Class, Authenticity, and Cattle Ranching - Lindsey's Post

I didn’t know that I was asking about authenticity as I conducted oral histories with cattle ranchers and cowboys this summer. My research was focused on the daily work practices of these individuals; I was asking how the rural livelihood of cattle ranching can illuminate a more practical, moral, landscape-oriented production of class then is typically afforded to that definition. To do so, I worked with ranchers and cowboys every day, hopping in their dusty Dodge Rams or ATVs, pretending to effortlessly swing my legs over the saddles of 16-hand tall horses, holding out my recorder over the trampled grass in order to do what anthropologists are trained to do.

Our interviews, which I am now straining to transcribe through the gusting wind of the open range, certainly covered the topics of work and embodied practice in the ranchers’ rural economy. But through this lens of work, there was always a nod to the elusive stamp of authenticity from both sides of the tape recorder. The strand of conversation that seems to bind all the interviews together (besides the consistent mention of rain, will there be rain?) is the positioning of the ranchers themselves against the urban behemoth that is Tucson and the indifference, if not outright disdain, the ranchers have towards the city-dwellers’ way of life. The questions I asked and the responses the ranchers gave regarding their daily work practices and how this differs from the work of ‘city folk’ strike me now not just as descriptions of labor, but as statements about the authenticity of their livelihoods. The two questions Bendix poses in her introduction, ‘who needs authenticity and why?’ and ‘how has authenticity been used?’ (21) are questions that I am now asking in relation to my work. Why do ranchers need to use authenticity? How are they using it? How am I?

My role in this authentication process is a reflexive one, as is Bendix’s. By aiming to re-conceptualize the standard definition of class, by pushing this definition beyond simplistic Marxist notions of production and labor, I must question why we as an anthropological discipline don’t include the practical, moral, land-driven daily habitus of the rural United States worker when we talk about class. I recognize that doing so may be problematic in and of itself; it is possible that the inclusion of these individuals’ life stories into a new definition of class could in turn form a rigid category of an “authentic rural laborer,” a “real cowboy,” a “true rancher.” However, though this remains a potential issue that requires vigilance on the part of the academician, it seems that work as a self-defined practice is an excellent vehicle to drive a new understanding of authenticity, and vice versa. Take, for example, an excerpt from an interview I had with a life-long cowboy (who is transcribed as NA), in which we talk about the troubling commercialization of horse whisperers.

NA: You’ve heard of the horse whisperers?

LF: Yeah, mmhmm.

NA: [Names two famous horse whisperers]?

LF: I’ve seen videos of that, yeah.

NA: Billy [The rancher NA works for] has developed a-, of course he roped horses before any of them little squirts were around, you know.

LF: Yeah, that’s definitely a new thing, the whole marketing of horse whispering.

NA: Oh, that part of it is just bullshit. I hate that part of it. Some of ‘em, P.T. is probably the biggest butthead, they’ve gotten away from…Yes, they’re good horsemen, but they’ve gotten away from basically training horses and now they’re marketing geniuses. The good ones, the really, really good ones, [Whispers], you never hear about.

The above excerpt exemplifies the “aesthetic of the common man” Bendix discusses in her book. The cowboy here is making a clear distinction between the “good” horse whisperers and the ones who abandon their trade to make money marketing their skills. In this example, it is clear whom the cowboy values as authentic and as inauthentic. This is one of many examples when cattle industry workers employed their knowledge of standard work practices to solidify themselves as “true” cattleman in the face of the “little squirts” and “buttheads” that exist in modern, often urban life. This separation of rural from urban, traditional from modern, is echoed when Bendix discusses the aesthetic of the common man (which I would argue is inseparable from the western, cowboy aesthetic). She writes, “The virtues of this group – whether common man or Volk – were praised, and it was contrasted to the decay threatening the social fabric of the nation (Bendix 1997: 74).”

In this sense, and in the process of transcribing the oral histories I gathered, I understand that the ranchers and cowboys whom I interviewed do not separate notions of authenticity, of preserving a way of life currently under assault by an ever-urbanizing Southwest, with notions of daily work. Further, I, as an anthropologist, cannot avoid examining this important link. As I begin analyzing my research, I must incorporate Bendix’s notion of authenticity – one that is processual and dynamic – into the new definition of class I aim to characterize. Why? Because I asked about it and the ranchers spoke of it, without ever giving it a name.