Irina Marin

This project proposes to examine the dissemination and reception of agricultural knowledge and innovation in the borderlands between the Austro-Hungarian, Tsarist and Ottoman Empires at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, in an attempt to account for the disparities in standards of living and productivity in contiguous rural communities. It is conceived as an interdisciplinary study that looks comparatively at knowledge acquisition or, conversely, at resistance to novelty among the peasantry in the region as a function of intersecting political, economic and cultural factors. This project proposes to examine the dissemination and reception of agricultural knowledge and innovation in the borderlands between the Austro-Hungarian, Tsarist and Ottoman Empires at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, in an attempt to account for the disparities in standards of living and productivity in contiguous rural communities. It is conceived as an interdisciplinary study that looks comparatively at knowledge acquisition or, conversely, at resistance to novelty among the peasantry in the region as a function of intersecting political, economic and cultural factors.