EVEN IF THEY THINK NOT, YOU CARRY IT INSIDE: LAND, FAMILY AND MORAL ECONOMY IN DE-AGRARIANISATION PROCESSES

Identifier:  imarina:9366536

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/imarina9366536

Authors:  González-Puente, M

Abstract:
This article deals with the socio-cultural dimensions of land in family de-agrarianisation processes, an invisible reality under economistic approaches to agrarian transformations. We analyse the values, duties, and imaginaries about land in different generations of families that run wine farms in Penedes region (Catalonia). Decisions about the family's land and its future orientations are ruled not only by market structures but by kinship and the moral codes of filiation and mutuality. Inherited land is still transmitted as an inalienable patrimony which cannot be freely disposed of and whose sale is perceived as illegitimate, even by de-agrarianisated generations. In a context of growing commodification, values, moral duties, and affections to the family's land do not diminish, but instead, under a contingent moral economy, compromise the de-agrarianisation and capitalist accumulation. Despite family de-agrarianisation, there are cultural resistances to abandoning agrarian production as a way of life. These resistances reflect intense cultural ideals and bonds with the land, that are difficult to change, embedded in kinship and out of step with the rapid material erosion of agrarian structures. Sociocultural de-agrarianisation is slower than the economic one.