On Rurality, Rural Development and

Rural Sociology

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg

Introduction

In this chapter I will discuss the concept of rurality. This is not only of
scientific interest: the search for a proper definition of rurality that goes
beyond former and increasingly inadequate conceptualizations is also of
social and political interest. 'Rural development' is acquiring an increas-
ingly prominent position on EU1 and national agendas. 2 Meanwhile,
growing cities, the urbanization of the countryside, an agricultural sector
burdened with problems and the ever present and burning issue of 'areas
lagging behind in development' constitute a complex of urgent problems
within Europe as a whole. The urgency of these problems and the intro-
duction of the concept of rural development into political discourse 3 raises
several questions which are far from simple. What, in fact, is the rural?
What is the rural we want to develop? And how is the countryside to be
moulded given the new claims being articulated by the cities?
In several arenas where Wageningen rural sociologists work 4 these
questions and issues emerge as key-issues on larger agendas. Roughly
synthesized it is possible to suggest that the rural today represents a
misunderstood, if not an unknown reality. There is, as Marsden et al.(1990,
p. 12) argued, 'a conceptual hiatus.' 5 It is not clear what we should
understand as the rural or what it ought to be. The rural appears to be
void as a concept and consequently is a vigorously debated empirical
reality. Some argue, for example, that there is no longer any countryside 6
in the Netherlands and maintain, despite opposition, 7 that rurality belongs
to the past.
Underlying these questions and issues it is possible to discern a second
level of complexities: will there be any room in the future for what we
currently understand as the rural when nearly every corner of the world
is affected and reshaped by processes of globalization? Is it possible, in an
epoch of globalization, to shape the rural along politically inspired lines?
40 Images andRealities ofRural Life

Searchingfor Ingredients and Their Common Denominator

In this chapter I will try to outline some of the ingredients that I believe
are essential to the concept of rurality. None of these ingredients is, in
itself, decisive to the demarcation of a sharp boundary between the rural
and the urban. In combination, however, they constitute gradations that
make up the differences between the two. This combination is not a
random phenomenon, itis a central denominator. Consequently, Iwill first
discuss the ingredients that, taken together, form the basis for a concept
of rurality that bridges past, present and future. Although rurality has
many location-specific expressions, which become particularly clear when
we use a comparative method (Hofstee 1985b), rurality is above all, as I
will argue, a constant through time.
Subsequently, I will examine the basic misunderstanding of changing
rurality, a misunderstanding with specific (urban as well as rural) causes
and backgrounds. Finally, I will tackle the most elusive and nebulous of
discussions: the issue of rural development in the near future.
It is obvious that any debate on rurality and rural development will
involve an assessment of the raison d'être of rural sociology. Or to put it
in another way, it is through the redefinition of rurality and rural develop-
ment that the relevance of several elements of the work of Wageningen
sociology becomes clear.8 In this chapter I therefore comment on some of
the work being carried out by the 'Wageningen School.' Thus, this
chapter can also be read as a critical review of the 'state-of-the art' of
Wageningen rural sociology.

On Rurality as Co-production of Man and Nature

Rurality was once a self-evident notion (Duby 1984, p. 7). Today it is

increasingly accompanied by a question-mark. In public debate, the
'rural' is primarily associated with transiency and remoteness. If it ever
existed, it is to be located in times far removed from modernity. And if it
'still' exists then it is in some peripheral location, far away. Rurality is
where tourists go to discover the counter-image of the city from which
they long to escape. Rurality is 'paradise lost': Macondo (Garcia Marquez
1972) or Jorwerd, the village forgotten by God (Mak 1996).
The intriguing aspect is that concerns about the disappearance of
villages, the demise of the rural economy and the restructuring of agricul-
ture are not only present-day obsessions. One could return to almost any
time-space location and find oneself embroiled in exactly the same dis-
cussion. The disappearance of the rural or, to be more precise,fearof disap-
pearing rurality, seems to be a constant factor in recent history. One could
also argue that the persistence or reemergence of the rural is an equally
 On Rurality, Rural Development andRural Sociology 41

constant factor. If this were not so, the threat of rural fade-out could not
be regretted time-and-again.
Contrary to current trends in the literature, I will not try to situate the
specificity of the rural in population density, the relative importance of
agriculture, the relative lack of services and facilities or other 'objectified'
categories (Huillet 1994; Hoggart et al. 1995).9 Working with such cat-
egories can only produce an image of a disappearing countryside. 10
Equally, such categories frequently frustrate comparative analysis and
therefore obscure any basic understanding of the essence of the rural.
More importantly, the use of such statistics is at odds with the essence of
the question: the way rurality is continually being constructed and recon-
structed. Rurality, as I will argue, is the continuously changing result of
a many-sided and highly complex social process that is critically depend-
ant on certain specific mechanisms.

YJhat,Then, Is the Essenceof Rurality?

The debate as to what constitutes urban and rural identities is probably as

old as civilization itself. The continuously changing, opposing, yet com-
bined, constellations known as city and countryside are both products of
the process of civilization. Curiously enough, recent scientific and social
debate has reduced the discussion of rurality to a one-sided equation in
which the rural and the urban become mirror images. As a result, more
urbanization cannot but be interpreted as less rurality.
What is missing in today's debates is an awareness that both the rural
and the urban are understood as being intrinsically interwoven (albeit
differentiated) aspects of civilization. Hence, the rural is not to be defined
simply as the opposite of the urban - it is also to be defined in relation to
the opposite of civilization, that is, 'wilderness.' The quest for the rural
cannot be grounded in one equation alone. Such a quest involves the
discussion of two boundaries: the boundary between the urban and the
rural, and the boundary between the rural and the non-civilized.
Nature movements in western Europe (especially those in the Nether-
lands) 11 are making us increasingly aware of this latter boundary. Through
their claim for a nature unaffected by man (heard most frequently from
the more radical sections of the nature movements), the notion of rurality
is becoming increasingly embedded in (and defined by) two equations.
Itisthe transformation wrought by mankind that distinguishes the rural
from wilderness. In 'pure' nature there are no people. 'Pure' nature is
nature unaffected by man, history or society. This is precisely where it
differs from the rural. In the countryside we feel, taste, see and hear
man's presence. The rural cannot be conceived of, experienced, or con-
structed without the presence of man. 12 The rural, then, is the locus where
the co-production13 of man and nature is [Link], rurality as
such is both the result and expression of this co-production.
42 Images and Realities of Rural Life

The second boundary, that between the rural and the urban, can now
be defined as the next logical step. The urban is the locus where the co-
production of man and nature stops. While there may well be 'green
elements' in the city, the co-production of man and nature is not essential
to cities. This difference might be sharpened if we introduce the notion of
a 'living' versus a 'dead' nature. Cities - including amongst other
things their associated industries - may well derive resources such as
cotton, iron ore, coal and uranium from nature. But they derive these
products in the first place as dead material and, secondly, they do not
reproduce the nature concerned.
The realm of the rural, by contrast, constantly uses and reproduces
'living nature' (eco-systems, bio-diversity) or, more specifically, cows,
fields, woods, crops and dung. This reproduction in particular, appears to
be a crucial difference.
Rurality isthe ongoing co-production of man 14 and nature. Consequent-
ly, the rural does not contain 'pure' nature. 11 The nature embedded in
the rural is a co-product, resulting from the interaction and co-evolution
of man and nature. It is both the enriched outcome of co-production and
the substance for further co-production. The same is true for 'man.' The
rural does not contain an abstract society or any society as such. It
involves and is built upon a society16 that is moulded to deal with co-
production. In the context of co-production, nature is not purely natural,
nor is society purely 'social.' The two are 'contingent' and 'heterogen-
eous' (Bijker and Law 1992, pp. 8-10). They constitute each other mutual-
ly. The one cannot be understood without the other and vice versa.
In as far as nature is absent in the urban, the city can definitely be said
to differ from the countryside. The urban is society moulded according to
organizing principles developed by mankind itself. The need to deal with
nature is not present in the urban. Hence, the typical arrangements associ-
ated with the co-production of the human and the natural are also absent
in the cities.
As far as the rural is concerned, I am using the term co-production in
the broadest possible sense of the word. In the first place co-production
refers to the interaction between man and living nature, that is the process
of production in which 'nature' is converted into goods and services for
human consumption. Agricultural production is evidently one of the basic
components of such co-production. Co-production is,however, not limited
to this alone. Man's needs are not limited to food. The notion of co-
production refers to a double boundedness: not only does mankind condi-
tion co-production, nature also conditions the same co-production. Nature
is not, to paraphrase a well-known expression from the school of social-
constructivism, as malleable as clay. Nature, especially living nature,
imposes its own rules. Just as society does. It is precisely the encounter
between the two, nature and mankind, that makes for co-production.
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 43

The co-production of man and nature not only involves the immediate
process of production, that is the production of goods and services to be
consumed. Co-production necessarily implies a strong unity of both
production and reproduction (Sevilla Guzman and Gonzalez Molina 1990).
Through co-production, the physical conditions for the very continuity of
the process of production (that is, its reproduction over time) are to be
secured. When using a field, the reproduction of soil fertility should be
secured, in order to be able to use the field in the next cycle. One has to
be sure that a cow has a calf both to secure next year's milk supply and
as a replacement for the cow herself if she becomes 'dry.'
Not only must the physical conditions for continuity be secured, the
required socialrelations must also be maintained. Hence, co-production as
allocated in the rural also implies the reproduction of specific social
relations of production. Through this set of relations, not only does the
social become organized in a specific way but also nature is moulded into
specific forms and patterns. In short, specific social relations (interwoven
with the fabric of society at large, but with their own uniqueness) are the
main ingredients, if not the central vehicles of rurality.

