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Modernisation Revisited: Market Structures and Competent Farmers in Södermanland County, Sweden, during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Kirsti Niskanen
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Extract

During the last two decades interpretations of agrarian modernisation have been the subject of critical debate. In neo-classical tradition, agrarian economists and economic historians have traditionally laid emphasis on the diffusion of technology and on the commercialisation of production. They have customarily been interested in the development of agricultural output and incomes, and basically understood modernisation as an evolutionary process by which commercial, market oriented production was substituted for traditional, subsistence production. During the 1970s and the 1980s agrarian sociologists and historians posed the question in more social and historical terms, seeking to determine which type of producers, large farmers or family farmers, were the bearers of modernisation. The traditional Marxian standpoint, as is well known, was that capitalist farming — in spite of delays and problems inherent in agricultural production — would come to dominate the agrarian sector through technical innovation and large scale production. Opposing this, neo-Marxian/neo-Chayanovian interpretations claimed that family farming, due to the innate characteristics of that particular production form, provided family farmers with a competitive advantage in relation to large scale production. According to this, more ‘social’ historical tradition, the social organisation of family based production was the key to understanding the viability, or even superiority, of family farming in the industrialised and urbanised societies of western Europe and North America.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , October 1997 , pp. 175 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh Mathematical Society 1997

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References

Notes

1 The principal theoretical issues are discussed e.g. in Ulf, Jonsson et al. , Problems of a Peasant Based Development Strategy: Use and Misuse of Historical Experiences (University of Geneva, Monograph No 6, 1993).Google Scholar For a parallell discussion within the field of development studies and rural sociology, see Vandergeest, Peter, ‘Commercialization or Commoditization: A dialogue between perspectives’, Sociologia Ruralis 28 (1988), 2–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Long, Norman and Jan, DouweVan Der, Ploeg, 'New Challenges in the Sociology of Rural Development. A rejoinder to Peter Vandergeest, Sociologia Ruralis 28 (1988), 30–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an overview of Marx's scattered analysis of the development of the agrarian sector under capitalism, see Dugget, Michael, ‘Marx on Peasants’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 2 (1975), 159–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar also Grigg, David, The Dynamics of Agricultural Change (London, 1982), pp 195–214Google Scholar and Jonsson, Ulf and Pettersson, Ronny, ‘Friends or Foes? Peasants, Capitalists and Markets in West European Agriculture, 1850–1939’, Review, Fernand Braudel Centre 12 (1989), 535–8.Google ScholarPubMed A more specific analysis of the German and Russian agrarian Marxist discussion around the turn of the century is reviewed in Hussein, Athar and Tribe, Keith, Marxism and the Agrarian Question (London, 1981, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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9 Ibid. pp. 13–14.

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11 Niskanen, , Godsagare, smdbrukare och jordbrukets modernisering, ch 3, pp. 37–55.Google Scholar

12 Ibid.

13 Jensen, , Danish Agriculture, pp. 315–53Google ScholarJonsson, et al. , Problems of a Peasant Based Development Strategy, pp. 54–63.Google Scholar

14 Niskanen, , Godsägare, småbrukare och jordbrukets modernisering, ch 3, pp. 37–55.Google Scholar

15 Niskanen, , Godsägare, smdbrukare och jordbrukets modernisering, p. 94, table 6.1.Google Scholar

16 Ibid. pp. 103–4, table 6 p. 103.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., ch 5, pp. 75–83.

19 Ibid.

20 The classical concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft by Ferdinand Tonnies have been reintroduced in contemporary Swedish sociological discussion by Asplund, Johan, Essä om Gemeinschaft och Gesellschaft (Gothenburg, 1991).Google Scholar

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22 Niskanen, , Godsägare, smårukare och jordbrukets modernisering, ch. 7, p. 30, table 2.6.Google Scholar

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24 Niskanen, , Godsägare, småbrukare och jordbrukets modernisering, pp. 48–51, 56.Google Scholar

25 Friedman, Harriet, ‘World Market, State and Family Farm’, pp. 545–86Google ScholarFriedman, Harriet, ‘Household Production and the National Economy: Concepts for the Analysis of Agrarian Formations’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 1 (1980), pp. 159–84.Google Scholar

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28 Encouraging family farmers to modernise production, improve production methods and increase productivity through prize awards was an international phenomenon, introduced by agricultural societies in west European countries during the decades around the turn of the century. Ronald Hubscher and Ulf Jonsson have used same kind of sources in their analysis of small farmers economic strategies and of sharecropping in French agriculture. See Hubscher, Ronald, ‘La petite exploitation en France: Reproduction et competitive (fin XIXedebutXXe siècle’, Annales; Économies, Sociétes, Civilisations, 40 (1985), 3–34Google ScholarJonsson, Ulf ‘The paradox of Share Tenancy under Capitalism: A Comparative Perspective on Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century French and Italian Sharecropping’, Rural History 3(1992), 191–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Niskanen, , Godsagare, småbrukare och jordbrukets modernisering, pp. 180–1.Google Scholar

30 See also Jonsson-Pettersson, , ‘Friends or foes’, pp. 546–50.Google Scholar

31 Niskanen, , Godsägare, småbrukare och jordbrukets modernisering, pp. 188–98.Google Scholar

32 Ibid.