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Ann. Rev. Social. 1983. 9:67-81


Copyright © 1983 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved

THE SOCIOLOGY OF
AGRICULTURE: Toward a New
Rural Sociology
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Howard Newby

Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, England

Abstract
Rural sociology has recently developed a new research agenda focussing on
the sociology of agriculture. This has led to a revitalization of a field of
research that had lost its way since the decline of the rural-urban continuum
in the 1960s. The crisis that occurred 'in rural sociology in the 1970s is
discussed in relation both to this theoretical vacuum and to the failure to
achieve a policy impact. It is argued that the sociology of agriculture offers
a potentially successful means of overcoming this crisis, but some of the
difficulties in utilizing this approach .are also discussed. Observations are
made on the institutional setting of rural sociology and on whether it is
compatible with the development of a critical sociology of agriculture.

INTRODUCTION

Rural sociology! is not a branch of the discipline that is noted for its lively
theoretical debate and intellectual innovation. In the United States it has

tHere "rural sociology" refers to the sociology of geographical areas whose population density
is low. However, this conceptual definition fails to convey the fact that rural sociology also
refers to a set of institutions-university departments, journals, societies, textbooks, research
teams, teaching activities, etc. In the latter sense "rural sociology" does not include such areas
as the sociology of development, peasant studies, etc, which are included in the conceptual
definition. Such exclusion is conceptually indefensible, but in this review-for reasons of
expediency due to constraints on space--I have followed convention, applying "rural sociol­
ogy" to advanced industrial society only. Here I review rural sociology in the United States
only. Elsewhere, especially in Europe, rural sociology emerged from very different intellectual
concerns and manifests a very different institutional structure (see Newby 1980, 1982a).

67
0360-0572/83/0815-0067$02.00
68 NEWBY

traditionally been awarded low status within the sociological profession and
assigned a somewhat peripheral role. This has been reinforced by the sepa­
rate institutional development of rural sociology and its uneasy and uncer­
tain relationship with 'general' sociology. At some times rural sociologists
have asserted the distinctive and unique features of their field, while at
others they have acknowledged that the separation is entirely arbitrary and
intellectually irrelevant. In either case little has been achieved to alter the
prevailing image of rural sociology as a quiet backwater characterized by
shallow empiricism and theoretical conservatism. It may therefore come as
a surprise to some that rural sociology is currently undergoing a consider­
able revitalization, having overcome a number of difficulties over the past
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decade.
There are now signs that rural sociology has set itself a research agenda
for the 1980s that is theoretically fruitful, substantively innovative and,
above all, relevant for the social problems currently facing rural society.
This is a considerable contrast with the position of, say, ten years ago (see,
for example, Copp 1972). This new research agenda is centered around "the
sociology of agriculture," sometimes referred to as the "new rural sociol­
ogy" (Sevilla-Guzman 1981). This represents not merely a branch of occu­
pational sociology, but a new approach to rural sociology, one more
theoretically informed, holistic, critical, and radical than the conventional
rural sociology that preceded it. In this review I concentrate on the origins
and development of "the sociology of agriculture" and do not, therefore,
attempt to be comprehensive. It should be emphasized that the sociology
of agriculture is certainly not coterminous with rural sociology and that,
despite the rapid increase in interest in the sociology of agriculture in recent
years in the United States, it is doubtful whether a majority of rural sociolo­
gists would subscribe to this approach. Nevertheless as a potentially excit­
ing development it is worthy of wider attention. Elsewhere I have offered
broader reviews of the field which may be regarded as complementary to
this one (Newby 1980, 1982a,b).

