Rural Community Studies in Europe. Trends, Selected and Annotated Bibliographies, Analyses

275 Pages·1982·4.36 MB·English

by  Jean-Louis Durand-Drouhin and Lili-Maria Szwengrub (Eds.)

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RURAL COMMUNITY STUDIES
IN EUROPE
Trends, Selected and Annotated Bibliographies, Analyses
Edited by
JEAN-LOUIS DURAND-DROUHIN
and
LILI-MARIA SZWENGRUB
in collaboration with
10AN MIHAILESCU
for the European Coordination Centre for Research and Documentation
in Social Sciences
Volume 2
PERGAMON PRESS
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First edition 1982
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rural community studies in Europe.
Vol.2
1. Sociology, Rural —Europe —Research
I. Durand-Drouhin, Jean-Louis II. Szwengrub,
Uli-Maria III. Mihailescu, Ian
IV. European Coordination Centre for Research and
Documentation in Social Sciences
307.7'2Ό7204 ΗΝ373
ISBN 0-08-026094-2
In order to make this volume available as economically and
as rapidly as possible the authors' typescripts have been
reproduced in their original forms. This method unfor­
tunately has its typographical limitations but it is hoped that
they in no way distract the reader.
Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co. Ltd., Exeter
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
CATELLI, Giampaolo Institute of Sociology, University of Bologna, Italy
CAVAZZA, Gianluigi Institute of Sociology, University of Bologna, Italy
DURAN-DROUHIN, Jean-Louis National Foundation of Political Sciences, Paris,
France
GROOT, J.P. Department of Sociology, Agricultural University,
Wageningen, the Netherlands
JANSEN, Anton J. Department of Sociology, Agricultural University,
Wageningen, the Netherlands
JAUCH, Dieter Rheinpfalz Publishers, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Fe­
deral Republic of Germany
JÄVOR, Kata Institute of Ethnography, Hungarian Academy of
Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
KÖPPÄ, Tapani Department of Cooperative Studies, University of
Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
KROMKA, Franz Department for Rural Sociology, Technical Univer­
sity, München, Federal Republic of Germany
MIHAILESCU, loan European Coordination Centre for Research and
Documentation in Social Sciences, Vienna, Austria
PLANCK, Ulrich Institute for Agrosociology, Agricultural Advice and
Applied Psychology, University Hohenheim, Stuttgart,
Federal Republic of Germany
SÄRKÄNY, Mihàly Institute of Ethnography, Hungarian Academy of
Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
SIISKONEN, Pirjo The Marketing Research Institute of Pellervo So­
ciety, Helsinki, Finland
STAGNI, Elena Institute of Sociology, University of Bologna, Italy
vii
viii List of Contributors
STARK, Jürgen Federal Ministry for the Economy, Bonn-Duisdorf,
Federal Republic of Germany
SZWENGRUB, Lili-Maria Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish
Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
TAGANYI, Zoltàn Institute of Sociology, Hungarian Academy of
Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
VÄGVÖLGYI, Andräs Institute of Sociology, Hungarian Academy of
Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
PREFACE
Social changes and the process of social transformation have tremendously speeded
up in our century. As a result of the mechanization of agriculture and rapidly
growing industrialization, it is the rural population that has been affected the
most. The concomitant phenomena like urbanization, migration, commuting, etc. have
raised serious problems and quite often even the future existence of the rural
areas is queried.
Research aiming to deal with the future of these areas and of the rural population
cannot be effective if it is not based on the information already accumulated in
this field. That is why the European Coordination Centre for Research and
Documentation in Social Sciences undertook in the early 1970s to coordinate an
international research project on "The future of rural communities in indus­
trialized societies". The first three volumes of a series of publications on this
topic are the Rural Community Studies in Europe - Trends, Selected and Annotated
Bibliographies, Analyses which, as the title indicates, include the following: (1)
A description of the trends and development of rural community studies, reviewing
the main features and historical trends in rural literature country by country and
attempting to categorize research work according to a number of approaches. (2) An
annotated bibliography in which the most representative works are presented in a
chronological order. (3) Analytical summaries which give detailed analyses of some
outstanding studies on rural communities; the numbers in this section refer to the
following items: 0. circumstances, orientations and method; 1. ecology; 2.
demography; 3. agricultural economy; 4. non-agricultural economy; 5. family and
kinship; 6. domestic group; 7. way of life, collective behaviour; 8. ideology and
social regulation; 9. communications; 10. groups, classes and social stratifica­
tion, institutions; 11. global system. And finally (4) a location map and
summary information on located studies.
