Peasantry, poverty, class

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Peasantry, poverty, class

• 15.10.2003

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Topics

• Land, peasantry, markets, ejidos, culture of
  poverty
• On terminology and theory
• Articles
• Ethnographies
• Land reform in Mexico
• Tequio and guelaguetza
• UFCo, US and Guatemala

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Historical emergence of the topic

• Peasantry as a distinctive object of scrutiny
• 1950s
• Explosion of cross-disciplinary interest
• late 1960s and early 1970s.
• gt a direct consequence of the success of the
  20th century peasant movements
• challenge to classical Marxism-Leninism
• (French peasants in the EU)
• Ambivalent category
• capacity for rebellion
• tendency to conservatism

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Anthropological approaches to peasantry (I)

• Kearney - Reconceptualizing the Peasantry (1996)
• The term "peasant"
• constructed from residual images of
  pre-industrial European and colonial rural
  society
• Influenced by romantic and modern nationalist
  imaginations
• definitions and debates have focused on the
  presumed social, economic, cultural and political
  characteristics
• Kearney - study of peasants' own definition of
  themselves

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Anthropological approaches to peasantry (II)

• Definitions of the term peasant have revolved
  around three important characteristics
• 1) peasants are agriculturalists
• 2) both their production and consumption is
  orientated to the household
• 3) they are under some economic and political
  obligations to outside power-holders.

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Anthropological approaches to peasantry (III)

• Kroeber - peasants as part-societies with
  part-cultures
• "Peasants are definitely rural yet live in
  relation to market towns they form a class
  segment of a larger population which usually
  contains also urban centres, sometimes
  metropolitan capitals."
• Unlike tribal populations, they are not isolated,
  politically autonomous, and self-sufficient
• Redfield
• similar approach
• positioning peasant societies on a "folk-urban
  continuum."

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Anthropological approaches to peasantry (IV)

• Firth peasants as a social class with concrete
  economic characteristics
• based on small-scale production
• with simple equipment
• small market organization
• fishermen and rural craftsmen
• the same social class as peasant
  agriculturalists.

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Anthropological approaches to peasantry (V)

• Economic studies of peasant life initiated by
  Chayanov
• Theory of Peasant Economy (1925)
• peasants - a distinctive mode of production
• domestic unit of production and consumption
• production is oriented primarily towards
  household reproduction rather that individual
  profit
• profit has no meaning (no wage labour)
• Chayanov's rule
• the amount of time a household member works is
  proportional to his/her household's dependency
  ratio
• the dependency ratio the ratio of household
  consumers to workers
• proto-capitalism when the ratio increases
• Chayanovs arguments attacked by orthodox
  Marxists
• peasants as rural proletarians

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Anthropological approaches to peasantry (VI)

• Chayanov gt Marshall Sahlins
• Stone Age Economics (1972)
• "domestic mode of production" (in kinship-based
  societies)
• production for use ( domestic mode of
  production) vs production for exchange (
  capitalist mode of production).
• the "structure of underproduction" Malaysia,
  Polynesia, etc.
• "affluent societies"
• The key dynamic in the peasant economy -
  household structure
• Feminist scholars
• what constitutes a "natural" household?

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Anthropological approaches to peasantry (VII)

• Foster (1965) - "image of Limited Good"
• "peasant behaviour is patterned is such fashion,
  as to suggest, that peasants view their social,
  economic and natural universes their total
  environment as one in which all of the desired
  things in life such as land, wealth, health,
  friendship and love, manliness and honour,
  respect and status, power and influence, security
  and safety, exist in finite quantity and are
  always in short supply as far as the peasant is
  concerned."
• Such a system is "closed"
• Ones position can only be improved at the
  expense of others
• progress seen as a threat to community stability

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Anthropological approaches to peasantry (VIII)

• leveling mechanisms
• E.g. Mayordomías
• Lewis - "culture of poverty"
• Wolf - "institutionalized envy"

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Political approaches to peasantry (I)

• focus shift
• peasant conservatism gt radicalism gt hidden
  resistance
• 1) 1950s and 1960s
• influence of the modernization theory
• Emphasis on peasant attachment to collective
  norms and values
• Based on ideas of Marx and Lenin.
• Urban proletariat vs rural peasants
• Lenin the success of the revolution depends on
  whether peasantry sides with proletariat or
  bourgeoisie
• decisive victory of the democratic revolution is
  possible only in the form of a revolutionary-democ
  ratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the
  peasantry.

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Political approaches to peasantry (II)

• 2) Late 1960s and 1970s
• anti-Vietnam radicalism
• reaction to the modernization theory
• Eric Wolf (1969)
• middle peasantry potential agents of social
  transformation.
• 3) 1980s
• Michael Adas (1981)
• pre-modern states in Africa and Asia
• peasants dealt with exploitation by simply
  walking away from it
• moving elsewhere or shifting allegiance to
  another authority.
• overt rebellion as a distinctively modern
  response
• Reaction to the increased bureaucratic
  penetration and control of colonial and
  post-colonial states.
• James Scott (1985)
• On "everyday forms of peasant resistance"
• covert tactics of resistance like gossip

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Articles (I)

• Hewitt de Alcántara, Cynthia 1984. Cultural
  Ecology, Marxism and the Development of a Theory
  of a Peasantry, 1950-1970. In Anthropological
  perspectives on rural Mexico. London Routledge,
  pp. 70-96.
• Wolf, Eric R. 1955. Types of Latin American
  Peasantry A Preliminary Discussion. American
  Anthropologist 57, 452-71.

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Articles (II)

• 1) "The term peasant indicates a structural
  relationship, not a particular culture content."
  Explain. (Wolf)
• 2) What are the possible risks faced by "open"
  peasant communities? (Wolf)
• 3) How did cultural ecology contribute to the
  study of peasant communities? (Alcantara)
• 4) Compare Wolf's concept of "coalitions" and
  Foster's "dyadic contract." (Alcantara)

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Ethnograhies

• Cancian, Frank 1972. Change and Uncertainty in a
  Peasant Economy The Maya Corn Farmers of
  Zinacantan. Stanford, CA Stanford University
  Press.
• Foster, G. M. 1979 1967. Tzintzuntzan Mexican
  Peasants in a Changing World. New York Elsevier
  (Pages TBA)
• Redfield, R. 1967. Peasant Society and Culture.
  Chicago University of Chicago Press.
• Tax, S. 1953. Penny Capitalism A Guatemalan
  Indian Economy. Washington, D.C. Smithsonian
  Institution, Institute for Social Anthropology.