ORIGINS

The sociology of agriculture begins from the premise that the causes of
much of the social change in rural America lie in the structural transforma­
tions occurring in agriculture. To those outside rural sociology this may
seem unexceptionable, but rural sociologists have traditionally paid little
attention to agricultural production (with one major exception, the diffu­
sion of technological innovations, considered below), preferring instead to
chart the consumption-related aspects of rural society and its institutions.
The reasons for this lie partly in how rural sociologists have defined their
RURAL SOCIOLOGY 69

field, partly in the institutional setting within which rural sociology is


conducted.
For several decades prior to the mid-1960s rural sociologists tended to
define their field by means of concepts essentially spatial in derivatipn. For
example, most of the findings of rural sociologists were interpreted within
the framework of the rural-urban continuum codified by Sorokin and Zim­
merman in the 1920s (with antecedents in the much earlier work of Tonnies
and Simmel). At one level the rural-urban continuum was merely a set of
empirical generalizations about the characteristics of the rural population.
It fitted in well with the efforts of rural sociologists to catalog various social
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and demographic aspects of rural society (see Bealer 1975). At another


level, however, the rural-urban continuum was also a theory: It was in­
tended to explain the nature of social relationships by reference to settle­
ment patterns. Not until the mid-1960s was it generally accepted that this
intention was futile, although occasional attempts perpetuate this approach.
A series of community studies during the 1950s and 1960s had demon­
strated empirically what Gans (1970) and Pahl (1966) were to establish
theoretically-namely that "rural" is an empirical descriptive category
without explanatory significance. This left behind a theoretical vacuum and
a professional identity crisis in rural sociology that took more than a decade
fully to resolve.
The institutional setting of rural sociology did not help. The institutional
basis of rural sociology in the United States consists mainly of the agricul­
tural colleges of the land-grant universities. This setting has not always been
conducive to intellectual creativity and imaginative sociological debate.
(For extended comments on this see Hightower 1973; Newby 1982b, parts
of which this paragraph summarizes.) First, in the land-grant universities
rural sociology has been expected to be "policy-relevant" or "applied"-Le.
influential upon the thinking of minor bureaucrats ("policymakers") in
rural affairs. Rural sociologists found this role conducive to self-esteem, but
it jeopardized the advance of the field in ways about which Sewell long ago
warned (Sewell 1950 : 121-22). Second, the administrators of the land-grant
colleges, principally applied scientists from the production end of agricul­
ture, have conceived of rural sociologists primarily as researchers charged
with the task of overcoming the "social problems" that interfere with
cost-efficiency in agriculture. They have tended to be impatient with "use­
less" sociological research that has no direct application. Finally, the agri­
cultural economists, often departmental colleagues, confident, quantitative
and "applied," have shared the goal of cost-efficiency and have all too often
been envied by rural sociologists for their policy influence and "scientific"
superiority. Rural sociologists have concerned themselves with the orga­
nization of agricultural production, while the economists have not both-
70 NEWBY

ered with, in effect, the error factors in their regression equations. It is


essential to recognize that this institutional setting governed the production
of knowledge in rural sociology while the concept of the rural-urban con­
tinuum held sway and affected rural sociology's response to that concept's
downfall.
The initial responses were the proclamation of a "crisis" in rural sociol­
ogy and a further round of agonized introspection about the nature of the
field, the latter symptomatic of the self-doubt to which rural sociology has
always been prone (see Sewell 1965; Ftn. 3; Bealer 1975; Newby 1980,
1982b). How were "rural" and "rural sociology" to be defined and concep­
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tualized? The reverse migration of urban dwellers into rural areas, which
gathered pace during the 1960s, meant that the rural and urban populations
could no longer be easily defined, socially or culturally. The traditional
economic activities of rural areas-agriculture, forestry, extractive indus­
tries-no longer supported most of the rural population. What was "rural"
in sociological terms, and what was the proper subject matter of rural
sociology (see Kaufman 1963; Wakeley 1967)? The widespread discussion
of definitional issues did not interfere unduly with continuing research in
the field. Rather it was an irritant-a factor that contributed to the continu­
ing lack of confidence in the scientific status of rural sociology, but which
was firmly contained within the 'private troubles' of the field.
A more pervasive response to the decline of the concept of a rural-urban
continuum appeared at first to be much more constructive. In the absence
of any general theory of rural society, rural sociologists attempted to in­
crease the scientific character of their field by emphasizing methodological
rigor. Theory could be reconstituted piecemeal, it was believed, on the basis
of rigorous scientific enquiry allied, for the most part, to sophisticated
quantitative data analysis. In many respects this was a necessary step. Rural
sociology had not been noted for its methodological sophistication and there
was plenty of room for improvement (Sewell 1950, 1965). The achievements
in this regard were impressive. From the 1960s onwards rural sociology
conformed much more closely in its research style to general sociology in
the United States, and an all-around increase in methodological expertise
was noticeable (Stokes & Miller 1975). Unfortunately, however, researchers
tended to become intoxicated by this success. A certain methodological
approach-positivist, inductive, quantitative-became an end in itself
rather than merely a tool of analysis. Here, undoubtedly, the informal
pressures exerted by rural sociology's institutional setting played their part,
as did the tendencies in general sociology (Newby 1982b). By the early
1970s, however, the realization Was growing that methodological rigor was
not an end in itself, still less a factor that would lead to the reconstruction
of a theory of rural society ex nihilo (see Copp 1972; Ford 1973; Nolan &
Galliher 1973; Nolan & Hagan 1975; Lowry 1977; Picou et al 1978).
.RURAL SOCIOLOGY 71

