Talk:Metayage

NPOV[edit]

This may just need slight recasting into a more encyclopedic form. I removed the sentence that read, "Indeed, to every tourist who has passed through the plains of Lombardy with their eyes open, the knowledge that métayage has for ages been there the prevailing form of tenure ought to suffice for the triumphant vindication of métayage in the abstract." 'Triumphant vindication' was just too hard to swallow. But sentences like "Métayage, in order to be in any measure worthy of commendation, must be a genuine partnership ..." need to be recast. Bejnar 14:23, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that I have removed all of the non-NPOV stuff except from the Criticism section. Bejnar 20:35, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Out-of-date[edit]

Even when the original of this article was written, presumably in 1894, the practice of métayage had passed out of use in most of France and Italy. It needs a major rewrite. Bejnar 14:58, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Metayage & sharecropping[edit]

First two messages are copied from user pages:

I bumped into an uncatted stray article on Metayage System which I've now linked to sharecropping in a way that I hope makes sense. --Mereda 11:54, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing Metayage System to my attention. To be honest, I've never heard of it, but that doesn't mean anything :) By the way, is it actually spelled "métayage"? If so, the article should be renamed to the correct term. I think what you did is fine, but it's possible metayage and sharefarming should be merged. What do you think? Should we leave as is or propose a merge? (Just have a feeling if I had a French-English dictionary, métayage would directly translate to sharefarming -- actually just checked and Google translates metayage to "share-cropping" -- I guess that's because Google uses American English). — Donama 01:18, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Someone else - Bejnar - has now spotted the old 1911 "métayage" piece and tagged it as a problem, so I've moved our conversation to the article's talk page. Words in 5 languages, including métayage and something else in Japanese, are shown at the foot of the existing article on sharecropping. Checking my French-English dictionary (Oxford-Hachette 2001) for "métayage" actually gives "tenant farming GB" and "sharecropping US". That doesn't answer the question, but it does flag up the issue of whether we're accurately describing systems of agricultural labor, or land tenure, or both. It looks to me, from 10 minutes reading (so I'm an expert!), as if every culture/continent might have had some sort of variant form of sharefarming, with some of them surviving into modern times. The scope of all that, using existing material at this stage, might be close to the upper limit for a single article; so a neater answer might be a set of "sharefarming by continent" articles. So, instead of merger, I'd suggest moving Metayage System to something like Sharefarming in Europe and then giving it a quick rewrite as the next step. That's got the advantage of breaking the job into easy project steps. Or would anyone (not me!) like to take on the heavy end of rewriting everything to make sense in one big piece? --Mereda 07:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that separate article approach is more appropriate. Certainly the terms métayage and metayage should lead somewhere when searched. It really doesn't matter to me whether an article is called Polis or Greek city-states, as long as the paths between them are clear and reasonable obvious. Which in the above example of Polis they are not. 'Sharefarming' is such a neologism that I would hesitate to use it as a title for any article, and certainly not for the European article, especially if to do so would be just for the sake of consistency. The upspring is that sharecropping is _both_ a land tenure issue and an agricultural labor issue. The histories of those in England and France are quite different, while those of France and Italy are similar. Sharecropping in the US institutionalized some of the same problems that it did in France and in Japan. As one author put it, "The economic and social conditions from which métayage emerged in the late medieval France, including great population pressure on a limited land supply, have at various times also existed in India, Japan, eastern Europe, and the southern United States and have produced similar sharecropping systems." In is interesting to note that payments under métayage while originally 'in kind' have been, for the past 200 years or so, for the most part in cash after the sale of the crop. While this is a significant change in terms of impact, and as one author stated changes métayage into simple peasant tenure with rent based on productivity, it is still called métayage under French law. Because the situation on the Danube, in eastern Europe, is quite different from France and Italy, I don't think that the term métayage has any more validity there than it does for US sharecropping. No, I am not interested in rewriting the whole set of articles. Doing so for me would require more book research (not original research) than I am ready to devote to a single project right now. Question: Does sharefarming include tenant farming and serfdom? Bejnar 17:40, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I feel happy with keeping separate articles, (currently Sharecropping and Metayage System); and most reasonable words ought to redirect to one or the other. And I'd happily accept that my first thought of moving the metayage stuff to the different name I suggested wasn't that clever: the subject differences in this area are cultural/legal/language-based rather than splitting according to any convenience of continental geography. My second thoughts are that: - we ought to move the article to the more intuitive and more correct Métayage; and that other variant forms of sharecropping, such as Musaqat under Islamic law and Aparcería, are best dropped into the global article on Sharecropping until someone feels energised to write them up separately. What do you think? --Mereda 15:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and Yes. (1)Can you move Metayage to Métayage; I don't know how to deal with the existing redirect. (2) Just like history articles under countries or states that remain under the larger heading until they grow too unwieldly, I think that sharecropping subsets should be treated accordingly. Give Métayage, Musaqat and Aparaceria their subheadings under Sharecropping and where appropriate use the Template:Main or Template:Details, I am not sure which would be more appropriate, maybe details. (3) We still need to rewrite this article a bit more. Bejnar 18:38, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh the joy of diacritics! It looks like this one fails to meet the criteria Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(use_English) and Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(standard_letters_with_diacritics)#Criteria for including the accent in the article's name. I'm not inclined to argue it to death, so I'd be content to use plain Metayage instead. Any other views?--Mereda 08:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bejnar, sharefarming is not a neologism. You can see there has been significant discussion on this on the Talk:Sharcropping page. I understand sharefarming is a term used in English-speaking Europe, Australia and New Zealand. I personally never knew the term sharecropping as a child -- it was always called sharefarming.