The Rural: Not Exclusively Agricultural

Rurality is not limited to agriculture alone;it often goes far beyond it. This
can be illustrated at various levels. First, one can refer to 'materialized'
rurality of, for example, the wide range of landscapes (Meeus et al. 1988),
and embedded in the natural and cultural values produced through the
encounter between society and nature in earlier centuries. The imprint of
rurality is omnipresent in at least 80 percent of our territories, if not
directly then through the chains that link the present to the past. Then
there is culture: the ongoing encounter between man and nature produced
(and was supported by) a particular culture in which the prerequisites, the
mechanisms as well as the outcomes of co-production are specified and
highlighted. Although the concrete expressions of such a culture differ
considerably according to their location in time and space, there seem to
be some general traits, often misunderstood, but which reappear time and
again. Here we might mention, for example, the family as an organizing
principle (bridging inter-generational reproduction), continuity, self-suffi-
ciency,self-employment and autonomy, sacrifice, hardship and hard work,
as well as the notion of 'doing a proper job.'
Secondly, we have to take into account that the encounter with nature
is also basic to such activities as hunting, fishing, forest management,
countryside recreation and to living in the countryside. Many colleagues
(see for example, Kayser 1990, 1995; Brunori 1994) have documented
repeuplement or contro-urbanizzazione. They made it crystal clear that the
movement from town to countryside is directly inspired by the specific
values encountered in the rural. Rurality is an interest of society as a
44 Images and Realitiesof Rural Life

whole. Such an interest evidently is not a residue from the past, but rather
becomes more strongly expressed as cities grow and society becomes more
urbanized (that is, more distantiated from the rural).
Rephrasing this point in more general terms, one could argue that
agriculture (but not only agriculture) produces and also consumes rurality
(in as far as farmers use nature, live in the countryside, and so on). How-
ever, the consumption of rurality (which is evidently related to a positive
valuation of rurality) increasingly extends beyond agriculture. Rurality is
equally reproduced through the repeuplement of the countryside, through
agro-tourism, through hunting and fishing, and through the consumption
of region-specific agricultural produce. At the same time,it is clear that the
consumption of rurality is only possible if rurality is also actively pro-
duced: the consumption of fossils is something quite different to the
consumption of rurality. 17
Thirdly, the basic ingredients of co-production (such as, for example,
craft and a certain distantiation from markets) often extend far beyond
agriculture. In fact, they move back and fore, often resulting in highly
complex if not contradictory constellations. In the 1960s and early 1970s,
South American colleagues described the ruralizacionof cities - a phenom-
enon that was rooted in the large barriadasthat emerged from the rural
exodus and where food production for self consumption became a typical
feature. However, craft and distantiation from markets (a phenomenon I
will analyse later under the heading of 'petty commodity production')
were not limited to 'city-gardens.' They overflowed, as it were, into what
we now know as the informal sector. We could just as easily draw paral-
lels here with Russia of the 1990s, for example, where it is absolutely
unclear whether some 80 percent of the population should be character-
ized as small peasants or as members of the urban population.
A similar confusion exists in western Europe. Later in this chapter I will
discuss such phenomena as part-time farming and the creation of new,
non-agricultural small and medium enterprises out of existing agricultural
enterprises. Without going further into details, it does not seem to be too
risky to hypothesize that rurality is indeed reduced to agriculture alone
(and probably even further reduced within the agricultural sector itself) in
certain political,economic and ideological conjunctures, whilst under other
circumstances the rural ismuch more extensive in [Link] specifically,
one could argue that current processes of rural development, such as we
are witnessing throughout Europe today, do in fact imply an expansion of
rurality. I will return to this point later.

Dealing with Co-production: Some Specific Ingredients of Rurality

In this section I will analyse some of the elements or ingredients involved

in the production and reproduction of rurality. The elements to be dis-
 On Rurality, Rural Development andRural Sociology 45

cussed are all related in one way or another to the rural as co-production
of the social and the natural. None of these elements are decisive in
themselves. Rather the combination and synergy of this whole gamut of
features forms the stuff of rurality. It is the differences in the emerging
combinations that constitute the dazzling variety of the rural as a concrete
expression bounded by time and space.

The Centrality ofCraft

Since the co-production of man and nature basically concerns the trans-
formation and reproduction of living nature (Toledo 1992), one of its
central, although frequently disputed ingredients is craft. Specific parts of
the eco-systems and the bio-diversity contained in it are transformed (into
specific use a n d / o r exchange values) and simultaneously reproduced in
and through farming. Hence, diversity, variability and a certain degree of
unpredictability are intrinsic to the elements that enter farming as labour
objects. During the farm labour process itself, these features are enlarged
further - in every cycle of production but also as far as the accumulation
of successive cycles of production, that is agrarian history, are concerned.
In this respect it is telling that in agriculture, technological development
did not narrow the scope of diversity, variability and unpredictability.
Rather it enlarged it (van der Ploeg 1990).
The way to cope with diversity, variability and unpredictability intrinsic
to the objects of labour is through craft. Through craftsmanship these
potentially threatening features are converted into foundations for the
production of progress.
The labour process in agriculture is essentially artisanal: it is not and
cannot be completely industrialized. Neither can it be completely sub-
sumed to the logic of capital accumulation. The transformation of 'living'
nature into specific 'end-products' (milk, honey, potatoes, and so forth)
is a process which cannot be wholly forecasted, let alone completely
programmed and standardized. Themore sosince this transformation does
not take place in the isolation of a laboratory. Rather it interacts in all sorts
of ways with the 'surrounding' and often unpredictable nature. Techni-
cally speaking, this implies that during the labour process the transform-
ation itself (that is the evolving co-production) should be observed con-
tinuously, in order to be interpreted, to be corrected and to be observed
again. To put it bluntly: there is no general rule for cattle feeding or for
fertilizing the land. How a cow is fed depends critically on theperformance
of the particular animal and on the interrelated performance of the farmer
(that is, on the objectives of the farmer who is feeding her as well as on
his interpretation of her reactions). The same applies to a plot of land.
Through many years experience the farmer accumulates the knowledge he
needs in order to be able to fertilize a particular plot of land in the best
possible way.
46 Images ami Realitiesof Rural Life

Whilst in industry mental and manual labour have been separated to a

considerable degree (Braverman 1974), in agriculture the two remain
highly intertwined: the one isnearly impossible without the other. Dealing
with nature, in the context of co-production, requires a direct and organic
unity of mental and manual labour. Nature is a 'moving target.' The
object of labour is continuously changing, developing and becoming more
differentiated. Itis impossible toban the associated variance since it would
represent a major step backwards in the evolution of co-production. For,
in agriculture, knowledge, governance and conscious creation of further
variance are crucial to progress. 18
Craftsmanship (the concrete form into which the unity of mental and
manual labour iscondensed) attributes a specific superiority to the agricul-
tural process of production. That is the capacity to realize, under ceteris
paribus conditions, better productive results; to avoid unnecessary losses;
and to maintain the basis for ongoing endogenous improvements (van der
Ploeg and Long 1994;van der Ploeg and van Dijk 1995). This same super-
iority, together with the capacity to use non-commoditized circuits, which
I will discuss later, serves to explain the dominance of the family farm and
the artisanal production embedded in it, in most parts of the world. It is
only in loci defined by sharp political, economic and social inequalities
('imperfections in the markets' as the economists argue), where indus-
trialized forms of agriculture, based on wage labour relations and
consequently on a separation of mental and manual labour, are to be
found a n d / o r are reemerging.
It is of course possible to introduce organizational schemes, based on a
separation of mental and manual labour, into agricultural production. This
is the undeniable story of the haciendas, the plantations, the capitalist farms
(herenboerderijen) of the past and 'mammoth-farms' (mammoetbedrijveri) of
today. Three observations are, however, relevant here. Firstly, worldwide
comparative data show that under equivalent conditions, peasant and
farmers' production are both technically and economically superior to
large-scale, capitalist agriculture. 19 Secondly, it is telling that in European
agriculture in particular family farming (or petty commodity production)
has emerged as the dominant form. Thirdly, craft continually reemerges
even in places where it had disappeared for a time.
Craft, as well as the artisanal structure of the labour process in which
it is embedded, evinces an almost infinite range of concrete manifestations
and is highly variable as far as time and space are concerned. This richness
in form is not only due to the encounter with a changing nature. It is also
the result of social interests, perspectives and experiences, in short, of the
strategies of the actors involved.
Being a highly differentiated capacity, one understands that through
craft nature is elaborated into an ever expanding richness. Within the
context of co-production, man not only moulds nature into new forms -
he or she also moulds nature into a highly differentiated phenomenon that
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 47

contains an increased biodiversity. Through a specific organization of

space and time, soil productivity for instance is redistributed in such a
way that some fields become rich and others become poor (as was the case
with the baldios in Tras-os-Montes ; and the bluegrassfields and heather lands
in the Netherlands). As a consequence, new elements were added to the
flora and fauna and landscapes were made into highly specific and
mutually contrasting constellations.
The same occurred through the continuous reproduction of animals and
crops. Over the centuries, cattle selection resulted in a dazzling range of
different cows (as is illustrated, for example, in Felius' beautiful encyclo-
pedia of cattle breeds). 20 But within each breed there emerges also a
relevant heterogeneity. As is illustrated in Groen et al. (1993), the cow-as-
she-is (including specific genetic features and values) is always the out-
come of co-production: she is moulded and therefore made into what she
is by the strategic decisions of the farmer. This farmer, of course, does not
act as an isolated individual. He or she is linked to specific groups that
carry common experiences, insights and knowledge (see Beaudeau 1994)).
Those farmers who aim, for instance, at 'a production that is as high as
possible with as little labour input as possible' (known in the Netherlands
as 'machine men') create different cows to those created by the typical
'cowmen' or 'double goalers.' 21 This is reflected in the genetic potential
for milk production, in the behaviour of the animals, in the strength of the
legs, in muscularity and so forth.
Probably one of the most telling illustrations of how nature is moulded
and reshaped is to be found in the complex interaction between differenti-
ated breeds and differentiated farming strategies. Dutch fields are stocked
by so-called 'red-and-whites' and 'black-and-whites,' animals that
represent specific values to the farmers concerned (Maso 1986). The
'blacks' (zwartbonten) are the typical milking cows, whilst the 'reds' (or
MRY cattle) are a dual purpose breed: apart from milk, they render a
considerable quantity of high quality meat. In addition to the livestock
there are the farmers themselves, amongst whom we might distinguish for
example the typical 'cowmen' from 'double goalers.' The latter orient
their farming activities to both milk and meat production, while for the
former, only milk production matters. They want to 'see as much milk as
possible from every animal in the milking glasses' (see Roep et al. 1991).
The distribution of 'reds' and 'blacks' on the one hand, and of
'cowmen' and 'double goalers' on the other, is for historical reasons
not parallel. Some cowmen work with 'reds' and some double goalers
do have to operate with 'blacks,' which is, at first sight, a somewhat
unhappy marriage. Table 1 (derived from Groen et al. 1993; see also van
der Ploeg 1994a) provides us with some insight into the outcome of this
complex encounter between different strategies and different breeds.
48 Images and Realities of RuralLife

Table 1 The Differentiated Development of Milk Type and Dual Purpose Cows
within Different Farming Styles
Development of Development of muscles
milk cows
M D M D
Double goalers 96,2 98,6 104,3 102,6
Cowmen 99,4 99,8 101,8 100,7
All values in the columns are significantly different (P<0.001, chi square test; Mstands for
milk type cattle, Dfor dual purpose cattle

