Peasant
• Peasant derived from 15th century French
“paisant” meaning one from the “pays”
countryside or region which itself is
derives from the Latin “pagus”
Peasants Are
• Agriculture workers with access to land or
landless
• Established roots in countryside in which
he or she dwells
• Either working for others or more
specifically owning, renting and working by
his or her labor on small plot of land
Moral Economist View of Peasant
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Poor
Subsistence
Always Close to Danger Line
Security not a Risk Taker
If surplus, sold in local markets
Avoid Cash Crops
Family Labor
Importance of Kinship
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Can expect labor assistance
Reciprocity
Extended Households
Make Financial Contributions
Ties That Bind
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Patron/Client
Landlord
Leases Land
Can be Inherited
Pays Taxes
Gives portion of surplus
Incorporates into Kinship
Security
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Whereas to be secure, comfortable
farmer, fixed rents and taxes provide
maximum incentive to innovate and
maximize production
Peasants with a concern for survival will
prefer variable taxes and rents which
might over a period of years take more
returns than fixed claims but which are
less onerous in bad years
Example
• Vietnamese peasant rebellion
• Peasants demanded agrarian reforms
• Protesting not so much inequality and land
distribution, but enslavement and
dispossession brought about by fixed rents
• Fix rents inflexible
• Fix rents increase dispossession in bad
years
Subsistence vs. Cash crops
• Prices for Cash or Market Crops set by
supply and demand
• Risky
• Cash or Market crops offer a larger
expected income than subsistence crops
but market or crash crops can increase the
probability of a drop below the danger line
Peasant Security Value
• Because a drop in, prices threatens long
run survival the peasant avoids
market/cash crops
• Peasants who put all their land in cash
crop production without holding back a
part for subsistence is thought to be
“crazy” by his neighbors
Who Produces Cash Crops?
• Rich peasants with savings and ability to
hire help can afford to engage in market
production
• Poor peasants, small landholders,
sharecroppers enter into cash crop
production when to do nothing is to go
under
• State requires cash crop production for
exports
Peasant and World Market
• Since local institutions are a more certain
way of meeting subsistence, peasant
views cash crop/world market as last
resort
• When peasant oriented to local norms
does sell cash crops, the money is used to
buy goods and services which his status
requires to subsist and maintain his social
rather than enlarge his scale of operations
Peasant Village
• Peasant village provides peasants with
security in pre-capitalist society.
• It is collectivity of income equals
• Internal function is to equalize the life
chances and life risks of its members
• Minimize risk
Village Institutions
• Village structure reflect overriding concern
of peasants with survival and subsistence
ethic finds social expression in the
patterns of social control and reciprocity
• The institutions peasants control are
organized to insure the weakest against
ruin by making demands on the wealthy,
through kinship obligations and the rule of
reciprocity
Result of Village Structure
• Guarantee all village families a minimal
subsistence existence insofar as
resources controlled by village make this
possible
• Peasants adhere to certain norms and
behaviors
• Corporate Villages keep social
relationships in equilibrium
Peasant&Landord
• Peasant family prefers a relationship with
landlords which provides them with an
assured subsistence margin
• Produces a “moral economy” based on
reciprocity and subsistence characteristic
of feudal systems where dependent patron
client relations tend to provide for this
security
Response
• Actually has been proven—peasants avoid
commercialization of agriculture where
they have to deal with market forces
• Peasants resist becoming wage laborers
and prefer some access to the land—
either as tenants or sharecroppers—
because the latter provides a margin of
security
Peasants vs. landless wage labor
• Landless agricultural workers and wage
laborers are both poorer year to year
• More insecure because availability of work
fluctuates
• Peasants not assured of subsistence
Shortages and Famines
• Subsistence is threaten by crop failure
which leads to famines
• Population increase
• Rain and Soil conditions
• Bad year conditions sometimes offset by
landlord.
Peasant Rebellion
• The overall deterioration of living
conditions
• Food less than subsistence
• Increased demands by landlords and
states who were not so much inflexible but
rather powerful to enforce their demands.
Structural Explanation of Peasant
Rebellion
• Structural
• Rural Uprisings are analyzed primarily as
a function of class coalitions and conflicts
• Credit Structuralist explanation for
successful explanations of the causes of
peasant rebellions
James C. Scott
• Moral Economy of Peasants
• Designed less to explain when peasants rebel
than to tell us “What makes them angry and
what is likely, other things being equal, to
generate an explosive situation?
• Explores dynamic of peasant social life
• Penetrate the fabric of peasant moral sentiment
to find the criteria for justice and injustice as
understood by peasants themselves
Scott: Why do Peasants Rebel?
• Exploited
• Poorer peasants revolt most militantly
• Revolt when exploitation—landlessness,
level of rent, tax rates
• Both exploitation and the eventual
availability of leadership key components
to peasant rebellion
Morality of Subsistence
• “Moral” because embedded in social
relationships
• Peasant Families prefer a relationship with
landlord (and/or) state which provides
them with an assured subsistence margin
over one that is insecure and fluctuating
even though the former may leave
peasants with a lower share of the
products over a long period of time
Security vs., Risk
• Security is preferred to risky gain