L'hérédité sociale en agriculture : l'origine sociale des petits paysans

In the society as a whole, social inequalities have a high probability of reproduction from one generation to the next ; what is the situation in agriculture ? Without being able to make a complete study of the relationships between social origin and social destination, we have attempted to find out to what extent the small farmers are sons or sons-in-law of small farmers, on the basis of a survey carried out in Brittany, in 1976. Method problems are first discussed. Within our conceptual framework, the sons'or daughters'social positions appear partly dependent of the position of fathers and fathers-in-law, even if there are many cases where the destination does not correspond to the origin.