Abstract
Agricultural machinery and social change : access to machines through machinery cooperatives (cuma), and the impact of agricultural organisations in two cantons of the department of Haute-Garonne. — Agricultural mechanisation is a relatively recent phenomenon among the small peasant farms of Southwestern France, and one important channel of development has been the agricultural machinery cooperatives (cuma). This article looks at the way peasants gain access to machinery in a region where various organisations have sought to encourage these cooperatives. The cuma is established by the intervention of an outsider in the local community, the particular agricultural and social context in which the cooperative must function. It was found that the cooperatives tended to run according to the existing patterns of interaction among members of the community. The drawbacks of purchasing and using machinery together with others were keenly perceived by the peasants in view of the differences between the « traditional » and more advanced among them, and unless the cooperative could create an organisational structure to overcome this, the advanced peasants tended to monopolize the benefits of development for themselves. The experience of the four communities studied suggests that there is no continuum between individualism and the development of a « cooperative spirit ».
Published Version
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