Contenu du sommaire

Undiscoverable Households. Family Organization in a Village of Traditional Corsica. In this article dealing with a village community of traditional Corsica, the author shows that household, domestic group and family form here empirically distinct levels of organization and that it is impossible to build up models of family organization based only on patterns of co-residence or of performing economic functions.

Sociological Analysis1 Outline of Rural Elites. Five Biographies of Peasant Leaders. The presentation of five Lorrainese rural leaders' biographies enables to show under which conditions a professional and unionist framing apparatus may develope in the peasantry, and the determining role played in that process by a rich and recognized farming bourgeoisie; this bourgeoisie can be supposed to have succeeded in keeping leading positions in farmers' organizations as far as the leaders' selection, by its mechanism and results, foreshadows the actual selection operating then in the rest of the peasantry.

In the Shade of the Factories, as if nothing had Happened. . . Industrialization and the Maintaining of a Peasant Community in Lorraine. This paper deals with the first part of a wider study of five French villages concerning the behaviour of those who leave agriculture. Grand-Failly is notable in demonstrating an absence of rural depopulation and mobility because of its proximity to the steel centre at Longwy. In other circumstances a village like G. F. would have undergone depopulation as a consequence of modernization in agriculture after World War II. The fact that the families of those who become steel workers can remain in the village contributes to the survival of the peasant community. A paradox lies in the fact that G. F. shows the survival of peasant values and behaviour although three quarters of the villagers have left agriculture, since those who stick to agriculture represent to all the "spirit" of the community, it seems that no further hazards to the agricultural life are likely to modify the fate of this village community as a sociological unit. Within the French rural world, G. F. thus stands as an example of what Lévi-Strauss labelled "the archaic illusion". It appears that the ethnographers who saw in G. F. above all a peasant community, have fallen victims to such an illusion.

Araden, or "The Paradise Garden". Land and People in a Chaldean Village, North of Iraq. The inhabitants of Araden are Christian; they are part of the Assyro-Chaldean people. They speak their language and share their cultural values. The population consists of three groups of families whose social structures are cemented by solidarity. Araden may be said a rural democracy as long as important decisions are collectively taken by all the men of the village. The needs of the population are covered by a polyculture in which collective work takes a large place. With the help of the government, Araden could produces surpluses which would be useful to the country. But it was destroyed during the civil war which opposed Kurde people to Bagdad's government (1961-1975). In spite of the difficult conditions, part of the population which had fled away returned to the village.