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Accepted Paper:
Capitalism, self-sufficiency, and the new peasantries from the perspective of the French neorural movement
Ieva Snikersproge
(University of Neuchâtel)
Paper short abstract:
By drawing on fieldwork in Diois, a territory in Southeastern France with a long history of neorural settlement, this paper shows how the articulation with the larger capitalist society affects any alternative lifestyle and self-sufficiency projects.
Paper long abstract:
In order to problematise the idea of peasant self-sufficiency in capitalist societies, this paper will investigate the counter-urbanisation movement in France. The first wave of neorurals - or urbanites recently settled in the countryside - was an offspring of the May 68 anti-capitalist movements. This wave sought to create autarkic communes that would engender a different society. The majority of social scientists agree that these experiments failed. And, yet, in the mid-1970s, they were followed by another, less "radical" wave. This second wave carried an environmental critique and thought to propose an alternative to capitalist productivism not through autarky, but through peasant-way-of-life articulated around the household and the village. By drawing on fieldwork in Diois, a territory in Southeastern France with a long history of neorural settlement, this paper shows how the articulation with the larger capitalist society affects any alternative lifestyle and self-sufficiency projects. The long and sustained, yet continuously transforming, French neorural movement points to the difficulties to propose real "new peasantries."