What Are People For? was published by North Point Press in 1990 and collects Berry’s essays from the mid-to-late 1980s — a period when his thinking was deepening and his audience was growing. The title essay asks the question that industrial economics refuses to ask: if machines can do everything more efficiently than people, what are people for? If we define value solely as economic productivity, we have made most of humanity obsolete.
The Essays
The collection ranges widely but returns always to Berry’s central concerns: the destruction of rural communities, the costs of technological “progress,” the relationship between culture and agriculture, and the possibility of living well in a damaged world.
“Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” — the most famous (and controversial) essay in the collection, originally published in Harper’s in 1987. Berry explains his decision to write with pencil and paper, with his wife Tanya typing his manuscripts. The essay provoked furious letters (published as “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine,” also in this volume). Berry’s point was not anti-technology per se but anti-dependency: he did not want to need a corporation’s product to do his work.
“Writer and Region” — on the relationship between literary art and geographical place. Berry argues that the best writing comes from intimate knowledge of a specific place — not from cosmopolitan detachment.
“The Work of Local Culture” — on how communities sustain themselves through accumulated knowledge, shared memory, and daily practice.
“An Argument for Diversity” — on monoculture as both an agricultural and a cultural problem.
“A Remarkable Man” — Berry’s tribute to his neighbor and mentor, the farmer Owen Flood.
The Title Question
Berry’s answer to “what are people for?” is: people are for taking care of things — land, communities, each other, the future. In an economy organized around efficiency and profit, this answer is radical. It says that the purpose of human life is not production or consumption but stewardship — and that an economy that makes stewardship impossible is an economy at war with human nature.
Collecting What Are People For?
First edition (North Point Press, San Francisco, 1990): Trade paperback original. Also issued in a hardcover edition (scarce).
Identification points:
- North Point Press imprint
- First edition stated
- 210 pages
Market values: Hardcover first editions in dust jacket bring $150–$400. The paperback original ($30–$60) is more common.
Signed copies: $300–$800 (hardcover).
The “computer” essay’s viral fame (it resurfaces periodically on the internet, always generating fresh controversy) keeps the book in circulation among readers who discover Berry through that single piece and then explore his larger body of work.