Khorasani Zadeh H. The rise of the peasant land ownership as a driver of social-spatial differentiation in contemporary rural Veneto and French Flanders // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №4. P. 83-101.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-4-83-101

Annotation

The growth of peasant ownership in peasant societies is usually associated with a reduction in social hierarchies due to the improvement of social-economic conditions, decline of large-scale land ownership and development of small-scale agriculture. When qualifying such assertions, scholars have proved that the peasant ownership’s impact on the evolution of agriculture and social differentiation are highly variable depending on the social-historical contexts. The article aims at contributing to this debate by showing how the rise of peasant ownership may lead to contradictory dynamics in terms of social-spatial differentiation due to the so-called differentiated ‘relationship with land and kinship’ or ‘reproduction patterns’ of peasant families. To test this hypothesis, the paper examines two European rural areas located in Northern France and Veneto, focusing on the evolution of land ownership, tenancy, kinship and social-professional features in a sample of municipalities in these two areas from the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th century. In addition to the analysis of aggregated data at the municipal level, the author also considers the evolution of smaller areas in each municipality under study with the qualitative approach based on the ‘biography’ of some properties and holdings, individuals and families. The research relies on both public sources (population census, property cadasters, agrarian surveys, etc.) and private archives.

Keywords

Ownership, tenancy, agricultural holdings, kinship, family, space, social reproduction, mapping, industrialization.

About the author

Hessam Khorasani Zadeh, PhD (History), Postdoc Fellow, University of Lille. Cité Scientifique Campus, TVES Laboratory, Paul Langevin Avenue, 59655 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.
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Alekseev A.I., Efimova O.Yu., Tkachenko A.A. The spatial structure of kinship (on the example of the Zharkovsky settlement of the Tver Region) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №2. P. 128-137.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-2-128-137

Annotation

The article considers the spatial structure of relationships of families in the peripheral settlement Zharkovsky (3 thousand inhabitants) with their children and relatives in other cities and villages. There are 180 members in 90 surveyed families of the village that has been losing population for the last 50 years, and its “diaspora” has spread from Dublin to Vladivostok and from Murmansk to Amman. The children of Zharkovsky’s residents are mostly students in two nearest regional centers—Tver and Smolensk, and also in Moscow and Saint Petersburg; educational institutions in medium-sized and small cities are less popular. Other relatives live in the same cities, but are much more dispersed in the cities of Siberia, the Kaliningrad Region, Belarus, etc. Most of the households under study consist of middle-aged parents or, more often, only of a mother, or elderly parents, whose children have already left the village. The spatial structure of kinship is usually “centrifugal”: the majority of relatives in other places are those who left the village. However, sometimes children live in the village while parents live in other places: these are children who left the villages of the Zharkovsky district, in which their elderly parents still live. Thus, there is also a “centripetal” structure of kinship ties: some residents of the village are recent immigrants from other places.

Keywords

kinship, spatial structure, Tver Region, households, rural-urban migration

About the authors

Alekseev Alexander I., DSc (Geography), Professor, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. 119991, Moscow, Lenin Hills, 1.
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Efimova Olga Yu., Student, Faculty of Geography and Ecology, Tver State University. Tver, Proshina St., 3, bldg. 2.
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Tkachenko Alexander A., DSc (Geography), Professor, Faculty of Geography and Geographical Ecology, Tver State University. Tver, Proshina St., 3, bldg. 2.
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Russian Peasant Studies. Scientific journal

Center for Agrarian studies of the Russian Presidental Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)

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