Rural Cooperatives in Socialist Utopia

What happened to the most successful socialist utopia? Scholars look back to trace the transformations of the Israeli moshav, or rural cooperative village.

This work provides an understanding of what happened to a model socialist construction - the rural village co-operative of Israel, the Moshav. It presents a diversity of views from the perspectives of individual community members, community organisations themselves and expert interpreters.

Scholars bring their field experience and their expertise in sociology, social anthropology, economics, political science, and other areas to bear on an understanding of what happened to a model socialist construction: the rural village cooperative of Israel, the Moshav. A number of the chapters describe re-studies of communities their authors had examined a generation ago. The overall result is a diversity of views from the perspectives of individual community members, community organizations themselves, and expert interpreters, about the causes and consequences of a decline in economic cooperation concomitant with a decline in government support and a decline in the role of agriculture in most communities and in the national economy. The processes examined here have considerable importance for the understanding of transformations taking place in vast regions of the world.