As the table shows: cowmen build their cattle (even when these are dual
purpose cattle) into good milking cows. The overall score for 'develop-
ment of milking cows' amongst cowmen is significantly higher than the
one realized by the double goalers. However, these double goalers rebuild
their cattle (through interlinked breeding decisions over time) into good
dual purpose cattle, even if they have to do this with 'blacks.' Whatever
the genotype (M or D),they realize the highest breeding values for muscu-
larity. This implies that it is not the genetic potential as such, but the
interaction between cattle and breeders, in other words co-production, that
makes cows into what they are.
Through the ongoing moulding and remoulding of their fields, their
cattle, and so on, farmers create, through their craft, entire productive
systems characterized by specific interrelations, regularities, potentials and
limitations. Productive systems cannot be understood as the more or less
progressive unfolding of 'nature' (and/or of the biological, physical and
chemical 'laws' this entails). Productive systems as a whole are also the
outcome of co-production and of a highly differentiated co-production at
that. This important point can be supported with an analysis of input
/output relations as contained in processes of production. This is summar-
ized in the four-diagram representation (Figure 1). The first diagram
(left/below) refers to the conversion of nutrients into fodder, that is: to
grassland production. The second diagram refers to the interrelations
between farm and feed market: it shows the extent to which the fodder,
as produced on the own farm, is supplemented with feed and fodder
bought on the market. The third represents the byre and relates to the con-
version of the total amount of feed and fodder available into milk and
meat.
In the interlinked diagrams two sets of lines (representing specific
input/output relations) are introduced. These lines refer to the 'regular-
ities' created by cowmen (C) and machine men (M). Taken together the
I / O ratios of the cowmen comprise a specific productive system. The same
goes for the I / O ratios created by the machine men (see for further details:
NRLO 1994).
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 49

Figure 1 A Four-Diagram Representation of the Practices of Cowmen and

Machinemen (Source: NRLO 1994)

15750
50 Images and Realities ofRural Life

All over the world, agriculture is characterized by different 'farming

systems.' Even within a quite limited space, one can often encounter an
impressive variety. As Figure 1 illustrates, this heterogeneity at the
material level (at the level of fields, yields, nutrient-inputs, animals, I / O
ratios, and so on) is the co-product of the strategically organized labour
processes of farmers, who through their specific and diversified crafts
make agricultural 'systems' into what they are. Through co-production
and craft, farmers (and through farmers the societies in which they are
embedded) materialize,as it were, into the hard core of the rural: in fields,
in landscapes, in cattle, in productive systems, in I / O ratios, in differenti-
ated levels of pollution (Schuthof, et al. 1994;Roep and Roex 1992), and in
specific products (Pohlman 1993;Roep etal.1995).Rurality is to be under-
stood not only at a symbolic level as an outcome of co-production, the
rural is also the material (co-)product of this highly differentiated and
complex co-production.
Figure 1 is also telling in another respect. One might wonder why the
group of farmers who are defining themselves as 'machine men' (M)
realize partial and overall I / O ratios that are considerably below those
realized by their collages (C).They know quite well how cowmen organize
their practices, the details are no secret. The answer emerges as soon as the
specific strategy of these machine men is projected into the fourth diagram
(left/upper). Whilst cowmen consider the surplus per milking cow to be
the most important indicator in analyzing and evaluating their own
performance as well as the performance of others, machine men are much
less interested in such indicators. For them the associated practices repre-
sent a waste of time: 'You loose time because you dedicate too much of
it to an individual cow.' They are more interested in large volumes.
Central to their strategy is the production of as much as possible with as
little labour input as possible ('without loosing time'). Hence the total
Gross Value of Production (GVP) per unit of labour (UL) emerges as the
central indicator. If this criterium is now introduced into the fourth dia-
gram, it shows that precisely through their specific practices in the fields,
markets and byres, they realize a score on GVP/UL that is considerably
higher than that of the cowmen. If we were to introduce 'surplus per
milking cow' as the main criterium, then the picture would be entirely
different. Once again: farmers mould 'the material' (here a farming
system as a whole) in such a way that it is reshaped according to their
insights, experiences, needs and perspectives. 22 They get what they want,
although not directly. In between the 'aims' and 'the results' is the
material, the 'non-human.' Neither the 'human' nor the 'non-human'
can be understood here in isolation. It is the co-production in which the two
are engaged and through which they are interlinked, that attributes identity,
specificity and significance to both the 'human' and the 'non-human.'
In agricultural science in general, attention is focused exclusively on the
'non-human.' In so doing, considerable parts of the rural (even a con-
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 51

siderable part, if not all of the empirically existing productive systems in

sensu stricto) are converted into 'unknown realities,' if not straightaway
into unknowable realities. Without, for example, the fourth diagram (that
condenses the goal-oriented behaviour of the farmers concerned) the other
three diagrams are converted into a world inhabited by lunatics, laggards,
traditionalists or God knows what. Without the 'fourth diagram,' one
does not understand why in the fields and byres of machine men (M) I / O
ratios are realized which, as such and taken in isolation, are 'too low.'
The same is also true of social sciences as applied to agriculture and the
countryside. Generally speaking, they focus only on the 'human' part of
the co-production equation. This makes the described ('partial') realities
and the institutions and cultural patterns they contain seem somewhat
'strange' to say the least.
I would argue that in Wageningen Sociology, the two - the 'human'
and the 'non-human' - are systematically combined, explored and
analysed. Hence our 'obsession' with yields, fields, cows and manure
(see Bolhuis and van der Ploeg 1985; Hofstee 1985a; Groen et al. 1993;
Schuthof et al. 1994). Our 'obsession' is shared by many of our colleagues
from what one might call the 'non-human' departments of our university
(Almekinders, Fresco and Struik 1995;Steenhuisen Piters 1995; Beaudeau
1994; Ubels and Horst 1993). It is an 'obsession' reflecting a basic under-
standing of, and a far-reaching interest in, the co-production of man and
nature. As such, it is an expression avant lalettre of what is now emerging
as social constructivism (Knorr-Cetina 1996; Latour 1994; Callon 1986).
Simultaneously, it must be said that at this particular juncture our weak-
ness alsobecomes [Link],including Knorr-Cetina, Latour and Callon
were required to understand the full scope and significance of the work
we were and are doing in Wageningen.

Extending Craft to Other Domains

Two additional considerations are needed here. The first is that craft-
dependent superiority as contained in farming is often extended to non-
agricultural [Link] there are direct interlinkages,as Bagnasco
(1988) describes for the Italian mezzadri who used their craftsmanship,
entrepreneurship and capacity to enrol in actor-networks, to build what is
now recognized as the vital small and medium industry in Emiglia
Romagna and Tuscany. The organic unity of mental and manual labour
and associated capabilities are transferred to other economic domains
(such as ceramics, metal and machine industries, clothing, transport, and
food processing), in order to reestablish, in a different setting, the super-
iority stemming from craft.
The second observation is that the relevance of craft sometimes extends
far beyond the rural as such. The rural is linked to the urban through the
provisioning of food, for example. Food is not just a commodity that is
simply interchangeable with any other commodity. It is not only price that
52 Images andRealities ofRural Life

governs the flow of this particular commodity called food. Consumers

expect safety, quality a n d / o r specificity. Hence, the flow of food is
embedded in expectations, norms, symbols, knowledge and ignorance. As
Ventura and van der Meulen (1994) have demonstrated, this makes for
particular food chains: circuits characterized by specific interfaces, where
processes of information and feedback, in short, processes of knowledge-
sharing link production and consumption.
The artisanal production of food increasingly represents an urban
interest. It is associated with food produced in a genuine way. It repre-
sents the opposite of industrially transformed food. And the more indus-
trially manipulated food becomes entangled in the one food scandal after
the other, the more this urban interest becomes one of the foundations for
reinforcing the typical rurality we are discussing here.
Is craft to disappear (Reuvekamp 1997)? And is the artisanal organiz-
ation of the agricultural labour process as one of the strategic vehicles of
rurality to disappear as well? I do not think so. What is expressed in and
through craft is precisely human capital. Agriculture today, especially in
western Europe, is a knowledge-intensive branch parexcellence. It is there-
fore extremely dependent on human capital, that is the capacity to master
co-production.
When this human capital becomes valorized through the new markets
that are emerging because of an increased social interest in the rural (as,
for example, the markets for high-quality produce, and for nature and
landscape preservation), it is highly probable that we will see a revival of
craft and consequently a strengthening of rurality (see also Brunori 1994).

On the Family Farm, Self-Employment andFreedom

All labour processes are embedded in and constituted by particular social

relations of production. The artisanal organization of farming is rooted in
a particular set of social relations of production, that is in small-scale
family farms or in more analytical terms in petty commodity production. 23
Essential topetty commodity production (PCP) is that it islinked to themarkets
aswell asdistantiated from them. It is precisely this combination that allows
for the realization of craft. Hence, the family farm is, just as craft, an
essential mechanism through which rurality is produced. The association
of the rural and the family farm is so close, that the latter even emerges
as one of the essential traits of the former.
Craft presumes a certain autonomy: the interrelations within the process
of production as well as the elements constituting it are to be ordered,
combined, structured and developed further according to the insights,
needs and perspectives of the actors involved. Here one might include
'living nature' as one of concerned 'actors': soil fertility, animals, and
biodiversity also have to be reproduced over time and sustainability must
be secured. This can only be done by following the intrinsic rationale of
 On Riirality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 53

co-production itself. The organization of the labour process, both in the

short and in the long term, is to be distantiated from the logic dominant
in the market.
Through PCP, that is through the actively created distantiation of
farming vis-à-vis the markets (both the input and output markets), a direct
submission of farming to and, consequently, a structuring of the process
of production according to the logic of the markets, can be avoided
(Friedmann 1980,1986). As has been shown in a range of studies (Bolhuis
and van der Ploeg 1985; Long et al. 1986; Benvenuti et al. 1989; Wiskerke
1997; Leeuwis 1989; van der Ploeg 1987, 1990; de Haan 1994), western
European farming is indeed actively distanced from these markets. As far
as the markets for land, machine services, capital, cattle, feed and fodder,
labour and plant material, for example, are concerned, European farming
embodies only a partialmarket dependency. A complete commoditization
of all factors of production and non-factor inputs is actively avoided albeit
in a variable way.
Wherever possible, the same is true as far as the interrelation between
farming and output markets isconcerned (Kerkhove 1994;Wiskerke 1997).
Commodity relations as entailed in the markets do not therefore penetrate
into the heart of the production process. They are, as it were, kept away
from the domains of production and reproduction. In this way, farmers
create the room for manoeuvre (Long 1984) which allows them to organize
farming according to their own strategies, thus make rurality into a phe-
nomenon that not only reflects market conditions but also a much wider
(and more complicated) array of driving forces. They create, to put it
succinctly, room for craft.
Analytically speaking, PCP and the family farm are not identical. In the
rural economy, as an empirical phenomenon, the two generally overlap.
The family farm is the dominant 'carrier' of PCP. The stability of the
family farm not only rests in the superiority to be derived from the craft
it entails and reproduces. It is also firmly embedded in a particular cul-
tural context, in 'rural culture,' that stresses the need to encapsulate
property in the family (in the domus) and regulates the use of labour
according to a specific 'moral economy' (see Friedmann 1986; de Haan
1994, but also the older work of Arensberg and Kimball 1948). If there is
any Achilles heel as far as rurality is concerned, it can probably be located
in this specific cultural context.
Many contemporary discussions highlight therelative decline of agricul-
ture within the rural economy and this is subsequently represented as
indicative of derealization. 2 4 One important question is, of course,
whether the rural economy can be equated with agrarian economy and, on
a more empirical level, whether agriculture ever has been the only econ-
omic activity in the countryside. Even more important is the question of
whether or not certain intersectoral changes in the rural economy refer to
a qualitative transformation that allows for a conclusion in terms of
54 Imagesand Realities of RuralLife

