L'agriculteur, la ruralité et le géographe : Pour une socio-géographie des agriculteurs / The farmer, rurality, and the geographer. Toward a socio-geographic study of farmers

The farmer, rurality, and the geographer. Toward a socio-geographic study of farmers. Since the mid-fifties, major economic, demographic and cultural changes have radically influenced farmer-town relationships. On one hand, the second agricultural revolution resulting from mechanization has had a big effect on internal and external agricultural relations. The agricultural crisis since the mid-eighties has favoured the development of a new profession, that of the rural manager, in close contact with both the market and urban dwellers. On the other hand, since 1975 positive migratory flows to rural areas have brought about profound social changes linked with the arrival of former urbanités. Finally, changes in the cultural fabric have resulted in many different attitudes to place and temporality, particularly between farmers and the other inhabitants. After identifying the principal characteristics of this phenomenon, the paper studies the main developments in the explanatory models which have structured geographical research since the mid-fifties. Particular attention is paid to the terms of the discussion which took place between 1985 and 1995, concerning the two ways of examining the social and spatial changes occurring in rural/town relationships. Interviews reveal that farmers who experience increasingly different places in town, continue to have split images of town and country. This encourages us to develop a new geographical approach to such studies by considering, as a starting point, the social and spatial itinerary of farmers who live in five or six types of rural space.