By the mid-1970s, then, a series of intellectual difficulties in rural sociol­


ogy had converged. The rural-urban continuum had not been satisfactorily
replaced as a generally accepted frame of reference for the field. Problems
of definition continued to gnaw at the self-confidence of rural sociolo­
gists.2 The emphasis on methodological rigor, while providing a dramatic
increase in the quality of rural sociological research, was not in itself a
means whereby these difficulties could be overcome. Overlying these inter­
nal problems, however, was an external factor that was even more effective
in provoking change. This was the 'farm crisis' of the late 1970s, to which
the Carter administration paid so much attention. While rural sociologists
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had been contemplating their own difficulties, rural society had moved on.
Consequently the policy agenda of the late 1970s was one to which, embar­
rassingly, rural sociologists had little to offer.

THE FARM CRISIS AND RURAL SOCIOLOGY

The farm crisis of the late-1970s was not marked by radical changes in
the structure of agriculture or rural society. The developments that con­
tributed to it were for the most part incremental and had been subsumed
under the euphemism of 'farm adjustment.' For many years a research issue
familiar to agricultural economists, this involved the long-standing ten­
dency of American agriculture to grow in scale, to become more concen­
trated in its production, to shed labor, and to become more capital­
intensive. American agriculture was also integrating further with both agro­
input and food-processing industries, referred to collectively as 'agribusi­
ness.' These trends had been followed persistently since the end of the
Second World War and had indeed been encouraged by federal agricultural
policy. But by the late 1970s a stagflating American economy had shut off
the conventional safety valve for the rural distress created by these trends:
the availability of plentiful employment in nonagricultural and urban-based
occupations. Alarm also became widespread at the rate of decrease in the
number of family farms. Traditional Jeffersonian concerns were reiterated
concerning the trends towards concentration of production, vertical inte­
gration with agribusiness, the plight of small farms, inadequate service
provision in rural areas, and declining rural communities in agriculturally
dependent regions.. For the first time since the 1940s the desired structure
of American agriculture, and the relationship between agricultural change
and rural social change, became matters of major policy concern (USDA
1979, 1981).

2 Urban sociology, similarly afHicted by the decline of the concept of a rural-urban continuum,
has been much more successful in overcoming this difficulty. However, these debates within
urban sociology-principally the work of Harvey (1973) and CasteJls (1976)-have received
scant attention from rural sociologists.
72 NEWBY

To a large extent these concerns caught rural sociologists unawares.


