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CULTURAL TRADITION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN AGRICULTURE
Author(s) -
PONGRATZ HANS
Publication year - 1990
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.1467-9523.1990.tb00395.x
Subject(s) - citation , sociology , social science , political science , law
The development of agriculture in the past decades has been determined worldwide by modernization measures. Mechanization and intensificarion of production. rationalization of farm management and adaptation (0 urban-industrial lifestyles were the goals of modernization wh ich were also pursued by the various disciplioes of agricultural science. In so far as any attention at all was paid to farm people's culture, i.e. tbe totality of ways of life and rules of behaviour among the farming population (wh ich must be differentiated according to region), it was usually regarded as outmoded and the remnant of a tradition which exerted a disruptive influence on the moderniz3tion process. Ir was rural sociology in partieular which set itself the goal of overcoming and excluding such 'backward' cultural manifestations. In reeent years, bowever, analyses in the field of research ioto developing countries and cultural-anthropological studies have cast a new light on the significance of farming culture'. They reveal that in their interna! structures and processes, traditional regional cultures have usually successfully adapted to the needs of people and the demands of the environment. Frorn (his perspective, modernization measures may even appear as aretrograde step: