On rural religiosity: parish priests, peasants and urban life

Abstract

This article analyses some aspects of religiosity in the countryside, in a country with an ancient and deep-rooted catholic tradition. It focuses on a northwestern area where the population is dense and dispersed, with fragmented family farms and a high proportion of tenant farming. From the sixties onwards, traditional emigration has progressively been replaced by increasing commuting; people are working in the cities, but keeping farms and living in the villages. While the religious goods supplied are being modernized, transformation of the local class structure is breaking down the relative homogeneity of demands and forms of consumption of these symbolic goods.