Acta Ethnographica 32. (1983)

1983 / 1-4. szám - D. G. Symes-T. K. Marsden: Family, Continuity and Change in a Capitalist Farming Region

Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Tomus 32 (1 — 4), pp. 77—101 (1983) FAMILY, CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN A CAPITALIST FARMING REGION D. G. Symes UNIVERSITY OF HULL and T. K. Marsden SOUTH BANK POLYTECHNIC, LONDON Introduction Britain is one of the most highly industrialised and urbanised countries. Less than three per cent of the economically active population is employed in farming yet agriculture remains one of the largest single industries and agri­cultural land uses continue to dominate the landscape. The mode of agricultural production ranges from the family farm found mainly in the upland, pastoral regions of the north and west to the large capitalist units concentrated in the eastern arable lowlands. Throughout Britain as a whole, 31 per cent of farm holdings are over 50 ha in extent and these control over 80 per cent of the total supply of agricultural land. Despite the considerable importance of the capitalist sector, the social system which helps to generate and sustain large-scale farming in Britain is inadequately understood and certainly much less thoroughly researched than that in the more traditionally oriented farming communities of upland Britain. Certain aspects of capitalist farming, especially the relationships between farm­er and farm worker, have been thoroughly explored (Newby) but the overall social structures and, in particular, the structure and role of the family at the centre of the system have been neglected. Thus, in large measure, social images of British agriculture continue to rely upon outdated and only partially relevant ethnographies of remote upland farming communities in the west of Britain. The derived model for the family farm was based initially on Arensberg and Kimball’s work in the west of Ireland during the 1920s and 1930s and subsequently adapted by Rees (Wales) and Williams (upland England). But more recent work on the eastern lowland farming areas (Newby et al.) has remained quite silent on the structure of the family and its functional relationship to the farming system. In this paper the authors will attempt to demonstrate how the farm fami­ly has adapted to the needs of a capitalist farming system by reference to a study of large-scale farming areas in east Yorkshire. The conditions of capitalist Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 32,1983 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest

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