Le bonheur dans la modernité

The book sets out to study agricultural advisors as a profession in order to update the social and political history of the modernisation of French agriculture during the "Trente glorieuses". It describes the conditions in which the profession of agricultural advisor emerged and examines the methods which these advisors used to obtain the farmers' support for modernisation policies. It then focuses on the crisis of the early 1970s, which is considered the combined product of the general reorganisation of public policies, the organisational struggles in the world of agriculture, the dynamics behind the emergence of the profession of advisor, the continuous intensification of production methods. Therefore, the book is not only aimed at specialists in sociology and rural history but also all those who wish to gain an understanding of the social and historical dynamics of the unprecedented changes in the agricultural world in the twentieth century.