Peasant Societies

Lecture #1 & #2

Facilitator: Mishayam Wajid

Note: Please read the Article sent and detailed lecture given in class to analyze and
understand the following concepts in detail.

Peasant Overview

Definitions:
No one correct definition.
The term peasant literally means a person working on the land with simple
tools. Even tlie entire rural population including the big landlords and the
agricultural labourers have been treated as peasantry.

Eric Wolf, an authority on peasant struggles defines them as " population that are existentially
involved in cultivation and make autonomous decisions regarding the process of cultivation".

Theodor Shanin defines them as " consist of small agricultural producers who with the help of
simple equipment and labour of their families produce mainly for their consumption and for the
fulfilment of obligations to the holders of political and economic power".

Irfan Habib defines peasantry as " a person who undertakes agriculture on his own, working with
his own implements of his family".

Taking all these definitions one can define the peasantry as a category of population having certain
patches of land, largely dependent upon labour, family or the hiring in - for the production of
agriculture, who believes in competitive market or restricted market system.

According to anthropologist George Dalton, “Peasants were legal, political, social, and economic
inferiors in medieval Europe. Some scholars emphasized generic cultural or “folk” characteristics
of peasants, while others, notably Eric R. Wolf, sought to delineate social structural “types,” based
on whether they had secure land rights or, alternatively, were tenants, sharecroppers or resident
laborers on large properties. “Peasants” tended to be distinguished from “farmers,” since the
former were said to aim at “subsistence” and produced cash crops primarily for survival and to
maintain their social status rather than to invest and expand the scale of their operations, as was
allegedly the case with the latter.
Teodor Shanin, another leading peasant studies scholar, defined peasantry as
having “four essential and inter-linked facets”:

1) The family farm as the basic multi-functional unit of social organization.

2) Land husbandry and usually animal rearing as the main means of livelihood.
3) specific traditional culture closely linked with the way of life of small rural communities
(Peasantry Way of life).
4) Multi-directional subjection to powerful outsiders. ( some form of subordination).

Peasant communities are a kind of folk society that exists on a ‘folk–urban continuum,’ which has
both geographic and historic dimensions. Cities represent the modern urban end of the continuum
and small, isolated non-agrarian indigenous societies are the extreme traditional folk end, with
peasant communities near the traditional end.

Categories of Peasantry -there are large number of categories within the peasantry : Small, big ,
rich, middle, marginal etc. These are depending upon the economic position including the land
holdings of the peasantry. Peasants who produce wholly or mainly for their own consumption are
characterized as subsistence farmers, in sharp contrast to agriculturalists who produce for the
market.

Types of Political Structures

We will trace different possible forms of the peasantry in these stages.

Band: A band is usually a very small, oftentimes nomadic, group that is connected by family
ties and is politically independent. With nomadic meaning moving from place to place, usually in
search of food, bands are most often made up of hunter-gatherers.

Due to their small size and their tendency to move around, bands usually have little to no formal
leadership. In other words, when to move and when to stay is usually based on group consensus
rather than one governing official calling the shots. With this, bands are usually referred to as
being egalitarian societies, societies in which all persons of the same age and gender are seen as
equals. The political organization is informed, in which no single person or place is nominated to
decide any problem but the decision takes place collectively by the group. This political
organization was found is almost all the societies before the agricultural period.

Tribes: Tribal societies in the sense of political organization are the same as band societies.
Their political system is egalitarian and informal. But the difference is that tribe’s societies are
food producers in which agricultural & husbandry is more important than food collection &
hunting. The size of tribe’s population is large and the groups are big as compare to band. In case
of any external aggression, the integration of the people among kinship play a vital role is defense
and the bands are tight. The head of the tribe was nominated by the age and wisdom, so, the aged
person was to be the chief or head of the tribe because of the agedness and experience. The aged
man was the library of wisdom and had the experience to decide a situation. So the political
organization was informal.

Chiefdom: Chiefdom has some formal structure, integrated community and rules populated and
the position of the chief is hereditary & almost permanent. Chiefdom have more economic
productivity and the chief have the authority of redistribution as compare the tribes’ societies. The
chief of a chiefdom posse a high status and rank in the society. He coordinate & mange the
religious activities as well as labor responsibilities. He had the responsibility of directing and
managing military activates .Chiefdom societies are practical in, south pacific chiefdom, Ayes and
Tahiti etc.
State: State is a self-governing unit surrounded by many communities within a territory, having
the power and authority to collect taxes, use men for work & war and enforce laws. State has a
formal system of written rules and regulation. The economic system is highly developed and
having technology. State societies have its centralized political structure. State has many social
institutions in which executive, legislature, Judiciary and a large bureaucracy is bureaucracy is
practicing. Different forces are used to control and defense indoor & out aggression control and
defense indoor & out aggression of the country. For security purpose these force include Army,
Navy, Air force and various police. The implementation of law and order is with the help of these
forces. These state societies are found all over the world presently.

The peasantry would be at its simplest in the chiefdom and most complex an ever-changing in the
state.

Extra discussion on: family structure of Peasants “Case study of polish family” by Theodor Shanin.