HERZENNI, AHMED; PHD

                         UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY, 1994
 
                         SOCIOLOGY, SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT (0700); HISTORY, MIDDLE EASTERN (0333); ECONOMICS, AGRICULTURAL (0503)
 

                         This study attempts to establish culture as a primary factor influencing agricultural development. It is
                         argued that while other approaches, such as the diffusion of innovations, Farming Systems Research
                         and Extension, the Alternative Strategies paradigm, political economy models, and the Moral Economy
                         approach, implicitly or explicitly disregard culture as the most pervasive factor influencing economic and
                         technological behavior, the cultural economy model gives culture primacy. Culture is defined as the set
                         of social norms and bodies of knowledge that ultimately stem from a particular relationship that a people
                         have to nature and deity, and that translates into particular social structures. This definition is meant to
                         restore the importance of human agency as a social force which constantly reinterprets culture and
                         refashions social structures. It is argued that even when peasant farmers are 'captured' by modernity and
                         capitalist forces, they are still able to maintain their own cultural interpretations of the world, and to
                         appropriate selected imports of modernity and capitalism through these interpretations. A Moroccan
                         village located in a semi-arid wheat producing region was chosen to test the cultural economy model. A
                         combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used to assess the cultural economy of
                         the village. The findings suggest that although sharecropping practices were on the decline, the social
                         norms that shaped them were still effective. The withdrawal of the richest land owners only reinforced the
                         sense of dignity and solidarity within the community. Some of the poor peasants still have access to land
                         through sharecropping with small land owners. And, the community is confident that the introduction of
                         irrigation in the near future will force large land owners to return to the practice of sharecropping, or at
                         least provide job opportunities to the poor. Traditional agricultural practices were still widely employed.
                         These practices revolve around the concept of bernisha. Technical innovation involved an adapted use
                         of the off-set disc harrow. This demonstrated the capacity of the farmers to appropriate exogenous
                         technologies within their particular cultural and farming systems requirements. It is concluded that unless
                         research and extension services undergo radical conversions of their programs by acknowledging the
                         expertise of peasant farmers they will continue to confront failures in their endeavors.

Social Systems Simulation Group P.O. Box 6904 San Diego, CA  92166-0904 Roland Werner, Principal Phone/FAX  (619) 660-1603