Overview

At the close of the twentieth century, even as globalization spurred the growth of megacities worldwide, inhabiting the French countryside had become an internationally-shared fantasy and practice. Accounts of moving into old farmhouses were bestsellers, and houses and barns built by peasants had been renovated as second homes throughout the rural hinterland. Such developments, Sarah Farmer argues, did not simply stem from nostalgia for a rural past or a desire to invest in real estate. Rather, they defined new versions of the rural that emerge in post-agrarian societies. In post-World War II France, cutting-edge technological modernization and explosive economic growth uprooted rural populations and eroded the village traditions of a largely peasant nation. And yet, this book argues, rural France did not vanish in the sweeping transformations of the 1950s and 1960s. The French responded to the collapse of peasant society and threats to cherished landscapes by devising new ways of inhabiting the countryside, making them the sites of change and adaptation. In addition to the rise of restored peasant houses as second residences, Rural Inventions explores the utopian experiments in rural communes and in ""going back to the land; environmentalism; the extraordinary success of peasant autobiographies; photography; and other representations through which the French revalorized rural life and landscapes. The peasantry as a social class may have died out, but the countryside persisted, valued as a site not only for agriculture but increasingly for sport and leisure, tourism, social and political engagement, and a natural environment worth protecting. The postwar French state and the nation's rural and urban inhabitants, Sarah Farmer eloquently shows, remade the French countryside in relation to the city and to the world at large, not only invoking traditional France but also creating a vibrant and evolving part of the France yet to come.

Full Product Details

9780190079079

Table of Contents

Reviews

Sarah Farmer knows rural France very well. In this compelling, innovative, and thoughtful study, she lays out what has changed in the countryside, for better or for worse. -- John Merriman, Yale University In this stunning new history of the French countryside after the Second World War, Sarah Farmer takes us far beyond our usual picture of rural exodus and the much-lamented disappearance of 'peasant civilization.' She reveals a world of teeming creativity, tumult, and reinvention as innovative young farmers, New Left utopians, second-home urbanites, and 'neo-rural' ecologists remade the economic and cultural landscape of rural France. A masterful study, full in arresting insights, and a great pleasure to read. -- Herrick Chapman, New York University Rural Inventions is a path-breaking history of the urban dwellers in the first decades of the Fifth Republic who thought about the countryside, dreamed about it, and in some cases moved to it, and how this transformed rural France. Some bought second homes; others fought for environmental causes or established communes and organic farms. Sarah Farmer shows that nostalgia for a past defined in terms of place by those who did not originally live there was an engine of change in the countryside. Yet if the city folk experiencing this nostalgia were to see themselves in the picture, this would spoil it for them. This is why they are the absent presence in accounts of postwar rural France. Farmer reveals this presence and its importance. -- Donald Reid, author of Opening the Gates: The Lip Affair, 1968-1981 France's postwar economic boom transformed the face of the countryside. When growth came to grinding halt in the 1970s, writers and artists reflected on what 'modernization' had done to la France profonde. It was a debate steeped in nostalgia but also one generative of schemes to reimagine what rural living was all about. This is a subject of real significance, which Farmer handles deftly and with an engaging sympathy. -- Philip Nord, Princeton University This is a magisterial piece of scholarship that breaks new ground by providing a wide-ranging, multi-dimensional perspective on the changes that have affected rural France since World War II. What makes this book extraordinary is the sheer sweep of the analysis conducted by Sarah Farmer and the depth of erudition that she brings to it. Farmer seems equally at home in the musty archives of the Biblioth que Nationale, the films of the Ministry of Agriculture, the popular TV shows and magazines in which rural themes arose, and the immense scholarly and popular literature that rural France has generated over the past hundred years. -- Michael Bess, author of The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000

"""Rural Inventions explores the modernization of the French countryside after 1945, as consolidation of agricultural holdings pushed rural people into rapidly expanding cities. Challenging the old binary of presumably modern cities and backward provinces, Farmer explores how rural areas adapted to the changes....This short, accessible book, featuring excellent illustrations, reveals a symbiotic relationship between urban and rural France in a format that will appeal to students as well as scholars."" -- Choice ""Sarah Farmer knows rural France very well. In this compelling, innovative, and thoughtful study, she lays out what has changed in the countryside, for better or for worse."" -- John Merriman, Yale University ""In this stunning new history of the French countryside after the Second World War, Sarah Farmer takes us far beyond our usual picture of rural exodus and the much-lamented disappearance of 'peasant civilization.' She reveals a world of teeming creativity, tumult, and reinvention as innovative young farmers, New Left utopians, second-home urbanites, and 'neo-rural' ecologists remade the economic and cultural landscape of rural France. A masterful study, full in arresting insights, and a great pleasure to read."" -- Herrick Chapman, New York University ""Rural Inventions is a path-breaking history of the urban dwellers in the first decades of the Fifth Republic who thought about the countryside, dreamed about it, and in some cases moved to it, and how this transformed rural France. Some bought second homes; others fought for environmental causes or established communes and organic farms. Sarah Farmer shows that nostalgia for a past defined in terms of place by those who did not originally live there was an engine of change in the countryside. Yet if the city folk experiencing this nostalgia were to see themselves in the picture, this would spoil it for them. This is why they are the absent presence in accounts of postwar rural France. Farmer reveals this presence and its importance."" -- Donald Reid, author of Opening the Gates: The Lip Affair, 1968-1981 ""France's postwar economic boom transformed the face of the countryside. When growth came to grinding halt in the 1970s, writers and artists reflected on what 'modernization' had done to la France profonde. It was a debate steeped in nostalgia but also one generative of schemes to reimagine what rural living was all about. This is a subject of real significance, which Farmer handles deftly and with an engaging sympathy."" -- Philip Nord, Princeton University ""This is a magisterial piece of scholarship that breaks new ground by providing a wide-ranging, multi-dimensional perspective on the changes that have affected rural France since World War II. What makes this book extraordinary is the sheer sweep of the analysis conducted by Sarah Farmer and the depth of erudition that she brings to it. Farmer seems equally at home in the musty archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the films of the Ministry of Agriculture, the popular TV shows and magazines in which rural themes arose, and the immense scholarly and popular literature that rural France has generated over the past hundred years."" -- Michael Bess, author of The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000"

Author Information

Sarah Farmer is associate professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available