Mereda, I like your idea to create continent-based (or region-based) articles detailing all cases of the general concept of sharefarming historically in place in the region. The word sharecropper has political significance in the US whereas the word sharefarmer does not in Australia, so it is worth pointing these things out along with the factual history of sharefarming.

(And I also don't like Wikipedia's policy on diacritics -- considering that redirects are so cheap and easy to create, it's really counterproductive). — Donama 04:06, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved the page over. The articles about these cropsharing practices are a lot better than when we found them, though they're still quite a way short of ultimate perfection. There's potentially a global range of subject material; and a historical range from traditional (maybe pre-history), through feudalism/peonage etc, to modern commercial practices. A region-based approach to writing additional material would probably work well for modern commercial practices, especially North America and the European Union, but the historical material just doesn't break down as conveniently as that when you start looking. Since sharecropping is the best-known term, and it's got some of the historical flavour as well, it's the neatest compromise until the article(s) get bigger. Who's keen to do any more at the moment? I'll probably look back here sometime. --Mereda 07:55, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV of the criticism section[edit]

Here are a few thoughts on how to improve this part of the article.

1.) We need quotes from some of the English writers who condemned the practice and maybe also one from Mill since he is mentioned. This is needed to back up the “unanimous” assertion otherwise it is just weasel word-ish.
2.) Rewording to remove the “No wonders” and “not only” which are overtly opinionated. I’ve taken the opportunity to start doing this on the section.
3.) Distinguish what is a direct quote from a source and remove any extra-curricular commentary. The prime example is the last paragraph which makes the POV assertion that “Métayage, in order to be in any measure worthy of commendation, must be a genuine partnership…etc” and then references a foot note to Cruveilhier, J. (1894) Étude sur le métayage Paris. As a direct quote this can be acceptable and should be properly distinguished. However in its current form it very easily gives the appearance of commentary and POV.

I’m going to seek the assistance from some of the editors who contributed primarily to this section since they should be best able to distinguish the quotes from the sources they’ve dealt with. I can work with some of wording but it seems that the real meat of the issue lies in how the sources are being utilized. Agne27 02:38, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the original of this section was the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, which gives the appearence iof having been translated from French, and also appears to be based on the Cruveilhier book cited. See [1] Bejnar 16:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, that does create a tough one. I have to admit that I'm suprised that work from the exalted 1911 would be so....well unencyclopedic, at least in the POV tone.Agne27 16:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Complant & Metayage[edit]

Continuing the dialogue with Bejnar As to métayage, I believe that the term is broader than the usage that you have come across so far. It is used in the French translation of Cato, as well as in the French books (listed in the article) referring to a wide variety of practices, from where the landowner furnishes nothing but the land to where he furnishes everything including the seed and hand tools. From where the landowner has no say in the production, through assisted co-management to almost complete management by the landowner or his bailiff. Bejnar 14:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that métayage is a very broad term and its probably beneficial to cover those different aspects. I do think that some of sore parts of the criticism section of métayage is related to the over-broadness of the term and by fleshing out some of the different applications, over the course of it's history, will make editing that section to a more NPOV stance much easier. I think that including the different aspects that "Complant" entails in a way that flows with the overall article is key. To that extent, I think the edit you did to the complant reference was great.Agne27 02:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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