Our Politics Could Use 'Another Turn of the Crank'

Featuring essays on sustainability, stewardship, and what he calls "gentle virtues," Appalachian writer Wendell Berry invites us to take a more communitarian approach to politics.

With several dozen books under his belt, scattered across the genres of fiction, nonfiction, short story, and poetry, Berry can pose an overwhelming challenge for those making their first foray into his writing.

My first dip into Berry’s world involved a few select poems recommended by a girl whose affections I was eager to win over at the tail-end of college (yet, to no avail). For many others, it was his 1977 classic, The Unsettling of America. And you can’t go wrong with any of his Port William novels.

If you’re seeking something short, Another Turn of the Crank is as good a place as any to begin.

Featuring six essays on sustainability and stewardship, Wendell Berry’s Another Turn of the Crank is a noteworthy addition to the Appalachian literary tradition. But we haven’t done enough to sow its seeds across our mountain region.

This incisive collection of short essays provides an easy introduction to Wendell Berry's views on community life and localized society. They are ripe with lessons we ought to take to heart if Appalachia is to thrive in the twenty-first century.

While centered around rural communities—including forest commonwealths—the substance of his attention focuses on local economies, generally.

He wants to revitalize them because they are how we can best conserve certain vital human values: affection, conviviality, social bonds, care, mutual aid, stewardship, place, belonging, humility (limits), cooperation, harmony, and unity.

While being an advocate of such "gentle virtues,” Berry does at times show his "angry farmer" side—which remains fiercely endearing.

He loves the land, people, the Sacred, the simple pleasures that come from hard work, understanding how one fits into the local collective, and laying hold of the wisdom that comes from knowing which aspects of modernism are dehumanizing (and to be resisted).

He has an engaging style that is smart and warm.

Most will find him difficult to categorize, as he says so himself: "Nothing that I have written here should be construed as an endorsement of either of our political parties as they presently function. Republicans who read this book should beware either of approving it as 'conservative' or of dismissing it as 'liberal.' Democrats should beware of the opposite errors."

He is an agrarian at heart. That’s the only label, I recall, that doesn’t bother him.

At times one will see his skepticism of corporations and free-market fundamentalism. On other pages, readers will encounter his criticisms of government agencies (specifically, non-local ones) and their technocratic workings. He is pushing back against mechanistic or mechanical views of living that hollow out our spiritual and moral lives.

It seems the ills of technophilia and mass-scale systems have only become more pronounced in the nearly thirty years since this collection was first published.

Wendell Berry is a communitarian thinker, focused on changing the way we relate to Nature.

As social capital continues to decline and global climate change and ecological devastations worsen—such as the devastation we’re laboring through in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene—Berry stands as a sage elder reminding us that many of the answers to our problems already reside in the tradition we inherited.

In his case, this is the Western canon. This narrow-mindedness or cultural chauvinism is one of the Appalachian writer’s greater shortcomings. As it is with the biodiverse landscapes the amiable farmer so loves, Appalachia is a richer place, I believe, when we gather in wisdom from whatever traditions are available to us.

And there are many throughout our region.

We must pursue good fruits from whichever trees bear them, not merely the ones that stem from our family’s roots.

I prefer to view Appalachia as a tree with branches grafted from numerous other cultivars. That’s how some thrive.

Berry also pleads with us to become better stewards—of each other, ourselves, and the natural world.

We are not masters of one another or "the environment." His focus on fraternity (or the gender-neutral fellowship, if that reads more appropriately to you) and community as foundational sources of the good life are deeply moving.

Having, admittedly, spent way too much of my early professional career evangelizing individualism as a supreme good (socially and politically), I find his correction healing.

Salvific, even.

The question we should be asking ourselves regarding any governmental policy or technology, is: does this improve the commonwealth of my community or not? Or perhaps alternatively, will embracing a particular practice enable my community to better flourish?

Berry encourages us to see life through the lens of communal well-being, which contrasts with the atomistic pursuit of self-interest endemic to much of our broadly liberal political order.

Another Turn of the Crank is an invitation for us to consider what Appalachia would look like were we to ground our moral and social reasoning with one question: How might this help or harm the well-being of my local community?