During the 1950s and 1960s rural sociologists had shared the generally
accepted view that technological change in agriculture caused benign, or
even positive, social effects. Indeed, rural sociologists had helped to lubri­
cate the mechanisms of structural change in American agriculture by their
work on the diffusion of innovations-frequently regarded as a singular
success story for 'scientific' rural sociology (see Rogers & Shoemaker 1971).
This work illustrated both the strengths and weaknesses of rural sociology
during the period. It was methodologically rigorous and even, in its way,
innovative. It obtained for rural sociology considerable legitimacy within its
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institutional setting. But it was also narrow in its empirical focus. Rural
sociologists had approached the problem via the investigation of the social
psychology of individual innovators. They hardly considered structural
inhibition on innovation, nor did they systematically investigate the social
consequences of technological change beyond the bland assumption that
everyone would benefit. The farm crisis forced a reinterpretation. By the
late 1970s it was becoming apparent that rural sociologists had naively
abetted the widespread deterioration of the social conditions of a significant
sector of the rural popUlation-principally the poor and underprivileged
whom they had believed they had been helping. Moreover, when structural
issues became a matter of public-policy concern, rural sociologists were
ill-equipped to handle them. American rural sociology was caught napping:
Its data base showed some alarming gaps. The issue of structure had not
been granted much attention.
This lack of attention was partly due to the fact that rural sociologists
had largely ignored the economic activity of the countryside, which seemed,
after all, the province of agricultural economists. Sociologists had devoted
most of their efforts to charting patterns of rural sociability, kinship, cus­
toms, traditions, and community change but had paid little attention to the
raison d'elre of rural areas, namely work. For example, because rural
sociologists had failed to develop a sociology of agriculture, they tended to
consider the system of agricultural production to be an exogenous factor
that impinged occasionally upon the values, culture, and folkways of the
rural population. Consequently, with a few exceptions, rural sociologists
showed little interest in, or understanding of, the economic factors trans­
forming the character of rural America: Once more the farm crisis of the
late 1970s forced a reinterpretation.
It is to the credit of rural sociology in the United States that this reinter­
pretation has been taken seriously. Arguably the reasons for this lie less in
the nature of the intellectual debate among rural sociologists (although this
cannot be completely discounted) than in a common value-orientation re­
garded conventionally as a major drawback to the pursuit of 'scientific'
RURAL SOCIOLOGY 73

rural sociology-i.e. the Romantic idealism and political populism that has
long influenced American rural sociology (see Schmitt 1969). The farm
crisis of the 1970s therefore prompted a deep personal concern over the
plight of the small farmer, the fate of agriculturally dependent rural com­
munities, and the threats to the rural ecology presaged by contemporary
technological trends. This made the publication of Hard Tomatoes, Hard
Times (1973), Hightower's critique of the "land-grant complex" of agricul­
tural research, particularly timely. Hightower's attacks may have been
strident and at times overstated, but their relevance could hardly be ig­
nored. Hightower's criticisms of rural sociology were mostly a by-product
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of those he directed at agricultural economics, but he struck an uncomfort­


ably responsive chord in the minds of those who had assumed rural socio­
logical research to be in the best interests of the rural population:
Land grant college research for rural people and places is a sham. Despite occasional
expressions of concern from land grant spokesmen, a look at the budgets and research
reports makes clear that there is no intention of doing anything about the ravages of the
agricultural revolution. The focus will continue to be on corporate efficiency and techno­
logical gadgetry. While the vast majority of rural Americans-independent family farms,
farm workers, small town businessmen and other rural residents-will be left to get along
as best they can, even ifit means going along to the city. Ifthey stay in rural America,
a rural sociologist will come around every now and then to poke at them with a survey .
(Hightower, 1973, p. 57)

Hightower's analysis of the land-grant universities as the quiescent clients


of corporate agribusiness, while by no means original, received undue atten­
tion because it coincided with both the onset of the farm crisis and the
theoretical and methodological difficulties converging within rural sociol­
ogy.

TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF AGRICULTURE

Hightower's indictment of the land-grant universities was essentially a


populist critique-a defense of the small farmer, the independence of rural
communities, and the rights of rural citizens against the irresponsible and
unaccountable agribusiness plutocracy. As such it was echoed in a number
of early accounts of the deleterious effects of current agricultural transfor­
mations, particularly those in which ecological considerations were sub­
stantial. The clearest monument to this trend was a collection of academic
and journalistic readings (Rodefeld et al 1978) documenting some of the
major social consequences of the structural transformations occurring in
American agriculture. As a sourcebook and teaching resource this volume
was highly successful, but it did not pretend to offer a sustained and system­
atic analysis of the sociology of agriculture. It was nevertheless an effective
74 NEWBY

curtain raiser to the development of a more coherent "new" rural sociology.


