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WANDLUNGEN DES ZIEL‐ UND WERTSYSTEMS: DER EINFLUSS VON WANDLUNGEN IN DER LANDWIRTSCHAFT AUF DIE GESELLSCHAFT 1
Author(s) -
SACHS DR. R.
Publication year - 1965
Publication title -
sociologia ruralis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.005
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-9523
pISSN - 0038-0199
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9523.1965.tb00516.x
Subject(s) - backwardness , agriculture , economics , industrial society , political science , economy , economic growth , geography , archaeology
Summary Changes in Goals and Values If social change and alterations in a set of values are consequent upon ‘technological progress’, then, as far as the majority of the European countries is concerned, the initial impulses emanated from trade and industry rather than from agriculture. However, no part of society remains unaffected by the changes it causes in any other part. The problems of agriculture, which is compelled to change, increasingly become the problems of the industrial orientated European society. The growing substitution of labour by capital in a labour‐divided market economy compels agriculture to effect decisive changes in its structure and goals towards a maximum of rationalization and specialization, together with a high degree of co‐operative effort, and towards a relaxation and an increased flexibility of emotional attitudes towards the means of production with special emphasis on their profitableness. Nevertheless, the growing experience of the increasing disparity in incomes and of the decline in social esteem (‘backwardness’) brings the farmers into a number of conflicts. Their reactions (confidence, resignation, or stubbornness) differ according to their economic or intellectual background, on the basis of the general sense of insecurity attached to a minority. In this situation the European economic and agricultural policy is torn between die demand for a reduction in the agricultural labour force and the postulate, according to which the agricultural sector is too valuable to be given up; apart from the question of food production, there are sociological, ethical, and aspects of town and country planning which are of importance in this connection. Meanwhile part‐time farming (and residential gardening) seem to be spreading and to combine rural‐agrarian with urban‐industrial values, without, however, eradicating the essential differences between the two. Under the impact of social and economic developments in Europe one can observe both in the West and in the East a differentiation in agricultural prototypes and a pragmatic trend to adjust the respective ideologies accordingly.