TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 615 The Corncribs ofBuzet: ModernizingAgriculture in the French Southwest. By Peter H. Amann. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. Pp· xiv + 292; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.50. Since the early 1960s, reformers have pushed for the rapid ratio nalization of French agriculture. Promulgated by agricultural exten sion agents, the representatives of professional agriculture, politi cians, and the media, powerful images of tractors and “progress” have come to dominate the rural French mindscape. In The Corncribs of Buzet: Modernizing Agriculture in the French Southwest, Peter Amann undertakes an ambitious project, chronicling the post—World War II process of agricultural modernization in five rural communes, or townships, in the département of Haute Garonne, far distant from France’s most favored agricultural regions. After a brief discussion of his research project, Amann devotes one lengthy chapter to each community, describing first the historical technology of agriculture— patterns of land ownership, tool inventories, traditional crops, and the like—and then proceeding to provide a more detailed discussion of these issues for the period beginning in 1945.'Amann draws extensively on archival sources, supplemented by interviews with about 100 farmers. Although Amann situates his work in the context of other historical studies of the French rural dweller’s shift from peasant to citizen, he seems primarily concerned with detailing “progress” as indexed by the presence of machines,-particularly machinery suited to field crops such as tractors or harvester-combines. Amann’s account of Buzetsur -Tarn, the most agriculturally successful of the communities, can be summed up in one word—tractors. Amann suggests that the post-1945 acquisition of a first tractor by most Buzet farmers led inexorably to agricultural intensification, transforming Buzet’s peas ants into high-intensity/high-productivity family farmers employing a vast arsenal of machinery, chemical inputs, and irrigation and drain age systems. The story seems less obvious in the other four townships, yet Amann retains his initial perspective. Amann’s motorization focus is likely the result of what he admits was his original intention—to study the formal governmentsponsored land consolidation/redistribution program known as re membrement. All of the five communities discussed in this book had completed remembrement in the 1970s, unlike the large majority of French communes. This issue suggests a related difficulty with Amann’s choice of communities. As a historian concerned with ease of access to archival material, Amann chose to research rural communes located in only one département rather than identify research sites according to more analytical criteria. Amann consistently presents far less detail when discussing live stock than field crops; hence, there is a disappointing lack of detail on dairy production, a gap made particularly noticeable because Amann 616 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE himself suggests that dairying figured importantly in the moderniza tion of several of his communities. Of greater importance, however, is one subject area that Amann himself notes did not form part of his study—the family. As well as avoiding this question during research, Amann seems to be unaware of the growing literature, particularly in anthropology, about the farm and family and technology in France (see esp. Martine Segalen, Susan Carol Rogers, and Lisa Groger). Throughout the community-study chapters, Amann seems to ac cept uncritically the high-intensity/high-productivity modernization model. He does discuss some key factors in the modernization process—the extension of the French social security regime to agri culture, and the importance of political and professional contacts in obtaining subsidies—yet he never fully incorporates these nontechnological issues into his overall analysis until the final chapter. In his conclusion, Amann shows us a more thorough, multifaceted glimpse of the processes he has chronicled in his five communities. Here, he suggests that the drive toward high-intensity/high-productivity agri culture appears to be “adapted to a very specific political environ ment” (p. 233) and notes that the future is far from certain. I would have liked to have seen him explore more fully the larger contours of this “very specific political environment,” but he does succeed in adding considerably to our knowledge of the mechanization of certain aspects of agricultural production in southern France. This book will...