ABSTRACT
A more cynical interpretation is that functionalism and the sociology of development served and continues to serve a conservative political/ ideological agenda and has helped to perpetuate existing social differences. The parallel between the assertions of Polish scholars that the obsolete lifestyle of peasants is a major impediment to the development of agriculture and the dualistic stage theory of the sociology of development current in Western academic and development agency circles in the 1950s and 1960s is unmistakable. Far from showing almost mindless attachment to land for its own sake, a characteristic with which "traditional peasants" are often charged, villagers see land as the means through which an encompassing value is expressed, namely, control over labor power, time, and one’s very existence. Turning to production techniques, one notices immediately that many farmers in Wola Plawska rely on the equivalent of late nineteenth-century US farming technology.
