Agraria_Journal_WINTER_2022

AGRARIA JOURNAL 2022 17 SUSAN JENNINGS Agraria board members, at their recent retreat, wove a web out of string to illustrate the concept of bioregional interconnectedness. communion with our immediate environments, and is a potent seed of transformation. Critically, the bioregional movement has, from its outset, centered diversity and the equitable distribution of resources as core principles. There is a conscious effort not to replicate the inherited models extractive of nature and exploitative of people when establishing a parallel economy. For inspiration, bioregional advocates look to Indigenous ways of living and caring for the land, creating cross-cultural bridges of learning and sharing that honor and uplift the continent's original inhabitants. ARTHUR MORGAN AND BIOREGIONALISM Among those to articulate the importance of regionalism, a precursor to bioregionalism, was Arthur E. Morgan (1878–1975), founder of Community Service, Inc., Agraria’s predecessor. The bulk of Morgan’s intellectual work centered on the promotion of small communities as the seedbed for culture and democratic values. He also understood that such communities were embedded in a larger region, and would need to rely on it out of economic necessity. Morgan was celebrated by decentralists and agrarians alike for his achievements at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in regional economic planning. In fact, Morgan saw that the Tennessee Valley, and Appalachia as a whole, could be self-sufficient through a) the development of small industries and cooperatives that produced commodities for local markets, and b) the promotion of local buying through local currencies, regional exchanges, and other locally owned distribution mechanisms. Morgan had experimented with such a local credit system in the early 1930s in Yellow Springs, when he set up the Yellow Springs Exchange, which allowed customers to barter or use locally produced scrip to purchase local goods and services. He also established the Midwest Exchange credit system for goods that could only be procured outside of the town, such as coal. Unfortunately his time at the TVA was short, and he was unable to significantly advance his vision for the region. During his longer career as a writer and advocate, Morgan promoted regional planning and governance structures “but only to the extent necessary for the social welfare.” He saw localism and regionalism as a defense against totalitarianism and mass conformity, as democracy flourished in small-scale, especially face-to-face settings. “The genius of democracy,” Morgan wrote, “is to eliminate compulsion to uniformity, whether that compulsion be