definitive deruralization. Through a myopic fixation on the number of

farms, the most central issue is overlooked. For despite all quantitative
changes, the structure of the rural economy, as defined by PCP, remains
basically the same. It is certainly remarkable that within some fifty years
nearly 50 percent of all farms have disappeared. However, it is equally
remarkable that the remaining enterprises are structured according to the
same principles that have characterized the rural areas for many centuries!
Probably it is even more telling that all kinds of new activities (such as
ecological farming, agro-tourism and small non-agricultural enterprises),
involving a range of new actors, incorporate the same principles. Hence,
it is also in and through the search for self-employment that the family
farm and PCP are continually being recreated.
Between 1850 and 1957 the level of employment in Dutch agriculture
rose from some 300,000 full-time labour equivalents to more than 670,000.
This period coincides with the big boom in Dutch agriculture. This con-
tinuous increase in both the quantity and quality (craft) of labour
expressed itself in an ongoing intensification of agricultural production
(Bieleman 1992).2oThe number of farms expanded more than employment
data suggest. From 1957onwards, the level of agrarian employment began
to decrease reaching about 250,000 by the mid-1990s. From the 1970s
onwards, it is significant that the number of farms decreased faster than
total agrarian employment.
In short, tendencies change and will continue to change. It is telling that
today the possibility of reaugmenting agrarian employment is again being
discussed seriously (see van Depoele 1996; van der Ploeg and van Dijk
1995;Saraceno 1996b).What remains constant, despite the tidal waves that
roll over the countryside, is a basic organizational principle: the unity of
the family farm and PCP.
In many analyses, petty commodity production (PCP) is represented as
a remnant of the past (see, for example, Bernstein 1977). This is, I believe,
an incorrect representation. One cannot deny the fact that the 'family
enterprise' is a social construction that emerged from a long historical
process of emancipation and socio-political struggle. If one goes back to
the first farm accountancy records available - in the Netherlands these
date from the late sixteenth century - one notes the extreme dependency
of the farm on external markets both on the input and at the output side
of the enterprise (van der Ploeg 1995a). 'Own resources' were scarce and
so were possibilities to control them. The family farm as we know it today
eventually emerged as the result of a long historical process: that is a farm
mainly, though not exclusively, built on resources owned, used and
controlled by the farming family itself. This process accelerated in the
period 1880-1930, taking the form of 'repeasantization.'
Slicher van Bath (1978), the well-known agrarian historian, identified
important keys to the analysis of this long-term process. Among these, the
notion of 'freedom' is strategic in the history of farming. Slicher van Bath
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 55

distinguishes between what he calls 'freedom from' and 'freedom to.'

'Freedom from' refers to the absence of (political, economic, class and
market) relations that harness and drain the family farm economy. Heavy
dependency on external markets - especially as far as the factor and non-
factor input markets are concerned - can have an asphyxiating effect here.
A certain autonomy can be gained through the creation of one's own
resource set (cf. van der Ploeg 1995a). Once established, such a set of
resources allows a certain 'freedom from' which, in turn entails a 'free-
dom to': it becomes possible to operate in a way that closely corresponds
with the interests, insights and prospects of the actors involved.
In current economic theories, the farm enterprise is essentially
represented as the meeting point of technologies and markets. Taken
together, markets and technology determine the way of farming. Farmers
might deviate from the 'optimum' as entailed in (and defined by) current
market relations and technologies, but if they do they cannot avoid
marginalization in the long run.
One of the important contributions of Wageningen rural sociology is its
theoretical and practical critique of this deterministic paradigm and the
subsequent elaboration of petty commodity production asa socially repro-
duced phenomenon crucial for the rural. The strategic mechanisms
through which rurality is produced and reproduced, have been brought
to the fore, analysed and highlighted. Farm enterprises are actively
distantiated from markets by, for example; the creation of a set of own
resources, whose mobilization, use and reproduction is not governed by
commodity [Link] this were not the case Dutch agriculture as a whole
would be materially impossible. 26 At the same time it has been shown that
farm enterprises are actively reoriented at other markets (Kerkhove 1994;
Broekhuizen and Renting 1994; Wiskerke 1997; Broekhuizen et al. 1997).
And as far as technology is concerned, a range of contributions show that
it is constantly being deconstructed, remoulded and recombined with
internal elements (van Benturn 1995; Leeuwis 1993; Vijverberg 1996).
Empirical studies realized along these lines, almost inevitably centre on
agency, strategies, and networks.
Markets and the supply ofnew technologies constituteimportant frames
of reference for farmers. But it is through the knowledgeable and goal-
oriented creation and reproduction of petty commodity production that
farmers create the room for manoeuvre required for the co-production in
which they are involved. Consequently, different positions vis-à-vis the
markets and the supply of technologies are created. In the Wageningen
research tradition these different positions are understood as different
farming styles.27
Cultural repertoireis decisive for the elaboration and materialization of
such farming styles. Inspired by Hofstee (1946, 1985a), an important part
of the Wageningen research tradition focuses on this cultural repertoire
and its role in agriculture. Excellent overviews of the development of this
56 Imagesand Realitiesof RuralLife

tradition have been elaborated by de Haan and Nooij (1985), and more
recently by Nooij (1996). De Haan's (1994) analysis of cultural repertoire
as regulating the intergenerational reproduction of farms and farming
families, de Bruin's (1997) analysis of the complex interface between
farming and agricultural policy, and Wiskerke's (1997) analysis of
different development trajectories in arable farming demonstrate, in my
view, the relevance of culture especially in today's agriculture.

The Sack of Potatoes Reconsidered

From local cultural repertoires to Karl Marx might appear, at first sight,
a gigantic step. Nonetheless, Marx was evidently right when he character-
ized peasants as a 'sack of potatoes.' Unfortunately, the 'dialectics' of
this statement were subsequently misunderstood. Attention has focused
on the 'potatoes,' the image of the peasantry as an unorganized mass of
atomized individuals, whilst 'the sack' or the interlinking and uniting
element has been neglected. All peasant societies, and the same goes for
farmers' communities, involve a balance of autonomy and dependency.
Both the 'potatoes' and the 'sack' are present.
Petty Commodity Production implies relations of cooperation and
competition. That can be seen in big 'international commodity com-
plexes' (Friedmann 1980); in 'systems in which technical and manufac-
tured inputs are incorporated into a labour process in which commodities
are produced, processed and marketed in distinctive industrial structures'
(Büttel and Goodman 1989, p. 87); it is also the case in the Peruvian
Highlands (Bolhuis and van der Ploeg 1985), and in horticultural
production in Dutch glasshouses (Vijverberg 1996). In short, the different
forms and expressions of PCP are always interlinked - albeit through
different mechanisms. The local cultural repertoire, specifying such crucial
notions as trust, progress, and the value of work, is evidently one of these
mechanisms. Observers such as Iacoponi have incorporated these
mechanisms into their work, but extend the analysis simultaneously to
other mechanisms as well. All these unifying mechanisms together
constitute what Iacoponi (1996) and others, including Saccomandi (1991)
and Brunori (1994), refer to as 'rural districts.'
The phenomenon of 'rural districts' is especially interesting because
it also refers to interlinkages that go beyond the farm enterprises as such.
They make visible all those interrelations that were forgotten when 'study
of the agricultural became divorced from the rural' (Marsden, Lowe and
Whatmore 1990, p. 6).Within these 'districts,' farms are linked to a range
of other economic units, not only with other agrarian units but also to
non-agricultural forms of PCP. Consequently, many of the indicated
interrelations are embedded in frames of reference that go beyond
immediate market relations. 28
Another set of interlinkages is found in the well-known phenomenon
of pluri-activity: when farming people engage in more than one, some-
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 57

times even in a multitude, of activities. An estimated 30percent of all farm

families in the Netherlands derive their income from agricultural activities
alone. In the remaining 70 percent the husband or wife generates income
from extra-agricultural activities (de Vries 1995). This extra farm income
amounts to an average of more than 20,000 guilders per year on dairy
farms and can be compared to the average farming income of 60,000
guilders.
Three additional observations are relevant in this respect. First, we
should note that pluri-activity often represents a consciously constructed
nexus that allows the continuation of farming, on the one hand, and the
reproduction of other economic activities on the other hand, which would
be impossible if they had to be grounded on stable and full-time
employment relations. The post-Fordist type of industrialization in
particular is, in many areas, dependent on the typical features of the
countryside (Marsden et al. 1990). Second, farm families increasingly
develop new kinds of pluri-activity located on the farm. The development
of agro-tourism, farmers' interest in landscape and nature conservation,
the on-farm transformation of raw material into high quality products, or
the revival of off-farm commercialization (see, for a recent overview,
Broekhuizen et al. 1997), can all be seen as new activities linked to and
located on the farm which allow for a broadening and diversification of
economic activity. These are, we might say, newly constructed forms of
pluri-activity. Currently, farming women are emerging as a particularly
strong force in these new types of pluri-activity (de Rooij, Brouwer and
Broekhuizen 1995).
In the third place pluri-activity is likely tobecome even more significant
in the near future. Expected changes in the EU Common Agrarian Policy,
the increased influence of farming women in decision making concerning
farm development, and the emergence of new rural markets all point in
this direction (Saraceno 1996b). 'New sacks' are being found for old, and
often misunderstood 'potatoes.'
Petty commodity production, artisanal labour process and cultural
repertoire, constitute some of the decisive mechanisms through which the
rural is produced and reproduced. These are mechanisms that imply
[Link] are also mechanisms that constitute some of the decisive links
between the local and the global. Farmers obtain a certain control ('a
freedom to,' as Slicher van Bath would argue) over the process of
production through PCP. This relative control over the process of
production and the resources used in it, allows for the development of
craft. Through PCP and craft, the process of production can be manipu-
lated according to the (variable) needs, insights, interests, prospects and
knowledge of the actors involved. PCP and craft enable the organization
of the fields, market relations and the byre (see again Figure 1), according
to the 'fourth diagram.' Consequently, it is inherent to PCP and craft as
well as to the implied cultural repertoire, that there are different ways to
58 Images andRealities ofRural Life

