Although the great majority of UK farms are run as family businesses, the family dimension of these businesses is frequently neglected. There are nevertheless important inferences to be drawn from studying the farm family, its forms and functions, and the way that the family and the business interact. This calls for a multidisciplinary approach and the review attempts to draw together insights from industrial economics, social anthropology, history and rural sociology as they apply to the farm family business. It then relates these insights to considerations of the family development cycle, processes of inheritance and succession, roles of farmers' wives and multiple-job farming families. The literature review points to opposing tendencies within the population of farm businesses. Family forms of organisation and relationships may have become less relevant to farming at the lower end of the size scale but more relevant to the conduct of a successful large farm business.

The farm as a family business: a review

Feminist perspectives in rural geography: an introduction

The article analyzes data on family forms and individual life experiences in two rural communities of the Baixo Minho (northwest Portugal) during the 20th century. It examines how social and economic differentiation shaped norms and practices, giving rise to a variety of family forms rather than a regional family pattern. The stem family is found to be characteristic of wealthy peasant farmers. Drawing on individual life histories in two different generations, the article traces changes in stem family dynamics under the impact of industrialization and modernization over the last thirty years.

Peasant Stem Families in Northwestern Portugal: Life Transitions and Changing Family Dynamics

This thesis contributes to the established literature on farm women within the context of family farming. It recognises that not enough is yet known about the discourses and agency which influence their lives. Consequently, this study has sought to establish what dominant discourses shape the lives of farm women, their responses to these discourses and how their discursive positioning influences their agency.

This study employed a qualitative case study approach involving interviews with a diverse mixture of independent farm women, along with women farming in marital relationships. This thesis engages these narratives to showcase the colourful, complex life-experiences of farm women. In addition, and where present, women's partners were interviewed to provide male farmers' perspectives about women in family farming.

This research has found that women's lives are shaped by positioning and contextualising discourses, with which they comply to ensure that the family farm survives. Their subservient discursive positioning limits the agency they can express, although they are able to mobilise indirect agency through supporting their partner; an implicit form of agency which has previously been unrecognised or understated.

Cumulatively, this thesis highlights the need to recognise the diversity of farm women, and how they are able to exercise agency from their constrained subject positions within the family farming context. Furthermore it emphasises that agency is a dynamic, and far more varied concept than previously understood.

Farm women : diverse encounters with discourse and agency

It is about the ethnography of the mate extractive activity, the mate fight, in the South of Brazil, by the copper-colored, being the "conductor wire" for the lifestyle of this group. It approaches the fight category related to the work category, propitiously added by the native ones as an ethnical prerogative, leading to the underlying oppositions.

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Uns trabalham e outros lutam: brasileiros e a luta na erva

This paper is concerned with the principle of the differential integration of the rural family, illustrated by means of a comparison between the social reproduction of the family farm in England and the pequenoproprietario household in Portugal. The comparison is developed in terms of a cultural model of the family in each case. In the English example, this appears to involve a partitioning of identity (especially on the part of the in-marrying wife) within the family and kinship system. In the Portuguese case, there is a suspension of identity of family members who are absent in space and in time. In both cases the idea of the family works as a unificatory device. It is for this very reason that critical attention should be given to the distinction between folk construct and analytical concept.



Resume

Le principc de ľ integration differentielle de la famille runic est illustre dans cet article a travers la comparaison de la reproduction sociale de ľ exploitation familiale en Angleterre ? une part et de la petite exploitation 2u Portugal. Au dela de ce principe la comparaison porte sur le modele culturcl familial de chacun de ces cas. Dans le cas anglais, lc modele culturel implique une separation ? identite (surtout dans le cas de la femme qui se marie) entre la famille et la parente. Dans le cas portuguais il s'agit ? une suspension ? identite des membres de la famille qui sont eloignes dans le temps ou dans Pcspace. Mais dans les deux cas ľ idee de famille fonctionne comme un mecanisme unificatcur. Ce dernier constat conduit a insister sur la distinction qui doit etre faitc entre la notion commune de famille et le concept scientifique.



Kurzfassung

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Prinzip der differentiellen Integration der landlichen Familie, dargestellt an Hand eines Vergleichs zwischen der sozialen Reproduktion des Familienbetriebes in England und des Haushaltes von Kleineigentumcrn in Portugal. Der Verglcich wird nach Entwicklung eines Kulturmodells der Familie fur jedes Land durch-fgefuhrt. Dies scheint im Falle Englands cine Teilung der Identitat (insbesondcre bei der einheiratenden Ehcfrau) innerhalb der Familie und der Verwandtschaftssystems einzu-schliessen. Im Falle von Portugal kann cine Aufhcbung der Identitat von solchen Familienmitgliedern, die in raumlicher und zcitlicher Entfernung leben, festgestellt werden. In beiden Fallen wirkt die Idee der Familie als cine Einhcit stiftende Einrichtung. Aus genau diesem Grunde sollte der Unterscheidung zwischen volkstumlichen Vorstellungen und analytischen Konzeptcn kritische Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet werden.

Mary Bouquet

Papers

The differential integration of the rural family