L'évolution des disciplines et des métiers

Evolving profession - Since the Second world war, agricultural economics in France evolved as a discipline under a set of three main influences: changes in institutional and material setting, changes in "social demand", changes in ideas and power within the scientific community. Whereas the interwar period had been rather poor in terms of economic and sociological analysis of the rural world (in contrast with the situation at the beginning of the century), the postwar period was first marked by the necessity of recovery after the destruction of the war, and then, by the upsurge of the "marxist" school, which, in France, was particularly vigorous and somewhat original. Since the mid eighties, the French production in agricultural economics is more "mainstream ", yet marked by difficult relations with general economists, who do not in general consider agriculture as a subject of study by itself.