Sociology and Space, No. 71-72, 1981.
Original scientific paper
Individualism and Cooperativism among the Peasantry
Alija Hodžić
Abstract
As production is modernized and
private farms emerge onto the
market, there is a growing
importance of external factors of
production. Work is socially
equalized on the market, and the
inefficiency of the small agricultural
producer revealed. The peasant
tries to avoid that primarily by the
use of mechanization, in which he
is partly successful, depending on
the potential of his farm. To
achieve an income on parity with
the income of his social
environment and to satisfy his
growing needs, he is forced to seek
work outside his farm, or even to
leave it.
We are witnesses of a process in
which tools are becoming less
sacred, and land and ownership,
as the basic values of the peasantry,
demythologized, especially on
farms with stronger economic
bases and a progressive type of
economic reproduction. The
fundamental cultural ihange is that
links with the farm are losing their
many facets (affective relationship,
social importance etc.) and are
being reduced to its economic
function (usefulness and
profitability). What made the peasant culture
authentic was its autarkic manner
of production and the resulting
closed-in way life. Its modern
un-authenticity, i.e. the fact that in the modern village culture has
essential impulses outside the
village, is based on the
disintegration of that autarky. That
change is global and epochal, and is
abolishing the peasantry as a
separate socio-cultural group.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
119437
URI
Publication date:
18.6.1981.
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