The invention of peasantry. A moment in the post-war history of French sociology.

In the 1960s, different tendencies in the study of peasantry met in Paris. American ethnologists discovered in European and South-American peasantry a new scope for study, French geographers and historians (in particular medi evalists) grouped together regional studies. The tradition of Russian popul ist agronomists was rediscovered, marxist economists and sociologists quest ioned themselves on the survival of peasants, which refuted the prediction by Marx as regards their disappearance. Thanks to these different trends, a nd under the pressure of the French agricultural revolution and repeated fa ilures of socialist farming, a theory on peasantry was developed.