RHN 153/2018 | Call
Organisers: Jordi Planas (University of Barcelona) and Anton Schuurman (Wageningen University)
Rural History 2019, 10-13 September 2019, Paris, France
Deadline for paper proposals: 15 November 2018
Call for Papers:
Rural History 2019 panel proposal
Organized capitalism within agriculture: Agricultural associations and state intervention in the European agriculture, 1880s-1930s
Since the late nineteenth-century crisis, the state intervention in European agricultural markets expanded involving many areas: governments used not only trade policy to protect domestic markets, but they also introduced many regulations affecting quality, quantity and prices in domestic markets, and they promoted innovations to make agricultural producers more competitive. The First World War and the 1930s crisis made much more urgent the need of supportive farm policies and led to a general setback of free markets and a growing role of the state in agriculture. From the late nineteenth-century crisis there was a growing social mobilization in the countryside, with the diffusion of agricultural associations (landowners associations, farmers unions, specialized crop producers’ associations, cooperatives, ...) that led to a much more organized rural society.
In this panel we aim to discuss the interaction between agricultural organizations and policy makers in Europe in a period (between two agricultural crisis) when specific agricultural policies started to be implemented. We would like to shed some light in the role of agricultural associations in demanding and/or implementing the state intervention in agricultural markets (intermediary institutions between the state and the rural society); the role of the state in the diffusion of agricultural cooperatives and other farm associations (legislation, state technical and financial support, etc.); the growing influence of agricultural associations in politics, empowering farmers but also paving the way to corporatist solutions, ... We would like to be able to compare and discuss different experiences in Europe regarding the growing organized capitalism within agriculture, looking at the changing role of the state and the agricultural associations.
If you are interested in participating, please send an abstract (max. 200 words) and a short CV to j.planas@ub.edu or anton.schuurman@wur.nl
Conference website: http://ruralhistory2019.ehess.fr