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Sociology of Agriculture and Food (SAFRIG)

Post-Capitalist Entrepreneurs: First-Generation Farmers in Rural North Carolina Kerilyn Schewel*, Lee Miller,

How do economic alternatives emerge within capitalism? This paper identifies a distinct
economic and cultural actor in rural America, who we term “post-capitalist entrepreneurs.”
These actors deploy sophisticated business strategies to sustain wellbeing-centered livelihoods
while simultaneously contributing to local social transformation, in this case through the
reconstruction of local food systems. Drawing on 32 semi-structured interviews with first-
generation farmers across 24 operations in Orange County, North Carolina, we show how small
farmers navigate the fundamental tension between market survival and post-capitalist
commitment to ecological sustainability, meaningful work, and community rootedness. We
identify four strategies they use to consciously re-embed economic activity within social and
ecological relationships: (1) redefining success beyond profit (e.g., soil health, household well-
being, community benefit), (2) transforming market transactions into relational practices, (3)
building collaborative rather than competitive relationships, and (4) practicing rooted
cosmopolitanism that links translocal knowledge networks to place-based action. This productive
tension—using entrepreneurial tools to pursue post-capitalist ends—advances theories of social
transformation by demonstrating how interstitial alternatives operate within capitalist markets.
Our findings illuminate grassroots pathways of change and the possibilities and limits of rural
reconstruction in the United States.