A survey of academic approaches to agrarian transformation in post-war Greece

Abstract

Discussed here are the interpretations of agrarian transformation in Greece during the post-war period. These are divided roughly into developmentalist, populist and ethnographic arguments. Emphasis is placed on the necessity of an interdisciplinary method in order to understand patterns of rural change, without attributing a determining role either to a political economy perspective or to an a-historical concept of community. Using the example of ethnohistory, this survey argues for an effective comparative ethnography of rural change, thereby overcoming the usual distinction between macro and micro-analysis.

Notes

1 See, for example, Newby [1982] and Marsden [1999].

2 PASOK, or the Panhellistic Socialist Movement, won its first national election in 1981, after the end of the virulently anti-socialist military dictatorship (‘The Regime of the Colonels’) which had ruled Greece during the years 1967–74. For an account of the latter regime, see Poulantzas [1976].

3 Vergopoulos [1975; 1978] and Mouzelis [1978b; 1979] are examples of neo-Marxist approaches to agrarian transition in Greece.

4 Included under the rubric of neo-populism are the analyses of Greek agriculture by Psychogios [1982; 1985], Damianos et al. [1991; 1994], Kasimis and Papadopoulos [1994], Damianakos [1997; 2002] and Kasimis et al. [2003].

5 For an interesting analysis by a populist of the debate about the peasantry with particular reference to the Balkans in the era before the 1939–45 war, see Mitrany [1961].

6 As pointed out by Long [1977: 189], ‘the articulation of the local system with the wider structure was frequently conceptualised in terms of the activities of individual brokers rather than seen as a structure of inter-related parts represented by different systems of production or levels of political control, or by social groupings of various kinds’.

7 In the opinion of neo-Marxists, the problem of under-development stems from trade, not production. The main theoretical exponent is Emmanuel 1972, for whom the logic of capitalist reproduction is unequal exchange between imperialism and less developed economies. This interpretation was challenged by Charles Bettelheim [Emmanuel, 1972: 271ff.] from a more orthodox Marxist viewpoint.

8 Many of these characteristics, it should be noted, also inform populist analyses of underdevelopment, especially the view of agriculture as structured by unequal relations between an undifferentiated peasant smallholder economy and what is seen as a purely urban capitalism.

9 However, the work of Moissidis was based on nation-wide secondary data rather than fieldwork, and as such missed the social dimensions of agrarian transformation that are captured by ethnographic approaches.

10 Louloudis et al. [1989] also pointed out that the terms of political participation changed, with peasants being able to bargain with their votes more effectively in the post-dictatorial era.

11 That marginal agricultural producers have been kept in operation by virtue of income support policies, economic decentralisation, tourist development and – most importantly – off-farm employment strategies [Damianos et al., 1991; Damianos and Skuras, 1996] all highlight the important role of rural women in a pluri-active farm unit.

12 The term ‘intermediate’ is defined by Hadjimichalis and Vaiou [1987: 320] in the following manner: ‘By intermediate regions we mean those areas which, since the mid-1970s have shown repopulation tendencies and rates of growth that are higher than or very close to the national rate in their gross regional products in industrial or tourist employment, in labour productivity in agriculture, industry, or tourism, and which have relatively high consumption indices. These intermediate regions are still behind in terms of social welfare and per-capita income compared with “old” core areas such as Attica, Thessaloniki, Patra or Volos, and with “new” ones such as Corfu, Larisa, Iraklion, and Rhodes. It seems, however, that they have avoided until now the marginalisation of many mountainous parts of central and northern Greece, of Southern Peloponnisos, and of the many problematic small islands’.

13 To this extent, rural space was to be conceived as a pool of local/regional institutions and resources, and no longer simply a function of agriculture [Hadjimichalis and Vaiou, 1987; Hadjimichalis, 1987; 2003].

14 Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands has for a long time conducted important research into agrarian transformation, in the process formulating a number of influential approaches (especially actor-oriented fieldwork methods) to the study of rural transition [Long and Long, 1992; Long, 2001].

15 As is well known, A. V. Chayanov 1966 was a major neo-populist theoretician who maintained that the peasant family farm was driven by an internal dynamic that was demographic; what he termed the ‘drudgery of labour’ amounted to the necessity of those who could work to provide subsistence for those who could not (the very old, the very young). The continuous reproduction of this labour/consumer balance ensured the survival of the peasant family farm, regardless of the external system (feudalism, capitalism).

16 Much migrant labour is employed on work in greenhouses.

17 This approach structured analyses by Maraveyas [1992; 1994; 1998], Louloudis and Maraveyas [1997], and Lianos and Parliarou [1986].

18 See, for example, Daoutopoulos and Pyrovetsi [1990], and Kousis [1993].

19 These included Goussios [1995] and Damianakos [1997; 2002].

20 This is not to say that such local institutions themselves vanish completely; it is to say, however, that the meaning may be different. What appears to be a reciprocal exchange of labour, for example, may actually disguise unequal exchanges between better-off and poorer families. That is to say, the institutions in question serve class interests, their appearance to the contrary notwithstanding.

21 Into the category of post-structuralist critiques come Herzfeld [1982; 1987; 1991; 2003] and Jusdanis [1991], while alternative paths of rural integration are explored by Van Boeschoten [1993], Karakasidou [1997] and Marantzidis [1997].

22 For an extended discussion of the significance for ethnographic analysis of the emic/etic distinction, see Harris [1968: 568ff.].

23 Like Karakasidou, the methodology of Bika combined participant observation with archival sources in order to link past and present.

24 Neither Karakasidou nor Bika succumb to the idealisation of village society as never changing; much rather, each historicises the agrarian context in socio-economic terms, transcending the static image constructed by nationalistic folklore. Such historical ethnography is a sociological analysis which ‘scales down’ the focus on exchange relations between agency and structure, farm enterprise and society, family and state policies, and clientele and market where action and decision making are carried out by villagers (instead of individuals) embedded in social relations. As Karakasidou [1997: 215] argues, ‘the dominant tenor of the newly emerging class relationships had a homogenising effect on ethnic or national distinctions’. In the same methodological vein, Bika [2004] highlights the vulnerability of the changing lowland Thessalian peasantry. In this framework, the village community is not the stereotypical folkloric, functionalist or populist image of a tension-free peasant arcadia, but reflects much rather all the facets of underdevelopment and lived experiences of agrarian transformation.

25 On this see Van Boeschoten [1993] and Marantzidis [1997].

26 Villagers are depicted as having ‘taken an active part in the elaboration of meaning’ in relation to the outside world but not the internal leadership. In reconstructing the peasant version of ‘folk’ communism, the case made by Van Boeschoten would have been more plausible had it included additional comparative materials (for example, another village and/or historical period).

27 This finding merely underlines a theme that has been discussed extensively in the pages of this journal: namely, the extent to which what passes for leftist politics at the rural grassroots is frequently no more than a decidedly non-leftist form of populism. What this in turn suggests is the importance of looking closely at local politics, and in particular how on occasion leftist policy and programmes are watered down by socialists in order to secure electoral support.

28 On the concept of ‘embeddedness’ as used by sociological theory, see among others Granovetter [1973; 1985], Mclaughlin [1998], Chung [1999] and Hess [2004]. As used here, the term is rather more specific, and encompasses the notion of relational networks at the rural grassroots which are historically and currently both local and trans-local. To be sure, a big task theoretically and methodologically, but one that rural research necessarily must address.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zografia Bika

The author is grateful to Tom Brass for editorial help.