Book Review

Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History ofCalifornia Farmworkers, 1769–1913

Richard S. Street. Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press.

Reviewed by Peter Benson, Washington University in

St. Louis

Rarely does scholarly work appear that so pow-

erfully captures the history and ethnographic sense of

a place in time as Richard S. Street’s pair of landmark

books on California farmworkers. These two books—

and a second, forthcoming volume of narrative history

focused on the 20th century—make an indispensable

contribution to the fields of agricultural history, labor

history, and the history of the American West, as well as

California studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, and

intellectual history. While Street’s work is necessary

reading for specialists in these areas of scholarship,

his writing is clear and compelling, his storytelling

abilities masterful, and appealing to a much wider

audience of people who want to know how Califor-

nia’s agricultural economy was made.

Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California

Farmworkers, 1769–1913 (2004a) is an 800-page narra-

tive history that documents the changing face of

California farm labor over the last several centuries.

It tracks dynamic processes of culture change and in-

tercultural social formation beginning in colonial

California, when Spanish missionaries began to colo-

nize indigenous groups and recruit them into mission

plantations, culminating with early efforts to organize

farmworkers during the Progressive era and the emer-

gent Latinization of farm labor. This is a work of social

and cultural history that attends closely to identity and

community processes among multiple ethnic groups—

indigenous groups, Spanish colonial administrators

and subjects, Mexican mestizos, Chinese and Japanese

immigrants, and poor white and black farmhands.

Photographing Farmworkers in California

Richard S. Street. Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press.

Reviewed by Peter Benson, Washington University in

St. Louis

The other book, Photographing Farmworkers in Cal-

ifornia (2004b), is much shorter, combines photographs

and textual commentary, and provides a complimen-

tary visual account of life and work among California

farmworkers. Like the mix of narrative and photogra-

phy in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the 1941 classic

by James Agee and Walker Evans, the photo archive

that Street has assembled and annotated infuses his-

tory and historiography with the added burden of

moral commentary. The photographs—powerful im-

ages of California farmhands from the past several

centuries, images of farmhands at work, immersed

in ordinary life in labor camps and rural towns, or

involved in farm labor organizing and direct action—

have moral meaning, Street insists. The images cap-

Culture & Agriculture Vol. 30, Numbers 1 & 2 pp. 59–62, ISSN 1048-4876, eISSN 1556-486X. r 2008 by the American Anthropological Association.All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1556-486X.2008.00008.x.