Page 35 - Panjek, Aleksander, Jesper Larsson and Luca Mocarelli, eds. 2017. Integrated Peasant Economy in a Comparative Perspective: Alps, Scandinavia and Beyond. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 35
the integrated peasant economy as a concept in progress
The similarity with the integrated peasant economy is impressive, al-
though it’s important to notice at this point how French historians in par-
ticular write about pluriactivity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gilbert Garri-
er and Yves Rinaudo distinguished between “closed forms of pluriactivity,”
practiced within the narrow space of a single hamlet or village and “con-
tributing to the collective autarchy of the community,” and “open forms of
pluriactivity” with a projection outside of the village, its products enter-
ing a commercial circuit and virtually always being subject to a cash pay-
ment” (Garrier, Goujon, Rinaudo 1988, 234). While “closed pluriactivity”
covers all the professions necessary to the life in the village community, the
“open pluriactivity is extroverted,” it has an “openly commercial vocation”
and a necessarily “extra-village dimension,” “it participates fully to a mar-
ket economy,” “requires a certain specialisation” and is “linked to forms
of proto-industrialisation, it evolves with time and modernises if neces-
sary” (Rinaudo 1987, 284). The integrated peasant economy is undoubted-
ly an open and extroverted economy, although it does not exclude from its
possible components also forms of activity within the community and in-
come sources originated in the same village (making the mention distinc-
tion much less relevant). In fact, one more parallel with the integrated peas-
ant economy is represented by the connection of the peasant economy to
the wider economy and external world that it implies: “Through pluriac-
tivity rural areas open themselves to the market, they undergo national if
not international economic impulses which the countless peasant weavers,
metallurgists or miners cannot escape” (Hubscher 1988, 9).
After reviewing the main and relatively numerous convergences be-
tween integrated peasant economy and pluriactivity, some of the major
points of divergence shall also not be passed over in silence. We may well
start from the internal debate between Italian and French scholars on the
very meaning of pluriactivity. While French scholars meant that “it’s possi-
ble to speak of pluriactivity only when a first occupation or activity in agri-
culture would be joined by another one in the secondary or tertiary sector,”
Italian historians found that employments in the same agricultural sec-
tor, mostly seasonal, should be considered as part of the picture, along with
wine or oil manufacturing, to give some examples, and that therefore a firm
distinction between agricultural and extra-agricultural activities in defin-
ing pluriactivity appeared “too rigid.”10 In fact, in the definition proposal by
Garrier and colleagues not only any agricultural activity carried out within
10 Villani 1989, 16–7; crucial words are stressed in italics by Villani himself.
33
The similarity with the integrated peasant economy is impressive, al-
though it’s important to notice at this point how French historians in par-
ticular write about pluriactivity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gilbert Garri-
er and Yves Rinaudo distinguished between “closed forms of pluriactivity,”
practiced within the narrow space of a single hamlet or village and “con-
tributing to the collective autarchy of the community,” and “open forms of
pluriactivity” with a projection outside of the village, its products enter-
ing a commercial circuit and virtually always being subject to a cash pay-
ment” (Garrier, Goujon, Rinaudo 1988, 234). While “closed pluriactivity”
covers all the professions necessary to the life in the village community, the
“open pluriactivity is extroverted,” it has an “openly commercial vocation”
and a necessarily “extra-village dimension,” “it participates fully to a mar-
ket economy,” “requires a certain specialisation” and is “linked to forms
of proto-industrialisation, it evolves with time and modernises if neces-
sary” (Rinaudo 1987, 284). The integrated peasant economy is undoubted-
ly an open and extroverted economy, although it does not exclude from its
possible components also forms of activity within the community and in-
come sources originated in the same village (making the mention distinc-
tion much less relevant). In fact, one more parallel with the integrated peas-
ant economy is represented by the connection of the peasant economy to
the wider economy and external world that it implies: “Through pluriac-
tivity rural areas open themselves to the market, they undergo national if
not international economic impulses which the countless peasant weavers,
metallurgists or miners cannot escape” (Hubscher 1988, 9).
After reviewing the main and relatively numerous convergences be-
tween integrated peasant economy and pluriactivity, some of the major
points of divergence shall also not be passed over in silence. We may well
start from the internal debate between Italian and French scholars on the
very meaning of pluriactivity. While French scholars meant that “it’s possi-
ble to speak of pluriactivity only when a first occupation or activity in agri-
culture would be joined by another one in the secondary or tertiary sector,”
Italian historians found that employments in the same agricultural sec-
tor, mostly seasonal, should be considered as part of the picture, along with
wine or oil manufacturing, to give some examples, and that therefore a firm
distinction between agricultural and extra-agricultural activities in defin-
ing pluriactivity appeared “too rigid.”10 In fact, in the definition proposal by
Garrier and colleagues not only any agricultural activity carried out within
10 Villani 1989, 16–7; crucial words are stressed in italics by Villani himself.
33