For details of this research project see the Foreword by B. Galeski and H.
Mendras as well as the Introduction by J.-L. Durand-Drouhin to the first volume
of this publication: J.-L. Durand-Drouhin and L.-M. Szwengrub (eds.): Rural
Community Studies in Europe. Trends, Selected and Annotated Bibliographies,
Analyses, Vol. I. Pergamon Press, Oxford - New York - Toronto - Sydney - Paris -
Frankfurt, 1981.
RCSE 2 - A*
IX
x Preface
The first volume, which has already been published, contains the following
national chapters: Great Britain, Ireland, Poland, Turkey, Rumania, France and
Spain. In the present volume, the reader can find chapters on the Netherlands, the
Federal Republic of Germany, Hungary, Italy and Finland. The third volume will
include chapters on Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Greece, the Soviet Union,
Sweden and Yugoslavia. (Let us mention here in parantheses that we are also
preparing a volume on the methodological aspects of rural community studies.)
We do hope that by these publications we can contribute somewhat to a better
understanding of the problems in this field and that they can be well used to draw
some conclusions on which researchers can base their future work.
RURAL COMMUNITY STUDIES IN THE
NETHERLANDS
Anton J. Jansen with a contribution by J. P. Groot*
I. TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENT
1. Development and Change in the Dutch Countryside
Although the popular image of "Holland" abroad is still often associated with
wooden shoes, cows and bulbs, the Netherlands (and in particular its Western
provinces, more properly to be called "Holland"), constitute one of the most
urbanized countries in Europe. After the United Kingdom and Belgium, the Nether­
lands have the lowest percentage of agricultural population (6.3 in 1972) while
less than 22% of the Dutch live in "rural communities".
When looking at some basic data concerning the agricultural population, one is
struck by what seems to be an anomaly, at least in Western Europe. Although the
percentage of agricultural employment gradually declines from 31.8 of the total in
1889 to 19.6 in 1947, there is simultaneously a strong increase in absolute
numbers: from 525,000 in 1889 to 629,000 in 1930 and to nearly 750,000 in 1947.
Statistically this incongruity is explained when these figures are set against the
background of a rapid population growth, unequalled in most other European
countries, from 4% million in 1889 to more than 9/^ million in 1947. However, the
phenomenon of a rapidly growing farming population has to be attributed first of
all to the very strong intensification of agricultural production, which set in
towards the end of the 19th century, in conjunction with an important extension of
the area of cultivable land. A "rural exodus", with some minor exceptions, is a
phenomenon unknown in modern Dutch history.
1.1. Rural development in the Netherlands until after World War II
At an early stage Dutch agriculture had become predominantly market oriented. Far
into the 19th century this remained predominantly the case for the "lower" Western
*Parts I and II by Anton J. Jansen and part III by J.P. Groot.
1
2 Rural Community Studies
and Northern parts of the country, these having fertile soils and being easily
accessible to shipping. As early as the 13th and 14th centuries the trading towns
of the Low Countries (Flanders and Holland) became surrounded by rural areas,
which not only grew food for the expanding towns, but also produced raw materials
for their industries, and export products. Peasants gradually became commercial
farmers: feudal bonds were broken at an early date, or never came into being,
while the early establishment of the modern family farm prevented the development
of large-scale capitalistic farming.
Agricultural development was partly supported by commercial capital from the
trading centres, in particular in the extension of the area of cultivated land
through reclamation on tidal and fresh waters. This type of land reclamation more
or less came to an end towards the end of the 19th century, and, by its very
nature, was virtually restricted to the lower parts of the country. On the map we
find a patchwork of "old lands", and "new polders", ("polder" means "a piece of
low-lying land reclaimed from the sea, a lake, or a river, from which it is
protected by dikes" O.E.D.) village communities differing in age by centuries yet
lying side by side. Ter Veen (1925) describes a polder community as the result of
the very stringent selection process taking place in the virgin lands of one such
interior "colony": 18,500 ha reclamed on the former Haarlemmer-lake (1852), the
biggest project of its kind. Hofstee (1937) describes the "gentleman-farmers" of
the Oldambt who became prosperous in a process of continuous land conquest on the
tidal waters of the Shallows.
