Peasantries and Development
French Style
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2139992 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Raymond Gervais (McGill University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 518-522 |
| Publication date | 1994-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0008-3968 • E-ISSN: 1923-3051 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00083968.1994.10804366 |
| OpenAlex | W1435726212 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
In the European context, French society maintained its rural character much longer than did neighbouring countries and therefore has had a rather long tradition of rural studies, both in the fields of history and geography. Sadly, this tradition did little to improve France's record in extension work in its colonies. Nevertheless, after World War II, in the wake of massive development projects and the creation of tools for scientific interventions in the colonies (Institut Franqais d'Afrique Noire and ORSTOM), rural studies became both more popular and efficient. Recently, an impressive collection of research on such vital topics as peasantries, peasant knowledge, large scale development projects, and socio-economic aspects of irrigation has appeared (see the bibliography at the end of this article), and such prestigious journals as Etudes rurales have published thematic issues on agriculture in Africa. I Much of this interest and the methodological tools for the expansion of francophone rural studies in Africa has been inspired by two geographers: Paul Pe1issier and Gilles Sautter (see ORSTOM 1989). In their massive theses (Sautter 1966; Pelissier 1966) and their manuals (Sautter 1968; Pe1issier i980), they have paved the way for generations of researchers both at ORSTOM and I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) (see Hallaire 1991). They are partially responsible for the diffusion in French Africanist geography of the notion of terroirs 2 that was so popular for many years in these circles. By linking the concrete spatial definitions of terroirs to the definitions given by the African societies themselves, they opened a strict geographical problematique to insights from other disciplines such as anthropology and history. It therefore comes as no surprise that an anthropologist, Georges Dupr6, author of some of the best works on central Africa, would want to edit a
Archaeology · Development (topology) · Political science · Style (visual arts) · Agriculture and Rural Development Research · French Urban and Social Studies · History · Mathematics
| Highly cited | No |
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