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We study here the birth and development of cooperative and union endeavors aimed at agriculture over two decades, from 1890 to 1900, through the personal itinerary of Robert de Rocquigny, who was at the time head of the Agricutural section of the Musée social. Sympathising with Le Play's followers, Rocquigny advocated the volunteer association as a tool for economic progress and social peace, and conducted field research in France, then Italy. In these, he studied the origins of the cooperative and mutual association movements in the countryside, as well as the emergence of agrarian strife. Analysing the works of this author allows us to relate two national histories with few commonalities at first glance, but which indeed are constantly mirroring each other in spite of their differences. The various ways in which the interests of the rural world were managed, organized and represented, thus provide the material for a reassessment in a comparatist perspective of the far-reaching transformations experienced by the countryside at the end of the 19th century. By adopting a path of interrogation which pays close attention to both divergences and interconnections, we will thus be able to free the issue of association from its traditional narrative, and reassess its role in the debates which led to the creation of the Institut International d’Agriculture in 1905.