Revision:Characteristics of Peasant Societies

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1. Non-mechanised agriculture
2. Small scale of production. Firth said "many a peasant farmer is also a fisherman or craftsman by turns, as his seasonal cycle or his cash needs influence him". Redfield, who is more agreed with, rejects this idea and restricts the term "peasant" to agricultural people.
3. Economic and social relationship with a general / larger and more powerful culture and tradition (The "Great Tradition").
4. Grow most of own food etc (i.e. meet most of subsistence needs but are NOT independent). They also grow a surplus to sell etc.
5. Often isolated from the mainstream.
6. Worldview conservative. Peasant tend to identify strongly with their land, their families and the ethic of hard work. Some tend to view the world as a place in which there are not enough good things- wealth, happiness, good health etc to go around. This is known as "the image of the limited good" (Foster). Inherent in this view is the idea that if one person accumulates more than his/her share of goods, another will have less than a full share. This notion can make peasants jealously protective of what they have, suspicious in their relationships with others etc.
7. Often a history of domination by other groups.
8. Eric Woolf divided them into:
   • Closed peasant societies - more likely to incorporate the characteristics of peasant communities. Outsiders are unwelcome and the membership of the community is closely defined. They live in poverty and what Woolf calls "defensive ignorance"; they remain uneducated in order to protect their traditional way of life. Their culture discourages the accumulation and display of wealth; those who manage to accumulate some wealth are pressured to return to the economic level of everyone else by sharing with relatives or by spending their accumulations on community events. Examples: Mexico, Spain.
   • Open peasant societies - arose in response to the increasing demand around the world for crops that could be readily sold for cash- a product of the rise of Capitalism. An open peasant society is therefore geared to a national / international economy and the peasants may sell half or more of what they produce rather than use it themselves. They own their land and sometimes borrow money, although on a small scale. They are much more integrated into the larger society, and welcome changes from the outside.
9. Status of women is usually low, perhaps because peasant women typically work in the domestic sphere rather than outside it. WARD GAILEY suggests that economics based on money may encourage status differences based on sex. Women's value devalued cause they don't make the money.
10. Social structure:
    • Sometimes lineal descent groupings remain important (e.g. Zincantan Mayan Indians).
    • Sometimes fictive ties have become important (e.g. Compadrazgo in Mexico).
11. Social structure: usually independence of household groups is most common. Economically, family households characteristically act as separate corporations, as units of production, and as competitors for scarce resources and income. In many peasant communities, these households stand relatively isolated and are not organised into lineages or other kin groups. The fragmentation into nuclear families, and their economic competition, are very often reflected in the texture of social relations, There is competition and hostile distrust between families.
12. There is an emphasis on dyadic relations (Foster). Dyadic- the way pairs of individuals are, in many different spheres of life, bound into relationships almost similar to contracts, though they are not enforced in law. Ties outside the family are, at least in the Mexican village of Tzintzuntzan, primarily between individuals rather than groups. They persist partly because they are never precisely balanced, and hence call for continuing reciprocity. Some dyadic ties are between persons of equal status; others are with patrons of superior status (including deities as well as people) who exploit and are "exploited" by the lower-status clients for mutual benefit. Ties to powerful patrons outside the community help to link its resistance into wider social networks. Modernisation of the broader society often pulls peasant societies toward increasing openness and secularisation.

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