Leaving Agriculture, Remaining a Peasant

Up to the second half of the twentieth century, France was essentially a rurally oriented society. Effective agricultural modernisation only developed in the 1960's. This `silent revolution' as it was labelled established a rift between two types of agriculture and two ways of life, the `peasant' and the `modern'. While as a group French peasants were 'modernising' both within and without agriculture, a fringe of small farmers and farm workers resisted such a questioning of their previous way of life. Paradoxically they actually left the land so as to remain `peasants' and maintain the old-engrained values of traditional society, sometimes in employment far removed from work on the land. Raised within traditional agriculture at a time when modernisation has become the overall rule, they cling to an older collective representation. This prevents them from understanding and adapting to the changing agriculture. Shut to the value system of their new professional environment, they keep a cognitive orientation which remains essentially `peasant'. This contributes to their persistent identification with the older stereotypes of the `sportive', `sociable', and `spendthrift' peasant life.