Rural inventions : the French countryside after 1945 / Sarah Farmer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Farmer, Sarah Bennett, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociology, Rural--France--History.

Sociology, Rural.

France--Rural conditions--History.

France.

France--History--1945-.

Rural conditions.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

ix, 168 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]

Summary:

"In post-World War II France, commitment to cutting-edge technological modernization and explosive economic growth uprooted rural populations and eroded the village traditions of a largely peasant nation. And yet, this book argues, rural France did not vanish in the sweeping transformations of the 1950s and 1960s. The attachment of the French to rural ways and the agricultural past became a widely-shared preoccupation in the 1970s; this, in turn, became an engine of change in its own right. Though the French countryside is often imagined as stable and enduring, this book presents it as a site not just of decline and loss but also of change and adaptation. Rural Inventions explores the rise of restored peasant houses as second residences; utopian experiments in rural communes and in going back to the land; environmentalism; the literary success of peasant autobiographies; photography; and other representations through which the French revalorized rural life and landscapes. The peasantry as a social class may have died out, but the countryside persisted, valued as a site not only for agriculture but increasingly for sport and leisure, tourism, and social and political engagement; a place to dwell part-time as well as full-time; and a natural environment worth protecting. The postwar French state and the nation's rural and urban inhabitants remade the French countryside in relation to the city and to the world at large, not only invoking traditional France but also creating a vibrant and evolving part of the France yet to come"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The peasantry is dead, long live the peasantry!

Second homes: peasant dwellings as rural retreats

Back to the land: rural utopias in 1970s France

Progress and nostalgia: memoirs of French peasant life

Disrupted landscapes: Raymond Depardon's visual memoir.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 123-162) and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Albert M. Greenfield Memorial Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Farmer, Sarah, Rural inventions

ISBN:

9780190079079

019007907X

OCLC:

1119745731