The National Institute of Rural Sociology: The First Fifty Years

The author goes through the past fifty years of Insor activity, in particular by looking into the work of its Director, Corrado Barberis. The work carried out at Insor is captured in the book La riforma agraria trenta anni dopo - The Agriculture Reform, Thirty Years Later. This research goes beyond the history of the 1950s reform to turn the focus on the tumultuous modernisation and transformation currently taking place. In fact, after the epic of the agricultural reform, themes like social stratification, the rise of the farmworker figure, part time employment, multitasking and family business, progressively gained importance, becoming new models for labour organisation and agricultural production. These issues, arising subsequent to the large-scale exodus, lead to consolidation of the current concept of rural development as a vital tool for the analysis and the management of contemporary development of the primary sector in all its aspects.