Comunidades subsumidaspersistencia y crisis de los vínculos locales de reciprocidad en el Valle medio del Alberche

Abstract

This doctoral thesis Comunidades subsumidas. Persistencia y crisis de los vínculos locales de reciprocidad en el Valle medio del Alberche sociologically analyzes the changes that the municipalities of the middle Alberche Valley (Ávila) experienced in the relations between their inhabitants in the heat of the double process of urbanization and tertiarization that accompanied the transition from the traditional peasant world to the contemporary rural society. The object of study is the evolution of kinship, community and neighborhood networks from 1940 to the present. The research moves in a hybrid ground between social anthropology and microhistory. Methodologically, thirty-four interviews were conducted with temporary residents and the local population about the social and economic transformations and the patterns of sociability that have taken place in this region. The work is developed in a sequence of historical moments. The post-war years up to the crisis of the traditional agrarian society and the interior exodus cover the first part. The tourist-real estate explosion at the beginning of the seventies until the extension of the values of the consumer society among the alberchanos, comprise the second part. The third and last chapter is dedicated to the various forms of social commitment that persist today and to the discomforts produced by the loss of social and community support. Finally, a series of conclusions relevant to rural sociology are drawn: the homologizing acculturation of the peasantry, the mental effects of social fragilization, the agrarian policy of Franco's dictatorship and its local repercussions, etc.