History Of Peasants Research Articles

Głuchoniemcy w polskim dyskursie naukowym i publicznym od XVIII wieku do okresu PRL

The author analyses the history of scientific and public discourses growing around the phenom-enon of Głuchoniemcy (Deaf‑Germans) in Poland. In the literature, this term refers to the des-cendants of the German‑speaking colonists who settled in the Polish‑Ruthenian border in the mid‑fourteenth century. The history of interest in this phenomenon from the eighteenth to the twentieth century reflects the cultural changes and social tensions over time. These descendants of the German‑speaking colonists living in the Carpathian Foothills were mentioned for the first time in the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century as a regional phenomenon of cultural diversity. In the era of Romanticism, when the importance of national identity in Europe grew, so‑called Deaf Germans were portrayed as fully assimilated Polish settlers with only relics refer-ring to German culture. At the end of the nineteenth century, after the publication of Józef Szujski, they became the subject of a political debate and were placed in the context of peasant history. Finally, the socio‑political situation of the interwar period led to the term “Głuchoniemcy” being removed from scientific and public discourses for many decades. After World War II, the absence of the topic became permanent, still directly related to the Polish‑German antagonism that set the directions of scientific interests of ethnographers and historians in Poland. The article tries to answer the question about the course of these changes in the perception of Deaf Germans by looking for external causes as well as those resulting from the nature of the subject of interest.

Typowi obywatele ludowi. Reprezentacje chłopów i chłopek na wystawie „#dziedzictwo” (2017)

This article is a critical analysis of the representations of peasant men and women at the <i>#heritage</i> exhibition (National Museum in Krakow, 2017). It reflects on the exhibits displayed in the “#citizenry” section along with the descriptions included in the exhibition catalog. The author analyzes the presented images of the peasantry in a broader socio-cultural context, contradicting curatorial theses about the attractiveness of Polish culture to the peasantry and its presumed sense of citizenry, while demonstrating that the exhibited images contained other visions of citizenry than those described. The social character of the genre of the portrait and the “folk type,” through which most of the analyzed cases were presented, is also discussed. keywords: #heritage, peasant history, visual arts, photography, folk type, portrait

The Making ofHomo Socialist: The Discursive Analysis of the Ideological Production of Class in China, 1949–1976

AbstractBased on a critique of the history project titled “Oral History of Peasants’ Ordinary Life in the Revolutionary Era of China,” this article provides an analysis of class ideology production from Land Reform Movement to the Cultural Revolution in China. Thirty years of socialist construction in China was based on the craft of making the Homo Socialist. The focus here is on how personal experiences were transformed into state-endorsed conduct via the discourse of class and class struggle. Over the course of the sociopolitical transformations leading to the Cultural Revolution, “class” changed from a socioeconomic designation to a political behavioral metaphor, and in the end a purely symbolic gesture; personal experiences were transformed from hallmarks of class privilege to virtual identification with imagined class struggle. And the peasants went from being “owners of bitterness” to “debtors of bitterness” on the way to becoming “sinners of the revolution”—who gradually submitted themselves to the regime in the name of revolution, liberation, and redemption. These transformations were realized through discursive practices connecting personally embodied experiences with the abstract Marxist theory of class and class struggle. Examining the shifting nature of class ideology production helps to explain how the Chinese Communist Party understood the effects of its governance and how people found class ideology meaningful to them, even when it reached the point of absurdity.

MATERIAL SITUATION, DAILY ROUTINE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF MARAMOROSH PEASANTRY IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 17TH CENTURY

