Tue Feb 20 09:56:43 EST 2001
ABSTRACTS IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
(c) 2001 EH.Net
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Name: John Abbott
Email: JAbbot1 at uic.edu
Institution: University of Illinois at Chicago
Co-author: none
Title: Rural Credit and the Peasant Household in Imperial Germany
Internet Address of abstracted work: not available
By mail:
Dept. of History (m/c 198)
913 University Hall
601 S. Morgan Street
Chicago, IL 60607
Phone: 708-383-4240
Language: English
Abstract:
One of the core processes of economic modernization, most social
theorists agree, consists in the gradual separation of business
activity from the family household. Indeed, this separation,
historically associated with the shift from subsistence to market
economies, is widely regarded as a distinguishing feature of western
economic development. In shaping this epochal transition, no factor
has been of greater importance than the growing availability of --
and the disciplinary habits associated with -- credit. This, in any
event, was argued by Max Weber in his ideal-typical account of modern
capitalist development, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft; this paper
evaluates this argument as it applies to the German peasantry during
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this
period, a revolution in banking and credit placed new opportunities
and obligations before rural Germany's household proprietors. The
role of Raiffeisen-style credit cooperatives, in particular, in
creating a new social basis for peasant calculation and longer-term
economic planning, will be considered.
Bibliography: Abbott, John R., "Rural Credit and the Peasant
Household in Imperial Germany," Manuscript, University of Illinois at
Chicago, 2001.
Subject: A, H, P
Geographical Area: 4
Country/Region: Germany/Bavaria
Time Period: 7, 8
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