Of Men and Machines

Co-operation among French Family Farmers

Bibliographic Data

ID2735341
AuthorsB Lisa Groger (corresponding author)
Year1981
Volume20
Issue3
Pages163
Publication date1981-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1828 • E-ISSN: 2160-3510
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3773224
OpenAlexW314473037
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Much has been written on the subject of peasants' lack of co-operation. Banfield (I958) and Foster (I965) have invoked a peasant ethos to explain individualistic behavior and peasant atomistic social structure. While a few have criticized their models (Bennet I966; Jayawardena I968; Kaplan and Saler I966; Kennedy I966; Piker I966; Silverman I968), many others have accepted them either implicitly or explicitly (cf. Gregory I 97 5). Friendship (Gilmore I 97 5), godparenthood (Mintz and Wolf I950), and labor contracts (Honigmann and Honigmann I976) have been studied and analy2ed as individuals' attempts to overcome the potential fragmentation of peasant communities. While such relationships are often activated for co-operative labor, co-operative labor as such has received little attention.2 Instead, the emphasis has been on the decline of co-operative labor due to mechanization and technical (Erasmus I956, I96I; Sachs I974). Even where the focus has been on co-operative labor, it was said to undergo a fairly rapid decay with the emergence of an agricultural proletariat and an increase in monetization (Moore I975:28I). This paper challenges the notion that technical and mechanization invariably lead to the demise of co-operation among agricultural producers. It deals with contemporary small farmers in Aveyron, a departement in the southern foothills of the Massif Central. It reveals extensive co-operation which, due to bureaucrats' definition of co-operation, never enters into the official statistics and it includes the contradictory and revealing views of the participants. Data were collected in Landous, a rural township in Aveyron and in Alunhac, a parish and administrative section of Landous, from June, I 97 5 to December, I 976. Alunhac is situated in the Segala, a region of Aveyron which, unlike many other disadvantaged areas, has young people who are staying in agriculture. They are said to be enthusiastic about machinery, and to have absolute confidence in technical progress (Fel I962:308). Their alleged enthusiasm is tempered by the related phenomena of small fragmented farms, low agricultural income, and high cost of technical progress. The average size offarms in Alunhac is 24 hectares. Of the 20,027 farms in Aveyron in I974, 88 per cent had fewer than 50 hectares, and 55.7 per cent had fewer than 20 hectares (D.D.A.Ig74). While the gross receipt per male agricultural worker in the late I g60s ranged from FF I 0,000 to FF22,000, Aveyron ranked lowest with FFI o,ooo to FFI4,ooo (Ouston I 97 2 :27). The farmers of Alunhac are highly integrated into the national and international market economy both as producers and consumers. They practice mixed

Genealogy · Sociology · Agriculture and Rural Development Research · Demography · History

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