In this article, the author tries to comprehensively consider the history of the peasantry from the eastern part of modern Transcarpathia. Particular attention is paid to the general characteristics of the organization of a rural society of the Maramorosh County of the first half of the 17th century. This period was characterized by significant migration within the Carpathian region, which led to the emergence of new settlements in the Upper Potyssia and changes in cultural and domestic nature. According to the author, the main driver of these processes was the minor and middle gentry of North-East Hungary, which encouraged the resettlement of peasants to their lands with the help of certain privileges. The article substantiates the idea that the daily routine of the Maramorosh peasantry and occupations were closely connected with the payment of tribute to their own master. That is why the primary sources on the early modern Maramorosh County peasant history are tax descriptions (urbariums), where much information about the property status, social system, and basic occupations of the people of that period can be found. The author emphasizes that in addition to small and medium-sized nobles, another large landowner in the Maramorosh region were the owners of the Khust dominion. The article highlights the difference between the payment of tribute, forms of management, and some other features of the peasants of the highland and lowland parts of the Maramorosh County. The author writes that based on the analysis of the inventory of the possessions of the nobleman Zhigmond Lipchei (Lipcsei Zsigmond) in 1646 and the decrees of Count Miklosh Esterhazy (Esterházi Miklós) in 1613, we can identify terminological nuances of the documents of this period. The author uses in the publication written sources from the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, for certain clarifications and explanations, acts, and North-Eastern Hungary and other territories charters. The author of the publication concludes the interdependence between the financial situation of the Maramorosh peasants and their mobility.

Visualidad y escritura como acción: Investigación Acción Participativa en la Costa Caribe colombiana

Este artículo lleva a cabo un proyecto de reconstrucción de la metodología de Investigación Acción Participativa (IAP) que Orlando Fals Borda y la Fundación del Caribe ensamblaron a principios de la década de los setenta en los departamentos de Córdoba y Sucre, Colombia, en colaboración con la Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (ANUC). A partir de una lectura paralela del archivo personal de Orlando Fals Borda y delos folletos ilustrados que su equipo produjo para diseminar una historia campesina narrada “desde abajo”, se arguye que la elaboración de cómics para esos folletos constituía un escenario en el cual se redefinía el significado de investigación. En vez de una secuencia tradicional que desde la elaboración de un marco teórico transita por la recolección de datos y su posterior análisis, se transformó la investigación en un ejercicio de colectivo de construcción de conocimiento. En el centro de este proceso estaba Ulianov Chalarka, el artista monteriano que, durante dos años, dibujó las cuatro historietas producidas por el proyecto. De esa forma, se analiza el acto de mirar del artista: cómo Chalarka crea una imagen icónica para representar las historias de lucha narradas por los campesinos, usando como caso ejemplar el cómic Tinajones, sobre las luchas campesinas de la región de San Antero y San Bernardo del Viento. Además, se comparan las historias elaboradas por el equipo en diferentes medios —prosa y cómics— para comprender la contribución de Chalarka al proyecto. Se interpreta, con la ayuda de un grupo de dibujantes de cómics, el montaje de las viñetas de los folletos, procedimiento que comenzó con la presencia del artista en las entrevistas y su producción de lo que se podría llamar “apuntes dibujados”, queresaltan ciertos eventos de la narración. Luego, se analiza la creación de los paneles por el equipo investigador, mostrando cómo se colocaban los apuntes dibujados dentro de viñetas que contenían más información. Finalmente, se subraya que a través de los errores de perspectiva en las viñetas se puede identificar el proceso colectivo de montaje de los cómics y que el papel de Chalarka evidencia la importancia de tener en cuenta a todos los participantes en un proyecto de IAP.

The new social cartography as an instrument of resistance: reflections on the life history of peasants in land struggle – MST/Goiás

The new social cartography as an instrument of resistance: reflections on the life history of peasants in land struggle – MST/Goiás

Beyond the Village: Recent Approaches to the Social History of the Early Modern German Peasantry

AbstractThe early modern Germany peasantry emerged as an historical subject in its own right in the 1960s. The first generation of this research gained a mainstream readership partly by appealing for a more ‘democratic’ history, but also by grounding peasant history in a wider interpretive framework indebted to Marxism, in which economic transformation stemmed from class formation, while meaningful political change was driven by class conflict. Although it succeeded in making the first generation of early modern peasant history matter to a wider audience, this class‐based framework not only no longer enjoys widespread support, but also has not been replaced in the work of peasant historians with a similarly compelling substitute. As a result, while a great deal of research continues to be published on the early modern German peasantry, its readership is increasingly confined to specialists. All is not lost, however, for with conceptions like ‘economic sociability’ and ‘state‐formation from below,’ the best recent research suggests ways of reconnecting the history of the early modern peasantry to wider social and political narratives. The article concludes by surveying some of the kinds of archival resources through which these new frameworks could be investigated.

