Contenu du sommaire

The Dead and the Living. The Cemetery of Minot in Châtillonnais. The history of the Minot cemetery as well as the study of the ceremonies and rituals associated with it — the way the corpses are placed in the sepulcher, the choice of burial sites, the upkeep of tombs — illustrate the close ties existing between living and dead. The cemetery's location within the village space, the arrangement of the sepulchers, the choice of funeral monuments, such elements show how the geography of the dead resembles the morphology of the social space of the living.

The Impossible Democracy: Kinship and Politics in a Lorrainese Village. This article, based on field work begun in 1968, examines various aspects of the political life of a Lorrainese village and emphasizes the important role played by kinship in municipal activities. After defining the term "Politics", the author explains and criticizes the three theoretical approaches used by sociologists and ethnologists to study the relations between peasant communities and the states that control them. He goes on to justify his choice of the hypothesis of latent or patent discontinuity as opposed to that of a priori or a posteriori continuity. Before analyzing village political systems in order to define different native models of local power, the author summarizes the "back-to-back" situation of the Nation and the French village in general. He then describes the particular village on which this study is based, focussing on the pre-electoral period and on the contrast between the village as presented to the outside world: a quiet, unanimous community, and the village as seen from within: political faction vying for power. The next part of the article is devoted to an analysis of the "family" or kindred, its composition, its influence, its action, and makes clear the important political role played by kinship. Village endogamy and strategical marriages are means of increasing political ties among kindred. The family, however, is not only a complex network of power relations but also the semantic code in terms of which the villagers elaborate their political concepts.

How Farmers Repatriated from North Africa Settled in Languedoc-Roussillon. After a brief history of the arrival of North African repatriots in France and an explanation of the sources and methods used for this study, the conditions are examined, especially the financial ones, that permitted 906 repatriated farmers to settle in Languedoc-Roussillon. Statistics are given on the location and size of the farms abandoned in North Africa and on the origin, age, family and education of the immigrants. Their agricultural activities in France are next treated, considering the location of the farm (coastal plain, inland plain and hills, plateau and mountain, valley) and the techniques used in viticulture, arboriculture, stock-raising, etc. Eager to modernize their farms in hopes of thus reducing their debts, the repatriots prove more receptive to agricultural innovations than do the native farmers.

Situation Analysis in Different Regions of France. Working on a series of analyses of agricultural data from diverse geographical areas, the author tries to determine what are the obstacles which stand in the way of technical progress, to elucidate the processes involved, and to evolve a methodological approach to the study of the diffusion of innovations. The analyses were carried out by research groups which included technicians, economists and sociologists, in the Haute Saone and Bresse de Bourg regions, the Millevaches tablelands, the Haut and Moyen Vivarais and the Vosges mountains. The analysis is given successively in technical, spatial and historical terms, and also as system analysis. Faced with technical innovations that are getting constantly more numerous and arousing a constantly growing opposition, the agronomist is forced to apply to other branches of scientific research and adopt a method of classification based on multiple criteria, in order to account for the numerous variables which play a role in this process.

The Colonization Process in Cordoba Province (Argentina). After providing some background information on Cordoba Province — main crops, farming material, transportation, market systems — , the author distinguishes three phases of colonization : before 1895, 1895-1903 and 1903-1915. Each period is then analyzed, considering such factors as types of colonization (official, private, spontaneous), development of agro-pastoral economy, land tenure and real-estate speculation, living and working conditions of immigrant peasants, colonization laws, etc. The conclusion is that the colonization process was mainly beneficial to the groups and companies who organized the immigration and monopolized the land, rather than to the immigrants themselves who remained economically disadvantaged and socially isolated.