Merrill (1976) edited a parallel attempt which emphasized the ecological
aspects of the problem. Perelman (1977) covered something of the same
ground from an avowedly Marxist standpoint.
While these populist critiques (especially those in Rodefeld et al 1978)
dealt with conventional rural sociological concerns-the family farm, the
vitality of rural communities, population change, etc-the approach to
these issues was beginning to change. Empirical observation had led these
populist critics to trace much of the deplored social change in rural America
to the structural transformations occurring in agriculture. Thus despite the
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danger of slighting the nonagricultural aspects of rural society, the "sociol­


ogy of agriculture" became virtually synonymous with a new, more critical
approach to rural sociology. Furthermore, the scale of the structural trans­
formations in American agriculture led to a more holistic approach to rural
sociology. However, rural sociology still lacked a theory that could account
for the data being gathered.
In August, 1978 the Sociology of Agriculture group within the Rural
Sociological Society met for the first time. It has since become an essential
feature of RSS meetings. The "new" rural sociology has proved particularly
(but not exclusively) attractive to younger faculty and graduate students.
In many ways the field is not new but is merely a return to the issues and
approaches that characterized rural sociology in the 1930s and 194Os, when
the structure of agriculture was a major research area. Then, largely under
the aegis of Carl Taylor at the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, the social
consequences of the changing structure of American agriculture received
considerable research attention. Amid recriminations, however, this effort
collapsed, apparently after a reassertion of the realities of political power
within the USDA and the land-grant complex (see Kirkendall 1966). A
further cause celebre arose in the late 1940s when a young anthropologist,
Walter Goldschmidt, conducted a study of two California communities,
Arvin and Dinuba, in order to assess the social impact of a proposed
irrigation scheme. Goldschmidt's findings-that agribusiness domination
was associated with a lower quality of community life-caused a local furor,
and Goldschmidt beat a hasty retreat to the less controversial field of
African kinship systems. Recently Goldschmidt's monograph, reprinted
(19.19) with a new introduction in which the author reflects on these ignoble
events, has become a rediscovered classic in the sociology of agriCUlture (see
also the review of subsequent research by Muckton et al 1982).
Some rural sociologists regard these historical episodes as ominous por­
tents. Research in this area has a tendency, resulting from empirical obser­
vation rather than a critical theoretical approach, to create political
controversy and lead to politically uncomfortable policy recommendations.
RURAL SOCIOLOGY 75

In the 1940s this tendency abruptly curtailed the development of a sociology


of agriculture. How well the institutional setting of rural sociology in the
1980s can accommodate this development remains to be seen.

TOWARD A THEORY OF RURAL SOCIETY

The sociology of agriculture has advanced along two fronts to become


established within American rural sociology. First, the foci of empirical
investigation have changed. Formerly rural sociology studied primarily
rural-urban differences and disparities, the adoption and diffusion of agri­
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cultural technology, the quality of life and social indicators, community


development, demography, and the educational and occupational achieve­
ment processes among rural youth. Now, however, the discipline has slowly
begun to analyze the structure of agriculture, state agricultural policy,
agricultural labor, regional inequality, and agricultural ecology (see Newby
& Buttel 1980: 15; Flinn 1982). This has created a new research agenda for
the 1980s, and an important body of work should appear over the next few
years.
Second, the sociology of agriculture as it has recently reemerged is not
only more holistic in approach, it is also more theoretical. The decline of
the concept of a rural-urban continuum and the general rejection of spatial
determinism left rural sociology without a coherent explanatory frame­
work. There was an awareness, however ill-defined, that the search for a
distinctive "rural theory" would be fruitless. A viable theory would have
to locate the rural within the overall spatial division of labor in society,
explaining the role of the rural sector within general social development. A
general theory of society was required that linked the social with the spatial.
Moreover, in order to be sociological, such a theory must emphasize the
social, as the notion of a rural-urban continuum had not done. From the
late 1960s onwards, urban sociology, afflicted by the same difficulties, had
succeeded in reorienting itself along these lines (Saunders 1981). Rural
sociology's influences were, however, somewhat different (see Buttel 1981,
1982).
The first temptation was to raid the classics for clues to an understanding
of agricultural development in capitalist societies. Extensive writings on
agricultural development by Marx, Weber, Kautsky, and Lenin have been
rediscovered and reevaluated (e.g. see Goss et al 1980; Hussain & Tribe
1981a,b; Nelson 1982). This exercise has been neither an uncritical one nor
a mere essay in sociological antiquarianism. Indeed, for all the insights
obtained, perhaps the most illuminating service of this endeavor has been
to emphasize the limitations of the classical sociological theories about
agricultural affairs. Nineteenth-century theorists worked predominantly on
76 NEWBY