Peasant Pasts: History and Memory in Western India (review)

Reviewed by: Peasant Pasts: History and Memory in Western India Douglas E. Haynes Peasant Pasts: History and Memory in Western India. By Vinayak Chaturvedi (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2007) Peasant movements once stood at the center of the historiography of colonial South Asia (and of many other parts of Asia and Africa) during the 1970s and 1980s. During the last twenty years, however, this area of study has receded in importance with the decline in research both on political economy and on nationalist politics and with the rise of historical approaches influenced by cultural studies. Scholars and graduate students have virtually abandoned working on the subject. In this stimulating new book on history and memory among the Dharalas in Kheda District in Gujarat, however, Vinayak Chaturvedi, has brought a completely fresh approach to peasant studies, one that reaches rich and original conclusions. Kheda district was the focus of an earlier major book by David Hardiman, Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat (1981). Hardiman’s major contribution in that study was to bring out the role of the Patidars, the dominant peasant community in the region, in the largely non-violent struggles associated with the Indian nationalist movement. Chaturvedi’s work turns his attention instead to the Dharalas, a set of actors (now referring to themselves as Kshatriyas) who either cultivated the most marginal agricultural lands in the district or who worked as laborers for the Patidars, and who were labelled as a “criminal tribe” by the colonial administration. Hardiman treated the Dharalas only briefly because of the relative paucity of the information about them. Chaturvedi, by contrast, tries to draw a picture of Dharala politics from the fragmentary archival evidence and from oral interviews he conducted in 1996 and 2004. The result is a book that is innovative both in interpretation and in method. As in previous studies of peasant movements, Chaturvedi certainly examines issues of state policy and political economy. He discusses, for instance, a range of colonial processes that bolstered Patidar dominance and that disadvantaged the Dharalas. But his most central concern is with appreciating Dharala political conceptions. Drawing upon the work of Carlo Ginzburg, Steven Feierman, Ranajit Guha and Shahid Amin, Chaturvedi seeks in effect to construct an intellectual history of peasants, but one that departs from the assumptions of Guha’s earlier work that there was anything “elementary” or “immature” in peasant understandings of the political world. Chaturvedi takes the ideas of individuals seriously, studies their origins, examines their circulation and development in a primarily nonliterate culture, and explores their evolution after the death of their original propagators. Based upon this evidence, he outlines the Dharalas’ conceptions of politics, which were anti-colonial, stood outside of Indian nationalism, were steeped in local notions of religiosity and kingship, and critiqued the position of the Patidars in agrarian society. Chaturvedi primarily reaches these findings out of information about three developments during the colonial period: 1) a short-lived uprising led by a peasant called Ranchod Vira, who proclaimed himself a king in 1898 and urged peasants in twenty-one villages to withhold the revenues they owed the government; 2) a movement for socio-religious reform in 1907-9 led by a figure named Daduram, who urged Dharalas to give up alcohol, meat-eating and stealing and to stop working (mainly for Patidars) in demeaning jobs; and 3) a miscellaneous set of activities, especially raids against Patidars and government employees, during the 1910s and 20s. In keeping with his focus on the fragment, Chaturvedi ‘s style of presentation departs sharply from most historical works. The book is not organized conventionally but instead consists of sixty four short segments, some no longer than a page or two. By escaping the tyranny of chapters, this framework allows Chaturvedi to analyze numerous pieces of evidence as far as they lead but without needing to fill the undocumented gaps that lie between them. A reference in the sources to “topiwallahs” (hat –wearers), a term indicating representatives of the state (who thus stood outside the local community), gives Chaturvedi the opportunity to examine Dharala conceptions of the boundaries of political relations. A discussion of why Ranchod, an illiterate figure, kept books...

