Styles, parables and scripts: Diversity and conformity in australian and finnish agriculture

Two paradigms for understanding the acquisition of farmer identity, farming styles and cultural scripts, are compared using interview material with family owned and operated farms in Australia and Finland. The styles of farming approach of van der Ploeg has been considered in various Australian applications. However, it does not adequately address why farmers become farmers, or how farming styles and farmers’ ways of life are socially reproduced. Instead, these are explained by the concepts of farmers’ parables and cultural scripts, both a form of narrative. Parables are the stories farmers tell about hypothetical farmers and which act as a form of social control. Scripts, like parables, are the cultural models that farmers utilise in their stories. Scripts and parables provide an explanation for the preservation of traditional practice when discourses of globalisation and economic rationality advocate the abandoning of the farm.