Què farem amb aquesta terra? Una etnografia de la (des)agrarització

Identifier:  TDX:4147

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX4147

Authors:  González Puente, Marc

Abstract:
De-agrarianisation processes refer to the erosion of agriculture in the economic, social, and biophysical aspects of rural areas. Land abandonment, family farms’ disappearance, the lack of farm successors, as well as farmers’ decreasing and aging have become a constant in contemporary agrarian transformations so far. Taking into consideration the urgent need from public policies and academia to face the systemic and all-encompassing crisis of the agrarian sector, the aim of this thesis is to analyse de-agrarianisation processes and the dynamics of their responses from different scales. First, from public land banks in Catalonia which, are understood as institutional responses to de-agrarianisation aimed at facilitating access to land. Then, from farms and agrarian families, in order to know the factors influencing their decisions to face the de-agrarianisation. Following the ethnographic method, observation and interviews have been used data collection techniques. The analysis is structured in four articles/chapters. Chapter III revolves around the discourses, values and imaginaries regarding de-agrarianisation and access to land of people involved in Baix Camp land bank (technical agents, landowners and land seekers). In Chapter IV the institutional discourses of eight land banks are analysed in order to examine their deployment, their potential and their uncertainties. Land significations and narratives emerging from land banks, as well as the material and symbolic crossroads of farms without successor are also explored. In Chapter V a processual-intergenerational perspective is used to study the trajectories, the strategies and the future orientations of contemporary part-time farming and its heterogeneous nexus with de-agrarianisation processes. In Chapter VI, the sociocultural dimensions guiding agrarian families’ decisions are analysed. Symbolic and cultural aspects of land as well as different dimensions and rhythms contained in de-agrarianisation processes are also made visible. Land’s moral economy and the existence of cultural resistances to accumulation and de-agrarianisation processes are also explored.