The following study assesses the contribution of research bodies, individual scientists, farming unions and agricultural trade organisations to shaping the social identity of the peasant classes and gradually causing agriculture to be conceived and managed like any other business enterprise. Special attention is given to the launch and published issues of Economie rurale, including the ideas championed in the journal and the social profile of its contributors. These are compared and contrasted with the ideas and authors promoted in other journals in order to study the way in which economic models imported from the United States led to economic rationality becoming recognized as the only path to historical evolution.
Performative economics; Agriculture; Categories of perception
