FAMILY FARMS IN THE SCOTTISH BORDERS - A PRACTICAL DEFINITION BY HILLSHEEP FARMERS

The theme of this paper is the family farm and the problems of definin g it. The approach taken is to recognize the difference between theore tical definitional practices of sociologists and anthropologists, on t he one hand, and everyday definitional practices of family Farmers on the other. The former focus upon observable behaviour and/or quantitat ive measures that are used to construct an analytical concept with pre cise boundaries; the latter are not interested in defining the boundar ies of the concept of the family farm but in understanding the nature and operations of their family farms so that they can reproduce them i n their everyday activities. They attend to what is most central and i deal to the family farm and this is the basis of their concept of the family farm. Through an ethnographic account of hill sheep farms in th e Scottish borderlands, the paper argues that the essence of family fa rms is a consubstantial relation between family and farm such that the distinct existence and form of both partake of or become united in a common substance that is transmitted over generations. The analysis hi ghlights the economic and social interdependence of family and farm, t he process by which the farm becomes embodied through family labour, t he strategies adopted by the family to ensure the transfer of the farm to the following generation, and the use of a genetic metaphor to tra nspose a legal relation between family and farm into a consubstantial one. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.