In the "higher" Eastern and Southern parts of the country, which in general have
poor soils, traditional peasant farming and a more or less closed, sometimes even
feudal, economy remained the dominant characteristics. Towards the end of the 19th
century this sector of traditional agriculture also became rapidly integrated into
a market economy, a combination of factors promoting this development. Among these
may be mentioned, in random order: the non-protectionist policy adopted by the
government during the agricultural crisis of 1880, the reorientation of
agriculture towards intensive stock and horticultural production, the development
of large nearby markets in the industrial centres of Germany and the UK, the
introduction of fertilizers, the organization of small farmers into co-operatives,
and, last but not least, strong government backing for the development of
agriculture, agricultural training and research. All this enabled even the
smallest peasant farmer to achieve a notable increase in output and to "earn a
living". Boer (1975) gives an extensive description and analysis of the economic,
social and cultural transformation of a traditional "sand community" in her
longitudinal study of Zweelo, 1930-1970. This process of intensification and
rationalization of the agricultural production of the Eastern and Southern parts
of the country was accompanied by a second wave of land reclamation, this time of
the extensive peat moors and moorlands in the "sandy regions". Between 1880 and
1950 the total area of so-called "waste land" dropped from 772,000 to 256,000 ha,
adding about half a million ha of arable land (20% of the total area in 1950).
After 1950 this form of land reclamation virtually came to a standstill: most of
the remaining "waste lands" now being national parks and forest reserves.
The considerable extension of the area of arable land allowed for thousands of new
family farms to be set up by former peat cutters, farm labourers and small farmers
(sons) from all over the country. The former peat moors in the North-Eastern part
of the country, in particular, acted over a long period as an interior "frontier".
Immigrants from all over the country, often directed by religious and political
motives, settled down as farmers, farm labourers, shopkeepers, artisans, and
traders in the new "colonies" as they were (and still are) called. The
amalgamation of these settlers into newly created villages and hamlets led to the
formation of communities, which in many ways were sharply distinguished from the
traditional sand villages. Van der Wielen (1930) and Oosten (1947) describe the
genesis and actual social structures of such "peat colony" communities.
The Netherlands 3
The major developments in Dutch agriculture, briefly described above, gave rise to
a very great variety in rural communities according to age, size, socio-economic
structure and culture patterns. The selection of sociographic monographs in the
bibliographical section provides a good picture of this variety. At the same time
the general process of intensification and rationalization of agricultural
production allowed for the conservation of an established agricultural system,
based essentially on independent family farms, all over the country. The deep
agricultural crisis which set in shortly after the First and was prolonged till
after the Second World War, however, demonstrated that the limits to any further
development and the simultaneous conservation of this system were being reached.
Between 1910 and 1947 the total number of arable and horticultural farms rose from
159,600 to 221,800, primarily as a result of the establishment of new, be it often
very small farms. As early as the thirties this gave rise to a "small farmers
problem", seriously aggravated by the lack of alternative employment opportuni­
ties. At the end of the Second World War, the Netherlands were confronted with a
heavily congested agricultural system, and with a relatively overpopulated
countryside.
1.2. Post-War developments in Dutch agriculture
After 1945, the necessary adaptation of small-scale, labour intensive agricultural
production to the standards of a growth economy and a welfare state threw the
farming population in a turmoil of rapid change. The general pattern of change
occurring in the Dutch countryside is not very much at variance with what happened
in most other Western European countries. Therefore, we will not enter into
details, but provide some summary information in the table below.
Major changes in Dutch agriculture between 1947 and 1977
1947 1959/60 1977 1977 as %
of 1947
Agricultural area (,000 ha) 2348 2310 2060 87.6
Number of full-time farms >1 ha (,000) 245 230 138 56.3
Male workers in agriculture (,000) 531 389 200 37.7
Of whom: farm operators 234 216 147 62.8
family dependents 110 63 20 18.2
salaried workers 187 110 33 17.7
Average farm size (ha) 9.6 9.9 15.0 156.0
The consequences of these quite revolutionary changes were manifold. Manual
labour, to a large extent, was replaced by the mechanization of land work. Most
family farms became "one-man farms", which at present constitute 70% of all Dutch
farms. As most farmers lagged behind relatively in the general increase in
welfare, the agricultural profession and the status of the independent farmer
suffered considerably in prestige, in particular, in the greater majority of rural
communities which underwent rapid change through industrialization and urbaniza­
tion. Former land workers and small farmers and farmers' sons, commuting to
industrial jobs in nearby centres, overtook the great majority of middle-sized
farmers in terms of income and welfare standards. Before the war, in many rural
municipalities the established farmers "formed the village elite, with a dominant