A Consideration of Asymmetry in the Peasant-City Relationship

Abstract

When we speak of the role of the city in the structure and functioning of peasant societies we should not think of it the way we would in the case of a tribal society, as something external to the system. Rather the city and peasant are complementary to the extent that while cities may exist and have developed without peasantry, peasants, by and large, have existence only in relation to cities (Redfield 1953: 31). This interrelationship is one the anthropologist should not ignore. In his traditional focus on tribal society he has perhaps oversensitized himself to seeing the small society as an autonomous whole. But, increasingly, anthropologists are working in socio-cultural milieus that are not clearly bounded but are rather part-societies and part-cultures of a larger whole. If we read the archeological record correctly the urban revolution followed the beginning of the village farming community era by about three thousand five hundred years (Braidwood 1958: 1426-1429). At this time some agricultural tribesmen in the Near East began to become peasant members in a larger political grouping. The transformation of societies based on kinship to those organized on the basis of territory meant that in time new societal types, the peasant and the city-dweller, came into existence.