construct the rural (Jollivet 1988; Marsden et al. 1992; Roep et al. 1991;
Leeuwis 1993). Heterogeneity (as expressed in a range of farming styles)
is, therefore, not an additional phenomenon. Heterogeneity is intrinsic to
rurality.
Heterogeneity is quite often managed by farmers and peasants as an
element of the cultural capital of the countryside. The conscious creation
of heterogeneity is not only found at the level of fields, cows and
accountancy records (and consequently observed, interpreted and used for
the production of progress); it is also entailed in and expressed by wide
range of different farming styles. This (empirical) range isused increasing-
ly (through comparative analysis) to explore ways out of the problems
confronting the farming sector. In this way issues such as employment in
farming, income levels, the role of women, innovativeness, the reduction
of ammonia emission, landscape preservation and so on, have been
addressed (van der Ploeg 1994b).
Finally, I should like to stress that PCP - and the control over the
process of production embedded in it - is not simply an analytical model.
In everyday life, it is closely bound to a particular culture. It represents,
for the actors involved, a Tine of defence' that allows a (re)modelling of
economic activities corresponding, at least potentially, with own interests.
It is also a pattern that allows for the creation and the maintenance of self-
employment. If this were not the case, it would be impossible to under-
stand why the 'small farm enterprise' not only persists but also
reemerges time and again all over the world.

On Agency, Locality, Globalizationand Relocalization

Following Long (1996), it can be argued that there is little new in the
notion of globalization in as far as it refers to the internationalized flow of
commodities, ideas, images and people. This is not only true for the Dutch
cities that once constituted centres of imperialism - it is equally true for
dominated or 'peripheral' zones. The first available farm accountancy
records in the Netherlands were made by Hemmema and date from
1569-1573 (see Slicher van Bath 1958 and van der Ploeg 1995a). These
records provide information about commodity flows entering and leaving
the farm, and show that there were contacts with regions in eastern
Europe and the Far East. Grain came from eastern Europe, and cattle from
a variety of European countries. Labour was recruited beyond the
boundaries of the country. The output, consisting of a wide variety of
products, was exported everywhere. Hemmema's farm can only be
understood in terms of the international context in which it was enmeshed.
This enmeshment entered also into the 'poetry' of life: Hemmema and
his contempories used medicinal herbs from the Mediterranean and we
still owe a beautiful part of our flora to it - the stinzenplantenflora: the
plants that grow in the gardens of old country houses, abbeys and farms.
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 59

Relatively speaking, these commodity flows were very important and

the notion of the free-floating commodity - whether it was hay, manure,
cows, land, capital or labour - was far more generalized than it is today.
It may be argued that some commodity flows have increased relatively.
And it may be true that the rhythm, and the sometimes dizzy speed with
which goods, services, and people move around the globe, have also
increased enormously. However, it is difficult to understand how these
relative shifts could ever constitute a major qualitative shift towards a
'globalized' world that is definitely different from the 'previous one'
(as Bonnano et al. 1994 have suggested, for example).
Globalization does exist, but Iwould suggest that it is found at another
level of complexity: that is,in the construction and amplification of expert
systems which are fundamentally and completely disconnected from place
and time. Let me first illustrate my argument and then try to link it to the
discussion on rurality.
The example, derived from van Dinten (1996), concerns two local
cooperative banks, one in Schagen, a small village in North Holland, the
other in Venlo, a 'small town in the South. 'The banking enterprise
underwent,' so van Dinten argues, 'far-reaching changes.' The intro-
duction and the use of systems is by far the most important one. Systems
do not differentiate according to place and time. As soon as banks start to
express themselves through systems, the difference between the auton-
omous local bank in Schagen and the autonomous local bank in Venlo
fades away. If these banks are willing to articulate their differences, then
they have to offer what the people in Schagen and Venlo recognize as
belonging to them, what they see as typical for their own place. But as
soon as a bank defines itself in terms of systems '. . . a local bank is
nothing more than another place where customer and system are
coupled' (pp. 100-101; my translation).
Systems are constructed sets of representations, rules,arrangements and
procedures. Systems render solutions. Systems are formalized, the rules
and procedures are explicit. Systems have their own language: system
language. Above all, systems are disconnected from specific situations:
they are generalized sets of rules, representations and procedures. The
creation and use of these 'system[s] of technical accomplishment [and]
professional expertise that organize large areas of the material and social
environments in which we live today' (Giddens 1990, p. 27) has far-
reaching consequences: one implication is an adieu to locality. On the
intellectual level, the indicated expert-systems imply an Aufhebung (a
'dialectical annihilation') of place and time; on the material level, they
make place and time as specific notions totally irrelevant. Agency is also
eliminated, or at the best delegated to a second level of importance.
Whether you ask for a loan in Schagen or in Venlo, the conditions will be
the same. There is no room for negotiation either in Venlo or in Schagen:
systematized rules are the same wherever the banking system operates.
60 Images and Realities of Rural Life

Agriculture as a range of interlinked social practices has become

increasingly 'systemized,' as a series of Wageningen studies have argued
(Benvenuti 1982, 1990; van der Ploeg 1987).29 That is the real 'globaliza-
tion,' although it has been demonstrated that this same 'systematization'
of the world also provokes counter tendencies: that is,new trends towards
relocalization (van der Ploeg 1992).
Relocalization is found everywhere: PCP, craft and districts are used as
lines of defence(Darré 1985; Dupré 1991).30 They are not only the outcome
of the encounter between globalizing tendencies and the rural, they are
also used to recreate space to deal in a more adequate way with co-
production. At stake here is the already discussed 'superiority' of the
rural, which now includes such new dimensions as the number of black-
tailed godwits per square kilometre, as well as the ever-present struggle
between town and countryside over the (re)distribution of wealth pro-
duced in the countryside.
By running the world according to designed systems, we increasingly
reshape it according to those systems. The question is, of course, whether
the 'real lifeworld' will accept a n d / o r endure this. It might seriously be
asked, echoing Polanyi (1957), whether 'systemizing' the world
according to universal rules and procedures, which make time-and-space-
locations completely interchangeable, would not be 'tantamount to
annihilating the world.'
Seen historically, the emergence of the 'family farm' or PCP, repre-
sents a process of relocalization opposed but nevertheless linked to ten-
dencies towards globalization. Farming (and other rural activities) could
only be continued and strengthened through the localized control and use
of local resources 31 (of. whatever kind). Or, to put it more bluntly, it is
through actively constructed relocalization that a strong position in glo-
balized markets can be gained and materialized. 32 Hence, rurality is acon-
stellation in which agency matters and probably in a decisive way. The rural
is certainly a locus that 'allows' for agency and this is part of its attract-
iveness.
Whatever definition of rurality we use, the specificity of time and place
and hence of the actors involved must be stressed. Van Dinten (1996)
quotes the Austrian social geographer Brugger: Heim is dort wo man
Ursache von etwas ist. This beautiful, almost untranslatable expression
clearly refers to both the specificity of space and the centrality of agency.
One cannot of course say that agency is irrelevant in the cities. But, as
I have argued throughout this chapter, rurality is constructed and recon-
structed in such away that agency matters. This is so, not for any ideological
or ontological reason, but because trends towards annihilating the
specificities of time and place, especially in the countryside, produce
strong responses to relocalize. The countryside, especially today, is the
meeting point of two opposing tendencies. A new rurality will emerge
from the complex interactions and conflicts between globalizing systems
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 61

and the particularity of the rural. Or perhaps we should say: a range of

new ruralities yet to be discovered.

Times are A'Changing

The countryside, as a socio-economic constellation as well as physical

space, is continually changing. Rurality, however, is a constant through
time. One could argue that change is an intrinsic aspect of co-production.
As both the outcome and the 'substance' of co-production; the country-
side is subjected to a triple dynamic. First, society changes and therefore
rurality as the co-production of society and nature changes. Second, nature
changes and therefore the rural also changes. And third, the mechanisms,
scope and reach of co-production itself change continuously, leading
therefore to both new social arrangements and new nature, in short, to
changes in the rural.
Perceptions of the rural are also changing. The same goes for the criteria
to assess whether there is 'progress' or 'regression.' It is telling, for
instance, that a decrease in the rural and more especially of the farming
population, has for centuries been seen as an indication of crisis (see
Slicher van Bath 1960), whilst after the second world war, a similar
decrease was regarded as a precondition for progress.
The mid-1950s mark the beginning of an epoch in which, at least in
Europe, a far-reaching project for the 'modernization' of the rural was
developed. 33 For many of the actors involved, this modernization project
implied a definite end to rurality: the countryside was to be aligned to the
cities. The urban-rural continuum would fade away. The notion of the
rural was,indeed, adapted and readapted, as Mathieu (1990) demonstrates
in his interesting review. 'Parity' became the rule as far as income levels
in town and countryside were concerned and, probably even more
important, with the calculation of income levels came the definitive
abstraction of PCP reality. The agricultural entrepreneur (the farmer
understood as a definitive step beyond the peasant of the past) was
supposed, in the process, to become equal to urban entrepreneurs, able to
dispose of the same balance between work and leisure (Eizner 1985),
having the same attitudes towards risks, credit and the management of an
enterprise, and behaving in daily life in the same way as every other
citizen.34Craft, as one of the central mechanisms and capacities characteriz-
ing the rural economy, was to make way for new technologies allowing
for an accelerated 'industrialization' of the agricultural process of
production. 'Management by exception' would become the new rule. The
same applied to the basic organizational arrangement, the family farm (de
Haan 1993). New arrangements, such as the GAEC (cooperation between
farmers) announced in the Mansholt Plan, would dominate.
62 Images and Realitiesof Rural Life

