Postmodernist Fashion or Marxist Debate in Peasant Studies

Abstract

The academic literature on the peasantry in Latin America is so voluminous as to create the impression of little scope for originality, but that impression is false. First, understanding the complexities of agrarian transformation in specific countries and in Latin America more generally requires the integration of theoretical analysis with historical examination of specific rural regions. Although many excellent rural histories have been published in the past decade, many more are needed to deepen our understanding of the processes of agrarian change in Latin America. Second, the field of peasant studies has been affected by the postmodernist vogue, and as a result there is a trend toward analytical conformity. What is needed is more iconoclasm, more questioning of prevailing interpretations and approaches to peasant studies. Because Nola Reinhardt and Gavin Smith do this, Our Daily Bread and Livelihood and Resistance are welcome and valuable additions to the literature. In the context of examining the historical transformation of specific rural communities, both Reinhardt and Smith explore major theoretical issues in the study of peasants. To appreciate their contributions it is useful to examine the theoretical preoccupations and research directions that dominate the field. Scholarly pursuits, along with other creative endeavors of the elite, fall prey to the invisible hand and for that reason are susceptible to fashion. And fashion is not simply a matter of what people find attractive (Wilson, 1985) but often reflects prevailing (and occasionally countervailing) socioeconomic structures and political ideologies. Postmodernism is currently the academic fashion. Its entangled roots extend back to the Frankfurt School, which emerged in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, to Gramsci (1971) and Raymond Williams (1976) and to the debacles and disappointments of the national and international political struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, in the 1980s and early 1990s, postmodernism became highly codified and took on renewed vigor as the validity of its postulates seemed to be confirmed by