METOPO (WP5)

This Research Project is based on the use of the recently available Archives of the Ministry of Agriculture (founded 1917). The archives will finally permit a detailed research on the actual implementation of the land reform and its economic, social and political impact both on a national and a local level.

Research Hypothesis 

The Land Reform entailed a profound transformation of the rural landscape, either directly (management or radical upgrade of the land settlement and landscape, transformation of the agrarian system) or indirectly (public works on transports, water management and land amendment), but it also transformed deeply the social and political landscape. The rural economic and spatial structures were reshaped in close conjunction locally with the englobing social and political hierarchies. The landlords and the traditional provincial elite were complemented (if not substituted) by new social actors: the agronomists, the lawyers representing the cooperatives of the allottees, the judges of first instance, the leadership of rural cooperatives and the local executives of the National and Agricultural Banks. New models of social inter-mediation and political representation of the rural population were molded and new patterns of action and mobilisation emerged, while the local/provincial political field was rearranged and a new playbook with novel rules of game crystallized.

Scientific coordinator: Socrates Petmezas
Research team: Dimitris Angelis Dimakis, Evangelos Panayotis Drougoutis, Giorgos Gasias