that. If we drop those expectations, do we even need an explanation? Madrid, Spain and Madrid, Iowa are two different towns with two different histories and communities. Why shouldn’t they be pronounced differently? In fact, after a couple of centuries, should unexpected pronunciation be our expectation?

Citations:

Duncan, D. (2022). “Missouree Was Always Out of Step with Missourah”: Sociolinguistic Variants as Moral Toponyms. Names, 70(3), 24-38.

Read, A. W. (1933). The Basis of Correctness in the Pronunciation of Place-Names. American Speech, 8(1), 42-46.

–Jon Dahlem

April 2023 Rewind

In case you missed watching any of our April webinars live, you still have a chance to watch them from our archive!   

Soil Health Institute’s Study to Assess Soil Health in the Des Moines Lobe Region of Iowa: If you live in the Des Moines Lobe Region, you and your soil are wanted! Watch this webinar to learn more about a soil health assessment being conducted in the region.  

Review of Iowa Water and Nitrogen balances Using APSIM Modeling: Learn about historical trends for variables related to soil, nitrogen, and water over the past 40 years in Iowa. Listen to discussion from Dr. Sotirios Archontoulis about the decreasing trend of days suitable for field work from the mid-60’s, with the majority of that decline occurring in the spring.  

Impacts of Cover Crops on Nitrate-N Loss: Plot to Watershed Scale: If you want to learn more about the effects cover crops can have on water quality, tune in to this webinar. Measuring nitrate can take a long time, especially at the watershed scale, but Dr. Matt Helmers shares preliminary data in this webinar that cover crops are making a measurable difference.  

Mapping Evapotranspiration at the Field Scale: Find out about a new way to access evapotranspiration (ET) numbers from satellite data. Also take a look at what Iowa’s ET values look like compared to precipitation in this webinar with Dr. Antonio Arenas.  

Blast from the Past: April 2016 – The Women, Land & Legacy Project: Learn about the Women, Land, and Legacy program, a statewide outreach program focused on empowering Iowa’s farm women. Find out if there is a local team in or near your county by visiting their website.  

All other Iowa Learning Farms webinars can be found in our archive, tune in and let us know your favorites! 

Iowa Has Great Soil. How did we get it?

This week Iowa Learning Farms welcomed Iowa State’s own Morrill professor, Lee Burras. Burras’ research examines natural soil formation and how soil changes in response to different types of long term agricultural use. 

Have you ever wondered how Iowa got such great land? Burras talks all about the long history of Iowa’s land. Starting way back when Iowa was covered by glaciers. But it wasn’t glaciers alone that created these amazing lands. There are a couple different factors that lead to the soil we have today here in Iowa. Burras talks more in depth about these factors and provides many visuals to better understand the changes over time!

You’ll hear about the natural and human histories of Iowa, and how all of those factors contributed to the extremely productive soil we have in the state of Iowa today. Iowa’s productive soil does vary across the state, but why is that?

For more on Iowa’s soil history, watch this week’s webinar!

-Hannah Preston