theories of industrial society, within which agriculture played only a resid­


ual role. Although they did not ignore agriculture, they considered it only
as a background factor, as part of the preindustrial, precapitalist, tradi­
tional, and residual society that had been transformed by industrialism.
This, for example, was Marx's perspective in Capital as well as Weber's in
his analysis of the backward-sloping supply curve of labor among the
Silesian peasants. Although Marx was later to revise his views of the peas­
antry, his assessment of their backwardness and historical inconsequence is
well-known (Duggett 1974). Marx also regarded the English case of
agrarian capitalist development as prototypical, whereas subsequent re­
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search has shown it to be unique. Thus while the sociology of agriculture


has accepted much of Marx's methodology (i.e. class analysis), a literal
application of Marx's writings to modem agriculture has been found un­
helpful.
Attention has therefore turned to Marxist revisionists---especially
Kautsky and Lenin. Kautsky's writings on agrarian development were
probably unknown in the United States five years ago. In part this is due
to the fact that his most relevant work, The Agrarian Question (1899), is
unavailable in English, although a summary of selected parts by Banaji
(1976) has been published. Kautsky dealt with an issue directly relevant to
the structure of agriculture today: the retention of a formally independent
class of family farmers who are nevertheless integrated into an agribusiness
complex of agro-input and food-production corporations. Kautsky also
argued the need for a distinct theory of capitalist development in agricul­
ture, a theory that could not be derived from industrial capitalism. The
importance of land as a factor of production was regarded by Kautsky as
primarily responsible for this distinction. In recent work this notion has led
to a renewed interest in the relationship between landholding and the social
structure in rural areas (e.g. see Goss et al 1980; Geisler & Popper 1981;
Massey & Catalano 1978).
Lenin's work, particularly The Development of Capitalism in Russia and
Theory of the Agrarian Question, also concerns the distinctive qualities of
capitalist development in agriculture (Nelson 1982). Lenin also attempts to
understand the objective basis of the survival of the peasantry. For contem­
porary sociologists, however, his work is vitiated by teleological assump­
tions about the eventual disappearance of the peasantry and by flirtation
with technological determinism. Nevertheless, Lenin indicated one highly
relevant aspect of capitalist development in agriculture: that it proceeds not
via rapid concentration and centralization of production but by the differen­
tiation of the peasant household-i.e. the emergence of worker-peasants or,
in the American idiom, part-time farmers. This has helped to provide a
deeper theoretical understanding of two important areas of rural sociologi-
RURAL SOCIOLOGY 77

cal research-the role of women in agriculture (see Wilkening & Bharadwaj


1968; Sawer 1973; Pearson 1978; Sweet 1972; Hill 1981) and that of part­
time farmers (Buttel & Larson 1982; Buttel et al 1982; Cavazzani 1979;
Coughenour & Wimberley 1981; Heffernan et al 1982).
In general, therefore, the classics on capitalist development in agriculture
have provided some fresh insights and a provocative set of research ques­
tions. Their value, however, lies not in providing easy answers to contempo­
rary questions of substantive sociological analysis but in their combining
holistic theory with empirical research.
The sociology of agriculture has been affected by a second set of influ­
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ences from outside the field as conventionally defined-from the sociology


