Contenu du sommaire : La Terre : succession et héritage

Inheritance Practices and Institutions in Auvergne and Limousin under the Monarchy Located in the Old Provençal language aire, the two adjacent provinces of Auvergne and Limousin, both with few cities, were legally distinct : the former was a land of customary, and the latter, of written law. However, the same necessities, resulting from like environments, brought about similar inheritance practices in both provinces. In order to keep landed patrimony as undivided as possible from generation to generation, the father favored both the institution of an heir through a marriage contract of the senior son or daughter and the declaration, also through marriage contracts, of the status of junior family members. Though having many advantages, this system marginalized wills, testaments and donations : these were used in abnormal situations or as a delaying tactic. The division of a patrimony occurred seldom, only when the father died ab intestat, with no married heirs, or when collateral heirs divided the estate.

Inheritance and the Peasantry during the French Revolution : A Major Misunderstanding How was peasant opposition to the french Revolution related to the revolutionary legislation that, after several mainly political vicissitudes, resulted in the compromise of the Civil Code ? How did the peasantry experience the transition, which obviously involved laws, from the monarchy to the republic ? How did it react ? The author has distinguished three phases : a) the enactment of new, unitary and egalitarian legislation ; b) reactions ranging from passive resistance to the invention of parrying techniques ; c) the Civil Code. This "brilliant compromise" authorized "both the strictest egalitarianism where it was already usual to practise it and a very marked inegalitarianism in the areas most under the influence of written law".

The Individual and the Land, or the "Country Order" according to the French Civil Code Rural property is property, and farmers are citizens. The drafters of the Civil Code did not recognize any specific relationship between the individual and the land. Regardless of the object or its owner, property rights cannot be divided, for they would then no longer be "the right to enjoy and dispose of things in the most absolute way". However, the "country order", the necessities of production, and the force of timeless usages led legislators to recognize volens nolens the particularity of the tenancy of rural property. Thus arose a complex notion of exploitation, which could threaten the unity of property rights. ,

Contemporary Forms of the Devolution of Farms Observation reveals that the legal forms for devolving farms (exploitations agricoles) have diversified, and that previously unknown formulas have appeared that mainly rely on the utilization of company-type forms in agriculture. The latter legally shape intergenerational collaboration and favor the development of farms that are forced to adapt to the economic environment. They also make it possible to avoid family "disinvestment" immediately after the parents' retirement and the settling of a succession. As a result, the costs of transmitting family capital are reduced or delayed.

Local Land Systems : A Historical Approach to the Relationship between Forms of Land Usage and Industrial Growth After recalling how, at the end of the 18th century in Great Britain, industrialists managed to have protectionism abolished, a measure that ruined English agriculture, the author describes the major local land systems that have marked French agriculture since the Revolution : large properties organized around a castle (western France) ; the share-cropper system in central France ; the system of "sacred egoism" in Brittany and Normandy ; the convivial system in the Beam and Basque regions, the Massif Central and Alsace ; and land systems based on direct owner farms in the southern and eastern Massif Central. Unlike Great Britain, these various land systems and the industrial sector have never come into contradiction, because French capitalism was, above all, centered in the banks. But the land systems have come undone since World War II. as the family farm, composed of an old "core" of lands in freehold and of land rented from several small farmers, has developed.

The Variety of the Ways of Devolving Property : Tenacious Geography This article analyses the results of a 1980 survey of 400 rural notaries public in France. This survey's aim was to understand the means of devolving property ; regional differences ; the continuity, or modification, in relation to the customary substratum in operation till the adoption of the Civil Code ; and changes as a function of recent legal, sociological and economic transformations. Responses were used to draw up a map of local practices. The most striking characteristics is the persistance of regional traditions 180 years after the enactment of the Civil Code. The boundary between the areas with "written" and with "customary" law is still clearly visible : nearly all of southern France, except for viticultural and large forest zones, practises the full inheritance of property whereas the poles of an egalitarian tradition, such as Normandy, the North, Berry. Anjou and Poitou, continue applying a strict system of dividing property among heirs. Many signs indicate that very rapid changes are under way as full inheritance practices are being widely adopted. Since land prices began falling and agriculture has plunged into a demographic and economic crisis, behaviors tend to converge.

Inheritance and the Organization of Property : Reflections on the Corsican Example Is communal property in Corsica private property ? Is private property personal property ? Is property inherited ? By rising these three questions, as much as by trying to answer them, the author intends to show that, underlying the apparent uniformity of forms of land appropriation and devolution, there subsists a plurality of models governing people's relation with the land and, therefore, relations among themselves. These models are based as much on a cultural logic of meaning as on a practical logic of efficiency.

An Attempt to Explain Falling Land Prices During a long period from 1850 to 1940, the trend in French land prices resulted from changes in ground rent, which were related to the yield of the land. This is the reason that land prices go down during a recession. The facts seem to support this theory : the price of land is the capitalization of the ground rent that can be obtained from it, and this rent varies with the yield. Between 1950 and 1978, the price of land was multiplied by 3.7 and then from 1978 to 1985. decreased 44%. This change resulted from the trend of the gross added value. Itself related to ground rent, which is statistically correlated better with the price of land during the 1960s, whereas the gross added value has more explanatory value for the recent period. A geographical analysis shows that these changes should be related to changes in systems of production.

The New Heads of Farms (1979-1981) Those persons who began heading farms between 1979 and 1981 differ in many respects : the size of the farms taken over, their bonds of kinship with those who farmed the land before them, age. previous place of residence, and the combination of activities within the household. The "classical" installation of young family helpers on middle-sized or large farms has not occurred very often. Hence, the rotation of farm heads does not seem to be a factor tending toward a single type of farm. On the contrary, it is involved in the reproduction of the diversity of French agriculture. This diversity comes not only from competition but also from the way farm families function in relation to the larger environment.

The Economic Anthropology of Inheritance This article deals with the anthropological underpinnings of neoclassical models of the transmission of estates. Made up of family enterprises, agriculture is especially concerned with the objectives and conditions of the accumulation and transmission of patrimony. After emphasizing the difficulty of defining patrimony independently of savings and capital, this article examines the various formalizations of altruistic behaviors, in particular within the Family Economy. Certain models propose that inheritance is a means of paying for services rendered by potential heirs, or else a residue resulting from uncertainty about the time of death. As currently formulated, these models reflect the sociological context used in drawing them up. Inheritance practices, depending on whether or not they take into account human capital, effect a compensation or reinforcement of inequality among offspring. The quest for optimal practices encounters a difficulty related to external effects whenever the share received by the spouse enters into consideration. In conclusion, the partial nature of the proposed models is emphasized along with the limits imposed by the individualistic postulate underlying the neoclassical approach.

Undistrainable Family Property: The Politics and Legislation of Small Property under the Third Republic Toward 1890, all political factions agreed on the need to support agriculture, which consisted of a peasantry sunken in debt and farms split up in parcels. Following the example of the American Homestead Act. a July 12. 1909 law instituted "undistrainable family property", for each household, included the house and its lands, of a value less than 8000 francs. Since such property was absolutely undistrainable, it could not be mortgaged. Despite modifications after 1920, the law was not very successful. Of greater import was the introduction of measures about succession that were inspired by Le Play and advocated by Social Catholics. A 1909 law, by allowing exemptions from the egalitarian rules of the Civil Code, maintained the indivisibility of property. After 1938, these measures were extended to cover all rural property. Family property was thus at the origin of the preferential attribution of a rural estate to an heir who himself would work the land, a preference recognized by current legislation.