Failure as a Precondition for Success - the Transformation of East German Agriculture Revisited

This paper asks why the transformation of the East German agricultural sector did not occur as politically intended: decollectivisation and a change to small family farms did not take place. In order to answer this question the two dominant sociological concepts of transformation, transfer of institutions and delayed modernisation, are first considered. Afterwards the theoretical and methodological approaches and results of socio-agricultural studies are presented. Based on the interpretation of the findings of these studies the main characteristics of the agricultural transformation are identified. The paper ends with the thesis that, as was typical for the German reading of the transformation process was its interpretation within the "order of time". This implied a devaluation and ignorance of whatever was not in line with the concept of modernisation.