Figure 2 The Modernization Project as Perceived in the 1960s

intensity of farming

2000-

1800

1600

1400
development model
1200

1000

800

600

400

empirical diversity in 1969

! I I I
30 90 120 180 210 240 270 300
scale of farming

Figure 3 Modernization as an Historical Process (1969-1983)

intensity of farming
2000 • empirical diversity
1800

1600

1400

1200

1000-
800-
empirical
600 situation in
400 1969

30 60 180 210 240 270 300

scale of farming
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 63

The countryside was, in short, to be 'deruralized.' Apparently

'sacred' elements, such as the strong links between a farming family and
its land, were to be eliminated. Farming was to become, in short, an
integral part of the systems called economy and technology. Consequently,
the impressive diversity of locally based farming styles (that were
documented and analysed by my predecessor, Hofstee, with a scientific
rigour that still amazes) would disappear and make way for one farming
system oriented to and defined by the parameters reigning in the domains
of market and technology. The confusing, highly diversified reality of the
rural 'still' at a distance from the forces shaping modernity, would
therefore be replaced by a new, more homogeneous reality, reflecting the
reorientation of farming to the optima entailed in markets and technology.
From a more analytical point of view we can understand the ' d e r e a -
lization' implied by the modernization project as bringing about a range
of mutually interlinked disconnections. In the first place, the very nature of
co-production was redebated and, to a considerable degree, thrown into
disequilibrium. Farming was increasingly disconnected from the local eco-
system, with which it had interacted for so many centuries. The far-
reaching reorganization of time and space was intended to artificialize and
to globalize farming and, consequently, nature too. Second, the moderniz-
ation project contained (and sometimes openly preached) a 'degradation
of craft' .35Whilst agriculture, had been understood since Columella as the
'art of farming,' the modernization project clearly aimed at an increasing
disconnection between farming and craft. Third, modernization implied an
adieuto PCP and therefore to the farm family as one of the decisive centres
of decision making. Fourth, the disconnections between agriculture and the
local eco-system, craft, the farming family and the patterns of cooperation
in which it was embedded, also implied an increased distance, if not a
complete disconnection between the agricultural process of production and
the food produced. The proverbial sprouts might just as well come from
a factory (Reuvekamp 1997).
Figure 2synthesizes some of the technical dimensions of the moderniz-
ation project. According to the dominant notions of the 1960s, 1970s and
1980s, the process of modernization was seen as a large and well-
coordinated movement through time, that is, as a 'jump' from the past
to the future (Rambaud 1983). Agriculture was to be intensified and the
scale of farming was to be increased simultaneously. 36 Agriculture was 'to
move' towards the optimum as entailed in markets and technology. At
the same time, locally inspired diversity (such as that expressed in initial
differences in intensity and scale) would be banished through convergence
produced through reorientation along globalparameters. Variety could not
be anything other than a remnant of the past.
The modernization project, which increasingly informed and penetrated
all dimensions of agricultural policy, deeply affected both agriculture and
the countryside. The two were literally reshaped: time and space as
64 Images and Realitiesof Rural Life

organizational dimensions of the rural obtained a completely new look.

Nonetheless, the rural as such did not disappear. Instead, rurality as co-
production as well as the central mechanisms in which co-production is
grounded, were reproduced if not strengthened. One way to illustrate this
is to analyse, in retrospect, empirical farm development patterns as
realized between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1980s (see
Figure 3).
Figure 3 37 makes it clear that farmers deconstructed in practice the
homogenizing tendencies of the modernization project to a considerable
degree. A process of increased differentiation emerged (see Long and van
der Ploeg 1989, for a theoretical elaboration of this phenomenon) from the
encounter between an increasingly centralized and prescriptive policy,
uniformed markets and a standardized supply of technologies, on the one
hand, and different farming strategies, on the other. The room for
manoeuvre (see PCP) created by farmers and their craft, that is, the
capacity to mould the process of production and technologies in specific
and mutually differentiated ways was crucial to this process.
It is, in retrospect, clear that the creation of the 'disconnections'
discussed earlier, has been only partially successful. The rural proved to
be more 'stubborn' than many social scientists of those times had
assumed. On the one hand, one can conclude that those farming styles
embodying a high degree of disconnectedness hardly function any better
technically or economically than the those containing a high degree of
Tocalness' (being linked to local resources, such as the local eco-system,
labour, specific end-products a n d / o r the local cultural repertoire). On the
other hand, society as a whole is reacting: the more food-production
becomes 'industrialized' - that is disconnected from craft and local eco-
systems - the more widespread the demand for genuine food. The more
landscapes (and the embedded natural values) are literally 'removed' to
make room for industrialized agriculture, the more there is a generalized
demand for nature- and landscape preservation. And one could continue
discussing all the interrelations linking the rural and the urban.
The socio-political movement towards more democracy that deeply
affected western Europe in this period has had far-reaching consequences
for the increased differentiation illustrated in Figure [Link] we have
scarcely begun to inquire into the possible interlinkages between the two,
it is quite clear that they are interrelated in several ways. One very
important interlinkage is farmers' struggle for local self-regulation (Hees
et ai. 1994), which gave birth to a new arrangement, nowadays known as
the environmental cooperative. Another interlinkage, which I will briefly
discuss here, concerns the gender dimension.
Rural women have played an important role in constituting the
heterogeneity we currently witness in agriculture. As the studies of de
Rooij (1992) and de Rooij, Brouwer and Broekhuizen (1995) make clear, an
increased involvement of women in work and decision making results in
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 65

quite different farming styles. The same has been demonstrated by van der
Plas and Fonte (1994) for Europe as a whole. In research by Bock
(forthcoming), this feature has again been emphasized in relation to
women's role in new processes and forms of rural development. As she
demonstrates, it isthe more emancipated women who make the difference.
The same interrelation between democratization and gender equality,
on the one hand, and rural development, on the other, can be seen at the
international level. Widespread land reforms in Latin America gave rise
to a massive and self-conscious campesinado. The collapse of state socialism
in eastern Europe made visible the MIR reality that had supposedly been
swept away by the eradication of the peasant. Massive repeasantization
has been triggered off in some parts of eastern Europe. Rural development
and democratization are, in short, intimately interwoven; not only in the
period analysed by Slicher van Bath (1978),but also today (Mamdani 1987;
Matlhape and Munz 1991).

The Ongoing Misunderstanding of the Rural

There is no single set of relations that links the urban and the rural.
Athens and Greek civilization produced petty commodity production,
whilst Rome gave the world large-scale, slave-based agriculture and much
later 1'arte dell'agricoltura: the art of farming (Columella 1977). Each
location and each epoch produces its own town-country interrelationship,
reflecting both the imprint of the past and containing specific prospects
and perspectives for the future. The complaints and lamentations, sometimes
misunderstood and seen as a kind of fatalism inherent in peasant culture,
reveal in my opinion what are felt tobe blocked prospects and perspectives.
The complaints, therefore, often contain the seeds of change. The mezzadro
from Bertolucci's Novecento who, in front of the landlord, cuts off his own
ear is not just lamenting, he is criticizing. It is a dramatic, down-to-earth,
and consequently very rural form of protest and critique. The man uses his
own body, the last resource, we might say, to express this critique; and
precisely because he uses his 'own body,' a way out can be created as
well. This happens in a later scene when the same old and ugly mezzadro
takes a flute to inspire the others, just as in Grapesof Wrath a tired and
worn-out mother, who has just lost her child, offers her breast to one of
the starving men, in an attempt to help him survive (Steinbeck 1991). It is
an archetype for the rural, in which exploitation, sacrifice, resistance and
revival are intimately linked.
One of the most beautiful illustrations of blocked prospects and
perspectives is found in Cobbett's Rural Rides (1973, p. 32), in which the
author relates an encounter with a farmer returning home after a hard
day's work in the fields. The man was asked how things were going.
'Very bad,' he replies, 'the weather is very bad.' Confronted with the
66 Imagesand Realities of Rural Life

fact that the weather had been beautiful and the harvest plentiful, the
farmer continues: 'Yes, that is exactly the reason, because they [that is: the
others, jd] turn all that into something very bad for the poor!'
Town and countryside, the rural and the urban are not only linked, that
is combined and opposed, at the material level but also at the symbolic
level. Although the frames of reference seem at first sight to describe the
other side of the town-countryside equation, it is exactly the other way
around at a deeper level of analysis. Through images used to describe the
countryside, urban culture provides information about itself. When the
towns are felt to be ugly places, the rural is 'pastoralized,' if not reified.
And when the town is seen as a fountain of change, progress and
dynamism, the countryside is depicted as a place of stagnation and the
peasant or farmer as a laggard.
Times are a'changing and so the rural goes on changing too. Another
change occurs in the ways in which the 'urban' knows the rural. If we
focus on recent decades, some major changes can be identified. Some forty
years ago, nearly everybody in the cities - at least in northwestern Europe
- was linked through kinship relations to farming families. Many people
had spent holidays on some farm during their youth and, with passing
years, this spot had been transformed into an idyll. When memory
becomes the vehicle for knowing the rural, the reencounter with the
concrete manifestations of rurality cannot but produce an image of
'Paradise lost.' Compare any document describing agriculture as it was
several decades ago,38 with current impressions and it will inevitably
appear that the rural has indeed changed drastically. Or that, as is
increasingly concluded, 'the rural is disappearing.'
Any such conclusion is, of course, superficially right but essentially
wrong. It is a conclusion based on changing outlook, not on the essence of
rurality. It reflects the city's malheur with its own inconveniences and its
associated longing for something totally different, that is, 'pure nature.'
It is telling that the wish to rebalance the rural as a co-production of man
and nature in favour of 'nature,' stems from the cities.
The 'city' (understood as a metaphor referring to a range of typical
urban interests) is increasingly unable to understand the rural. This is
basically due to the fact that the city knows the countryside through the
'past' or through the 'future.' 39 Hence, the images associated with the
rural 'as it used to be,' a n d / o r with the rural 'as it ought to be,' are
central to the urban-inspired representation of the rural. Consequently, the
rural as it is emerges as a denial, or an ugly deviation, from one of two
opposite poles.40
The images of the rural as-it-was and of the rural as-it-needs-to-be are
not outside history, but rather coterminous with the rural itself. The more
the rural moves (and changes), the more the development of these two
counter-images of the rural also accelerate. The changing rural and the
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 67

consequent misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the rural are,

therefore, two sides of the same coin.
Why isit that therural-as-it-is, cannot beunderstood from thecity? This
is basically due to a relative lack of the mechanisms through which
rurality is produced, not absolutely, but relatively, in the urban context.
Since the city is unfamiliar with these mechanisms (the urban was
constituted through their denial), it can never come at to grips with the
rural as-it-is. 'East is East and West is West and never the twain shall
meet.'