of development, especially the burgeoning literature on peasants. Extensive
debates on simple commodity production, articulation of modes of produc­
tion, and the "world economy" perspective have become relevant for the
sociology of agriculture. Some of these concepts have been applied to the
analysis of agrarian societies in North America and Western Europe. Fried­
mann (1978, 1980), for example, has used theoretical insights developed in
the field of peasant studies to illuminate the historical development and
contemporary persistence of the family proprietorship form of productive
organization in North American agriculture. Like Kautsky, Lenin, and
others (see above), Friedmann seeks to distinguish capitalist development
in agriculture from that in other sectors of the economy. Thus rural sociolo­
gists continue to explore issues raised by the "agrarian question" in the early
years of this century (see Hussain & Tribe 1981a, b), examining the difficul­
ties of accounting for the observed tendencies of agrarian development
within a Marxist framework. Among the factors isolated for particular
attention have been the disjunction between labor time and production time
in agriculture (Mann & Dickinson 1978; Mooney 1982), the compatibility
of family proprietorship in farming with large-scale corporate involvement
in food processing, distribution, and retailing (Goss et a11980; Pfeffer 1982);
and the sponsorship of family farms by the state (Friedmann 1978; Mann
& Dickinson 1980; Mottura & Pugliese 1980; Havens & Newby 1983).
This growing cross-fertilization between the sociologies of agriculture
and development has been facilitated by the growing awareness of the
interrelationship between the agricultural sectors of the advanced-industrial
and the less-developed countries. This interrelationship is maintained both
by the prevailing pattern of international trade in food commodities and
through multi-national corporate control of agriculture, food processing,
and distribution throughout the Third World (George 1976, 1979). Such
corporate control has given a new meaning to the phrase "the changing
structure of agriculture," which is now used to describe not only changes
in the scale and concentration of production but also the changing role of
78 NEWBY

farming in the agribusiness complex. Agribusiness is global in scope and


stretches along the food production chain from seed production to fast-food
franchising. The examination of this food production complex takes rural
sociologists far beyond the analysis of what is customarily regarded as rural.
For example, attention has been drawn to the role of research and develop­
ment in both public and private institutions, undertaken with the primary
purpose of developing new agricultural technologies (in the broadest sense)
whose eventual influence on the structure of rural society can be consider­
able (e.g. see Hightower 1973; Busch & Lacey 1982; Kenney et aI 1982).
Similarly, the ecological impacts of this emergent agribusiness structure
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have been monitored (Buttel & Larson1979; Larson & Buttel1980; Gilles
1980; Heaton & Brown 1982) and the social consequences of technological
innovation at the level of the work situation are receiving attention (Fried­
land et aI1981). These concerns combine in an innovative research agenda
for rural sociology in the 1980s.

CONCLUSIONS

Here I have treated the sociology of agriculture as the most significant


recent development in the field of rural sociology, locating its emergence
within the recent history of rural sociology, indicating some of its distinctive
qualities, and drawing attention to ongoing research in this area. How long
the sociology of agriculture will continue to gain adherents remains to be
seen. For the time being, at least, it has become an area of lively theoretical
and empirical debate. If successful, it may broaden its area of enquiry from
its specific origins (incorporating, for example, the nonagricultural aspects
of the rural economy and society) and eventually merge into the mainstream
of rural-sociological enquiry. Much will depend on whether the institutional
context of rural sociology will accommodate such developments (Friedland
1979).
It is important to stress that the sociology of agriCUlture is by no means
monolithic. Within the field a divergence of theoretical and methodological
approaches assures that important questions are not ignored. For example,
opinion presently diverges over whether rural sociology can be reduced to
a sociology of agriculture or whether the latter is merely a useful heuristic
device with which to begin reconstructing rural sociology. Devotees of the
former view argue that "rural sociology" is a meaningless notion that
should be replaced by analyses of the labor processes and social relations
of production across a wide variety of agricultural commodities (Friedland
1981; Friedland et al1981). Others see dangers of economic reductionism
in this approach and prefer a broader definition of rural sociology (Newby
1982a, b). These positions obviously derive from more general assumptions
RURAL SOCIOLOGY 79

about the concept of political economy and the relationship between econ­
omy and society. Thus although the sociology of agriculture offers no
startling new theory to resolve the problems confronting sociology (includ­
ing rural sociology) today, it does address important substantive and theo­
retical issues. It has also imparted a renewed sense of purpose and direction
from which the whole of rural sociology should benefit (Flinn 1982).

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