Loka Ashwood

About Loka's Work

Loka Ashwood is a sociologist examining the intersection of environmental injustice, corporate and state power, and anti-government sentiment in American rural communities. Ashwood reveals how state support for some corporate interests can come at a high cost for rural residents. She draws from her own experience on her family’s farm and ethnographic research in rural communities facing ecological, economic, and social challenges. By analyzing specific local issues in the context of larger institutional structures, she sheds light on rural identity, culture, and politics. 

Ashwood’s first book, For-Profit Democracy: Why the Government Is Losing the Trust of Rural America (2018), investigates the drivers of government distrust through the lens of nuclear power plant construction in impoverished Burke County, Georgia. Ashwood recounts that in residents’ view, local and federal governments prioritized profits over constituents’ property rights and wellbeing. An alliance between government and a for-profit corporation used eminent domain claims to take many residents’ property (some of which supported their livelihoods). Loss of and damage to public land and waterways further harmed individuals’ health and economic fortunes. Ashwood connects the Burke County case to broader disillusionment with state institutions among rural populations. She contends that as government enables exploitative and extractive entities to overtake rural spaces, anti-state politics and culture emerge and coalesce into what she calls a “moral economy of democracy.” According to this mindset, resisting the laws of a government that has lost moral legitimacy is justified.

Ashwood also helps rural residents fight environmental injustice by giving new context and understanding to laws that purport to work on their behalf. Empty Fields, Empty Promises: A State-by-State Guide to Understanding and Transforming the Right to Farm (2023), co-authored by Ashwood, is an overview of Right to Farm (RTF) laws in all 50 U.S. states. RTF laws were enacted with the understanding that they would protect family farms from complaints and nuisance lawsuits by neighbors. Instead, agricultural corporations have co-opted these laws to prioritize profits for shareholders. Major polluting operations, such as confined animal feeding operations and meat processing plants, use RTF statutes to overcome opposition from nearby farmers and residents. Since RTF laws were introduced around 1978, the number of farms has fallen drastically, with 87 percent fewer hog farms and 82 percent fewer dairy farms. The book is a practical guide for challenging use of RTF to shield environmentally harmful agribusiness. Currently, Ashwood is working on a book centered around her farming family, as well as a study of the consolidation of agriculture through a growing network of legal and financial relationships among agribusiness companies. Through this interdisciplinary approach, Ashwood is exposing the causes and dire implications of rural discontent while equipping rural communities with resources to build critical agency and advance their interests.