The Future of Rural Development

The more our world becomes urbanized, the greater the need for rurality
will be (Simmons 1996). It therefore comes as no surprise that the issue of
'rural development' is on the agenda again. It is even less surprising that
this issue is discussed in terms of strengthening an important part of our
cultural capital (Delors 1994;Saraceno 1996a).
The drive towards deruralization as reflected, for example, in the
modernization project of recent years, has run aground on the boundaries
and problems created by that project itself. Consequently, society as a
whole articulates towards the rural a range of needs and expectations that
were once self-evident, but which have become increasingly marginalized
in the course of the modernization trajectory. Simultaneously, parts of the
rural increasingly address these needs - even before such a redress
appeared on various political agendas. The associated rural development
practices avant lalettrereflect themany testimonies toagency as embedded
in the countryside.
In the years to come we will probably notice a reruralization: a
reemergence of the rural as an indispensable part of our civilization.
Human capital, that is the capacity to handle craft and PCP to address
societies' new needs, 41 will be decisive in this respect. Changing values
in the political culture of agriculture (Nooij 1993)underpin this possibility
(van Aartsen 1995). It is even possible that this same reruralization will
bring about some basic changes intendencies such astheongoing decrease
in agrarian employment levels. As we have discussed elsewhere, an
increase in quantity and quality of farmers' labour is not beyond the
realms of possibility. Whether this will ultimately occur depends on
agency as entailed in the rural itself. Even if rurality is a constant through
time, its concrete future remains unsure. The specifics of rurality remain
largely unknown as does the form it canbe expected to take in the future.
Perhaps that is one of the charms of rurality.
68 Imagesand Realities of Rural Life

Notes

1 The recent Cork Conference on Rural development was especially interesting. See Cork
Declaration (1996),Fischler (1996), Mannion (1996),Saraceno (1996a) and Simmons (1996).
The discussions and conclusions of the Cork Conference are evidently rooted in previous
debates. See, in that respect, Delors (1994) and van Depoele (1996).
2 As far as the Netherlands are concerned, we can refer to the Policy Statement of the
Minister of Agriculture, Nature Conservation and Fisheries known as Dynamiek en
Vernieuwing (Dynamics and innovation) See van Aartsen (1995).
3 The emergence of the 'rural development' option at the EU level is evidently related
to the crisis of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), with the negotiations that are to
take place in the second GATT round, as well as with the discussions over the integration
of an increasing number of central and eastern European countries into the Common
Market. The discussion on 'rural development,' however, goes well beyond the
practicalities of the indicated fields of interests.
4 For a modest and far from complete overview, we might refer to the EU debate on 'rural
development,' organized by the former EU president Jacques Delors (see Delors 1994);
to the Cork conference on 'Rural Development' in the preparation of which staff
members played a role (seenote 1);to thedevelopment of milieu-coöperaties (environmental
cooperatives) in the Netherlands (Hees, Renting and de Rooy 1994), to the practical
involvement in the elaboration of solutions for acute conflicts in the countryside (van
Egmond, Koopmans and van der Ploeg 1996;Nijhoff, van der Ploeg and Zijlstra 1996); to
involvement in the national debate on agro-environmental problems and conflicts (Frouws
1994); to the debate on the role of traditions (de Haan 1996), and to the involvement in
the National Debate on Agriculture that was organized in 1994 and 1995 (van der Ploeg
et al. 1994;Ettema et al. 1994, 1995;and, in more general terms: Broekhuizen and van der
Ploeg 1995). This involvement is not to be understood as a random phenomenon - it is
instead one of the central methodological principles of the Wageningen approach. Special
mention is to be made of a recent NRLO study (NRLO 1997), that highlights the
contribution and impact of Wageningen sociology to the general debate on rural
development.
5 Whilst in the prewar period agriculture was definitely the main economic pillar of the
rural economy (other economic activities were often highly dependent upon agriculture),
from the 1950s onwards, agriculture looses this central position. Many back- and forward
linkages are reallocated in the cities and the rural economy is increasingly reorientated to
other markets. This 'divorce' of the agricultural and the rural was not matched at the
conceptual level: the equation of the rural and the agricultural (an identity that reflected
prewar realities) was maintained for too long. When it was finally realized (see also
Mormont 1990) that this conceptual identity was increasingly at odds with reality, the first
and immediate reaction was and still is to abandon entirely the notion of the rural. Hence,
the conceptual hiatus. It was insufficiently recognized that the rural had in the meantime
obtained a new essence which, at conceptual level, can easily be reflected and recombined
with the agricultural. Further on in this text I will try to develop such a general notion.
6 See, for instance, Strijker (1997). The reader is also referred to Huigen (1996), who takes
a similar stand. Internationally, this position has already been articulated earlier, for
example, by Goodman and Redclift (1986),who portray (according to Marsden, Lowe and
Whatmore 1990, p. 11) 'farming as an economically residual, if not archaic category.'
7 A recent Dutch Governmental policy document on spatial planning in the coming century
notes that 'throughout the country people fear the loss of contrasts between city and
countryside, which could result in a 'grey' nation' (VROM 1996, p. 8).
8 During the 1970s and 1980s rural sociology experienced a worldwide crisis and loss of
identity. This was strongly related to what was then already felt as the 'disappearance
of the rural.' Long (1985) argued: 'rural sociology has . . . lost the grounds for claiming
to be a distinctive discipline with its own special object of investigation and mode of
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 69

explanation' (p. 721 italics added). The lack of a theoretically grounded delineation of
the object of rural sociology ('what is the specificity of agriculture and the countryside')
had a prominent place in Long's critique: 'Whereas the early tradition had assumed
that there was something especially distinctive about rural locations which made them
socially and culturally different from urban forms of social life, researchers increasingly
took the view that rural locations were merely empirical or geographical entities in which
one worked. Being 'rural' carried no special theoretical or methodological implications
for the research' (ibid, p. 720). The inability to link the 'own field of research' to the
'more general theoretical debates' was considered part of the crisis of rural sociology
(ibid, 1985b, p. 720; Newby 1980, 1981; Newby and Büttel 1980). De Haan and Nooij
developed a similar critique in Wageningen, noting at the same time that 'the crisis and
stagnation . . . in rural sociology in the seventies' could be interpreted as a 'side-effect
of the important process of reconceptualization taking place within various branches of
the field' (1985,p. 51).As I have noted elsewhere (van der Ploeg 1995b), rural sociology
in the 1990s is going beyond the impasse of the 1970s and 1980s. This is particularly true
of the Wageningen branch of rural sociology. There have been important 'reconceptualiz-
ations' within the discipline itself. Rural sociological research has regained its own well-
recognized place on the research agendas relating to agriculture and the countryside -
both within the Netherlands and at European level. The theoretical contributions of rural
sociology to social science in general, as well as to agricultural sciences, are now seen as
self-evident (see Büttel 1994; Goodman and Watts 1994; and Portela 1994). All this, I
would argue, is related to the rediscovery of rurality.
9 The problem with the 'objectified categories' indicated is that they create endless
contradictions when applied in a dynamic analysis. If people are attracted by rurality and
decide to live in the countryside, than the countryside stops being rural because a certain
demographic level is breached. The same goes for comparative analysis: bringing rural
Java and Scotland into one and the same comparative analysis creates Gordian knots that
are impossible to untie. More generally, I am trying to go beyond both the ' functionalist
approach' to rurality, in which population density remains the defining cornerstone (e.g.,
Cloke and Park 1985, p. 13) and the 'pragmatic approach,' in which the countryside is
simply identical to the non-urban (e.g., Cloke and Thrift 1994). What I propose, then, is
a constructivist approach.
10 The countryside isbecoming increasingly populated by people who work(ed) in the cities
but prefer to live in the countryside. Kayser (1990, 1995), a French rural sociologist, terms
this repeuplement. Several observers interpret this same phenomenon as indicating an
irreversible 'urbanization' of the countryside. I guess that such an interpretation is
wrong. This 'urban exodus,' to paraphrase a well-known expression, is not to be
understood as the simple expansion of the city. It is exactly the opposite: it isadieu to the
city as a locus of consumption. It represents a positive choice for the countryside as a
place for housing, living, relating to others and relaxing. It is, in short, the attractiveness
of the rural that makes for this demographic shift. It would be ludicrous to conclude from
the resulting increase in demographic density, that the loci concerned stop being rural.
The difficulties produced by such criteria in any comparative approach have been
convincingly documented by Kulczar et al. (1996), who showed that by applying OECD
criteria to Hungary, the whole country emerged as 'rural.' The same lunacy occurs in
the exclusive reference to decreasing numbers of agricultural enterprises. Although the
green space continues to be used mainly by agriculture, a decrease in the number of farms
is for observers, such as Strijker, reason to observe a 'deruralization' a n d / o r a
'deagrarionization.' It remains absolutely unclear why such a tendency could not be
observed in the 1950s or, for example, during the Great Depression when the plague
ravaged the countryside. Apart from that, Strijker e tutti quanti absolutely miss the
dominant feature: the interwovenness of urban and rural economies which strengthens
the specificity of the rural. The absolute apex is reached when the quantitative distribution
of services over the territory is used as an indicator for rurality. As somebody once
70 Images and Realities of Rural Life

