Sociology and Space, No. 40-42, 1973.
Original scientific paper
Hypothetical Framework for Studying Farm Families
Ruža First-Dilić
Abstract
The farm family is the most important group in the Yugoslav village, because
the agricultural areas which are privately owned, are organized into the family
farms on which family members work, living exclusively or mostly from this work.
Therefore the rural family is at the same time a production as well as a consumer
unit, and the basic pressumption of its existence is the patrimonial unity and
its preservation. The private ownership of land by family groups as the basic
means of production, which enables the existence of this group, defines the farm
family as a production relation, which determines both the relations within the
family as well as outside the family.
Thus, united and mutual dependence upon work and private (land) ownership,
peasants and the land, the family and family farm, the family group and
working group, the consumation and production are differential specifics of
the rural family, which distinguish it from families of other professional backgrounds.
From here the author presents the general pressumptions relevant for
analyzing farm families: 1. When patrimony is the existential basis of a family
group, the individual family is an economic unit in society. 2. When his own work
becomes the existential basis of each person, the individual family stops being
an economic unit in society.
For developing the typology of the family organization in general, the author
differentiates from three ideal types — extended family, stem family, nuclear
family — which makes an one-dimentional continuum. In addition, through analytical
access into the rural family as a specific, the author strives to confirm when and with what traits the rural family approaches the ideal types. The author
starts from two general hypotheses: 1, If the family is an economic unit in
society, the larger structure of the family organization is more often than the
nuclear structure. 2. In the modern Yugoslav village, all three ideal types of
farm families exist at the same time.
Since, under modem conditions, the empirical types of farm families do not
correspond with the ideal types, it is more correot to classify the agricultural
family, not on the basis of a three-celled continuum, but rather on the basis
of a multidimensional typology. Existing structures of family organizations of
farmers are located in the space of attributes, in which they are formed, they
live and ohange simultaneously and parallely with the types of family organizations
of non-agriculturists.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
119647
URI
Publication date:
7.12.1973.
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