Agricultural holdings and social strata; the «freguesia» (parish) of Santo Isidoro (Mafra)

Abstract

This text is the result of a larger study made by the authors when they were finalists in sociology at the Lisbon Institute of Work and Enterprise Sciences. Three reasons led the authors to make that study. First of all, the need of deepening better the «rural world» subject and its evolution, even to characterize better the «urban milieu» and its production processus, as well as the integration (and transformation), within itself, of strata coming from different origins. Second, the decisive importance of the «rural milieu» and the classes ruling there (quantitatively and qualitatively) in the transformation processus (or of «resistance to the transformation») of the global society. At last, the need of identifying and contributing to the development of effective transformation factors and processi. One has decided to center the study in the «freguesia» (parish) of Santo Isidoro, in part on account of circunstancial motives and in part (and mainly) on account of the kind of realities and problems one could foresee to find, namely concerning the agrarian structure and the forms of exploiting the land, the agricultural associationism, the impact of the «urban milieu» on the «rural milieu», the permanence, in spite of that impact, of certain traditional habits, etc.