commented: 'as long as they keep shitting in barrels, it is rural, but as soon as they
change to water-closets their world undergoes a paradigm shift.'
11 It is remarkable that nature movements in Europe as a whole identify very much with
nature and landscapes produced by farming communities, stressing the cultural history
and frequently liasing with farmers unions. The tendency in the Netherlands goes partly
in the opposite direction: the more 'radical' part of the nature movement explicitly
denies the (potential) value of the rural. Strict and exclusive preference is given to
'nature unaffected by man.' This point of view implies indeed that the rural is to be
expropriated in order to create room for nature or wilderness. This can only provoke
strong resistance, as we have been witnessing in the Netherlands. Apart from that, the
radical wing's understanding of nature is quite idyllic, that is, poor and a-historical.
12 This is underpinned by negative experiences related to the marginalization of farming in
vulnerable areas. Wherever this phenomenon occurred in Europe, there emerged a
definitive loss of rurality as well as a degradation of nature, according to the current social
definitions of nature. Wilderness is also out of the reach of these social definitions; nature
entails biodiversity. It is embedded in beautiful landscapes, accessible in order to be
admired. That is, nature as it is socially defined, is definitely part of the rural. Only in the
definition of ecologists is wilderness reconceptualized as 'nature.'
13 The concept of 'co-production' is derived from the vocabulary developed in the school
of social constructivism. The term co-evolution is also frequently used. See Bijker (1993,
p. 125); Callon (1986, p. 20); (Latour 1991,p. 22); Latour (1994, p. 64) and Lente (1994, p.
178). Interesting applications within the realm of rural sociology and economy are found
in the work of Sevilla Guzman and Gonzalez (1990), Iacoponi (1996) and Brunori (1994).
14 I am using 'man' here as a metaphor for society, especially for that part of society that
is involved in the indicated co-production. It goes without saying that this latter part is
equally effected and conditioned by the larger society to which it belongs.
15 This contradiction between the rural and 'pure nature' is reflected in the growing
pressure from nature movements (as Natuurmonumenten, World Life Fund, some of the
provincial Landscape Unions, etc.) to expropriate defacto the rural in order to convert it
into 'pure nature.' On the other hand it is increasingly recognized in society at large
that interest in nature as articulated by different social groups implies nature-as-result of
co-production rather than the stone age fiction expressed by the nature movements
concerned.
16 Of course, this notion has never been absent in writings and reflections on agriculture.
Carena for instance, in his beautiful introduction to the 1977edition of the Columellanotes
that 'il mondo della campagna contiene gia moite, se non tutte le contradizioni délia
societa o, piu in generale, del rapporto dell'uomo con l'ambiente' (1977, p. ix; italics
added). Carena also refers to Huggett (1975, pp. 154-156) who observed that the notion
of co-production emerged ('blossomed') especially when the distance between town and
countryside was enlarged.
17 It is telling that in some of the 'hot spots' within the Netherlands (e.g., Gaasterland and
de Peel), it is precisely the rural dwellers who oppose the conversion of the rural into
what they perceive as 'wilderness.' In de Peel, for instance, farmers reluctantly agreed
to a conversion of their lands into hoogveen. (due mainly to the very high compensation
they were offered), but then rural dwellers did not accept the proposed conversion at all.
One telling comment was: 'I choose to live here because there are cows in the meadows,
there is activity and life . . . I definitely do not want to live in a world of dead peat.'
Rurality, understood as co-production, represents a definite value for rural dwellers.
18 The genetic selection and improvement of plant varieties a n d / o r of cattle depends
critically on the availability of variation and on the capacity to 'master' it. Farmers have
been doing this for centuries. Dutch farmers' study groups and the widespread use of
farm accountancy records for comparative use,are recent examples of this mechanism. See
Knorr-Cetina (1996), Leeuwis (1993) and Vijverberg (1996) for a discussion.
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 71

19 Not only from a productivist point of view, or as far as the economy of the individual
enterprises is concerned. It also applies to the sectoral and the macro levels. It obviously
depends on conjunctural reasoning whether a high employment level in agriculture is
perceived as a positive or as a negative phenomenon. Nonetheless, in today's world, in
which the West, the Third World and the former Soviet bloc are all confronted with the
urgent need to create more employment, one could argue that peasant and farmers'
agriculture is superior to capitalist farming. The latter however is rapidly expanding,
especially within the Third World, where western enterprises find the 'room' to do so.
20 It is telling and intriguing that artists such as Felius (1996) and van Zomeren (1995), are
needed to express the beauty entailed in co-production.
21 These folk-concepts refer to particular farming styles in the dairy farming sector in the
Netherlands; see de Bruin (1997),Kerkhove (1994) Leeuwis (1989),Long and van der Ploeg
(1994), Roep et al. (1991) and Wiskerke (1997). The similarity with 'management styles'
as documented in other parts of the world is striking, as can be derived from a
comparison with the work of Bennett (1981), Barlett (1993) and Manolescu (1987). There
is, however, a difference between these works and the Dutch studies on farming styles.
The latter pay much attention to the differentiated technicalities of farming, that is, to the
'non-human' in its association and interaction with the 'human.'
22 The story can of course also be told the other way around: the fields, cows, buildings and
machinery of the 'machine men' are moulded and combined in such a way that they
only allow for practices characteristic of this farming style. A 'cowman' could hardly
operate in his preferred way on such a farm.
23 Essential to SCP is the conversion of commodities (obtained on input markets) into other
commodities (to be sold on the output markets) using labour force which is non-
commoditized. Applied to farming, this implies that family labour is the labour
characteristic for the 'family farm.' The other resources are mobilized on the markets.
In contrast, PCP involves not only labour, but also (a considerable part, if not all of) land,
capital and 'non-factor inputs' are owned and controlled by the farming family (or
community). Not only labour, but most or all relevant resources are non-commoditized and
hence used and regulated with non-commodity mechanismsand circuits (see Friedmann 1980,
1981, 1986). A relatively autonomous and historically guaranteed reproduction is,
therefore, crucial (see, for a further discussion, Long et al. 1986; van der Ploeg 1990 and,
especially, Saccomandi 1991). In most literature PCP is associated with the past a n d / o r
with remoteness (see Bernstein 1977). PCP should be typical for the peasant, whilst SCP,
it is assumed, is the typical condition for the farmer. The transformation from PCP to SCP,
then, is understood as being typical for the transition from a (partly) natural economy to
a 'fully commoditized economy' (Bernstein 1977; see also MacEwan-Scott 1986). This
assumption (or representation) is, I believe, basically wrong. It does not help us to
understand current peasant and farmers' struggles, nor does it allow for the elaboration
of any practical contribution to these struggles. Finally, it might be useful to refer to the
difference between SCP and PCP, on the one hand, and Capitalist Commodity Production
(CCP) on theother. Themore so,sinceCCPremains an important phenomenon, especially
in South American agriculture. CCP is production oriented at the creation of surplus-
value. Only those commodities are produced that entail surplus-value (for the one
controlling the process of production). This can only be done by using labour force as a
commodity. Hence, in CCP all resources enter the process of production as commodities.
In SCP the same applies with one important exception: that is, the labour force. In PCP
it is not only labour, but also a range of other resources that enter the process of
production as non-commodities.
24 Strijker, for instance, refers to the relatively modest contribution of agriculture to the rural
economy as far as investments, employment and income are concerned. According to his
analysis, agriculture accounts at most for some 25percent of the indicated aspects. Beyond
that, he analysed some five small villages, indicating that only a minority of all inhabitants
had some relation with agricultural activities. The problem with this analysis is that these
72 Images and Realities of Rural Life

data are very much taken at face value. It is not clear whether or not they represent a
relative or absolute decline. But even when we assume that they are indicative of an
absolute and a relative decline, the question remains whether these quantitative changes
refer to any qualitative transformation whatsoever.
25 This labour-driven intensification contrasts strongly with the technology-driven
intensification that characterizes agriculture from the 1960s onwards. Part of the latter
model is the increasing dependence on inputs that embody productivity rises. See, for a
further discussion, van der Ploeg (1987) and for a critique Vijverberg (1996).
26 Technically speaking, the Dutch agricultural sector has had a negative net profit over the
years (a negative netto bedrijfsresultaat).
27 Currently we define a farming style on different, but interlinked levels. A farming style,
is, in the first place, an interlinked set of values, norms and experiences that concern the
way farming is tobe organized; in that sense it contains cultural repertoire. This repertoire
is actively shared and further developed within specific networks. Second, a farming style
contains a specific practice, a specific organization of fields, byre, machinery and
especially of the labour process. This specific practice (and all the technicalities and inter-
relations that are relevant to it) is informed by the strategic notions or cultural repertoire
already mentioned. Hence, a farming style also represents a specific unity of 'mental'
and 'manual labour.' Third, a farming style also entails the specific interrelations
between the farm unit and the surrounding markets and technology supply: that is, those
relations needed to realize the specific practice which is at the core of every style. Hence,
a farming style not only concerns 'internal' relations, it also involves a (deliberately
structured) set of 'external relations.' In the fourth place, we can refer to the fact that
markets and technology arenot disembodied [Link] are crucial dimensions through
which a considerable part of agrarian policy is effectuated. Hence, different positions
defined within the room for manoeuvre created by markets and technology, can be
understood as well as many positions vis-à-vis (or responses to) agrarian policy.
28 The newly emerging tradition of neo-institutional economics in particular has made all
kinds of mechanisms that govern non-commodity circuits visibleand transparent. The key
concept in this approach is 'transaction costs.' See, for a further discussion and
application, van der Ploeg and Saccomandi (1995).
29 A significant difference is that in Wageningen research reference is made to empirical
constellations. Consequently, the notions of systemness and relative autonomy (Gouldner
1970) emerge as key issues: to what degree does the real world function as a system?
30 This also explains why so many intervention strategies produce unintended consequences.
See, for a further discussion, Knorr-Cetina (1981), and Long and van der Ploeg (1989).
31 Lowe et al. (1995) rightly stress the centrality of the control issue.
32 See Vacca (1989),for a similar reasoning regarding the industrial sector. The methodologi-
cal framework developed by Knorr-Cetina (1981) remains a useful tool for understanding
the complex interrelations of the global and the local (see for a brilliant discussion:
Brunori 1994). A more substantial approach (that builds on the work of Knorr-Cetina as
well as on new empirical insights in the complex and contradictory nature of the
encounter between the global and the local), is presented in Long and van der Ploeg
(1994).
33 The intellectual roots of this project go back probably to the 1930s, when agriculture was
reconceptualized from being a specific encounter between man and nature, into the
'unfolding of the laws' that govern nature as understood by biologists, chemists, and
physicians. See, for a further discussion, van der Ploeg (1987), Leeuwis (1993) and
Vijverberg (1996).
34 The number of visits to a Chinese restaurant became one of the indicators by which to
measure the 'modernity' of farmers.
35 I am paraphrasing here the subtitle of Harry Braverman's well known work, Labour and
Monopoly Capital:the Degradation of Work.
 On Rurality, Rural Development and Rural Sociology 73

36 It was also assumed that farms would further specialize and be completely integrated in
agro-industrial chains. It was assumed that the farmer (there was no 'she' in those
days) would become an 'early innovator' as well as a 'good entrepreneur.'
37 Based on LEI farm accountancy data. See also van der Ploeg (1987) and de Bruin (1997).
38 There are, indeed, beautiful illustrations such as those by Uilkema (1995),Magi (1982),van
den Driest (1983), the pencil-drawings by van Gogh (see Hulsker 1978);but also written
documents, such as those by Mak (1996).
39 Particularly those more specific urban interests directly linked to agriculture and the
countryside, such as agribusiness and agrarian sciences, articulate the 'future': an image
of the rural as it ought to be. That evidently relates to the issue of control and the
associated struggle about the (re)distribution of the wealth produced in the countryside.
40 An intriguing difference between these two opposite images is that the notion of
agriculture-as-it-ought-to-be is very often used (at least in Europe) to refer to US
agriculture as a guiding image and a fountain for inspiration. The image of agriculture-as-
it-used-to-be reference, by contrast, refers to the same location some decades ago.
41 Such as the need for high quality; region specific produce; agro-touristic facilities (Te
Kloeze 1990; Lengkeek 1994) and landscape preservation and nature management (van
Koppen 1995).