Our Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of John Tillotson for his 60 th Birthday (review)

Short Notices 243 Parergon 21.1 (2004) Rasmussen, Linda, Valerie Spear and Dianne Tillotson, eds, Our Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of John Tillotson for his 60th Birthday, Cardiff, Merton Priory Press, 2002; pp. 235; cloth; RRP £25.00; ISBN 189837559. At a time when medieval and early modern studies are the subject of a major Research Networks survey and funding application to the Australian Research Council, it is very instructive to have this collection of papers from colleagues and students – past and present – of John Tillotson’s at the Australian National University. Tillotson has been at ANU since the mid-1960s, beginning as a PhD student of Eleanor Searle’s and later as a teacher and researcher. The contributors reflect something of the state of medieval studies in Australia, with only a minority holding full-time academic positions and the rest either employed outside academia, working in an honorary capacity, or working on doctoral or postdoctoral projects. The papers are given a reasonable degree of coherence by the way they reflect Tillotson’s own research interests. Three papers relate to the place of women in medieval European monasticism: Valerie Spear examines why there was little overt resistance to the dissolution of the English nunneries in the 1530s, Linda Rasmussen looks at how some groups of English nuns negotiated the place of their houses in the complicated patchwork of legal and financial privileges, and Julie Hotchin considers the nature of the obligation of male monks to provide pastoral care to women. Civic identity and moral regulation is another area of interest: Bill Craven discusses the relationship between sumptuary laws and the ‘bonfire of the vanities’ in Savonarola’s Florence, while Stephanie Tarbin investigates the regulation of sexual misconduct in 15th -century London. The other contributions are more miscellaneous, ranging from notions of masculinity in chivalric romance (Tania Colwell) to military campaigns in medieval Cappadocia (Alexander Grishin) – to mention just two. While there is some variation in quality and substance across the different papers, on the whole they are substantial and valuable additions to research in their specific areas. A final section which deserves particular notice is a group of three useful papers on digital applications in the field of medieval studies. Judith Pearce provides a succinct and thought-provoking survey of the possibilities for digital catalogues and image databases of medieval manuscripts. Dianne Tillotson gives a brief historical account of developments in the use of multimedia and the Web for teaching medieval studies, and Greta-Mary Hair reports on a specific, highly innovative computer package for teaching 11th century chant notation. Like the 244 Short Notices Parergon 21.1 (2004) other, research-oriented contributions, they reflect very well the variety and vitality of medieval studies in just one institution in the Australian higher education sector. Toby Burrows Scholars’ Centre The University of Western Australia Toch, Michael, Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany: Studies in Cultural, Social and Economic History (Variorum Collected Studies), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003; pp.xiv, 328; RRP £57.50; ISBN 0860788962. Michael Toch has devoted much of his scholarly life to teasing out some of the more obscure aspects of peasant history in Germany and Eastern Europe. For instance, while we know little of the language of German peasants, particularly when they are speaking to one another, he has used small but significant scenes in medieval German literature to consider what aspects of communication between lords and peasants can tell us about their social attitudes and the strategies they used at different times and in different places to maintain their particular interests. He develops some interesting ideas about the economic relationships involved that run counter to the received wisdom about the transition from direct cultivation to peasant tenure in agriculture that developed about the time of the Plague. This relates especially to the lord’s provision of the working capital for his tenants, an aspect of continental farming which did not cross the Channel and so is unfamiliar to historians of England. Agrarian credit of this and other varieties, and its organisation and importance, have been neglected. Much of his work is in such gaps, areas that have received little attention from other historians because of the difficulty...

Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany: Studies in Cultural, Social and Economic History (review)

244 Short Notices Parergon 21.1 (2004) other, research-oriented contributions, they reflect very well the variety and vitality of medieval studies in just one institution in the Australian higher education sector. Toby Burrows Scholars’ Centre The University of Western Australia Toch, Michael, Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany: Studies in Cultural, Social and Economic History (Variorum Collected Studies), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003; pp.xiv, 328; RRP £57.50; ISBN 0860788962. Michael Toch has devoted much of his scholarly life to teasing out some of the more obscure aspects of peasant history in Germany and Eastern Europe. For instance, while we know little of the language of German peasants, particularly when they are speaking to one another, he has used small but significant scenes in medieval German literature to consider what aspects of communication between lords and peasants can tell us about their social attitudes and the strategies they used at different times and in different places to maintain their particular interests. He develops some interesting ideas about the economic relationships involved that run counter to the received wisdom about the transition from direct cultivation to peasant tenure in agriculture that developed about the time of the Plague. This relates especially to the lord’s provision of the working capital for his tenants, an aspect of continental farming which did not cross the Channel and so is unfamiliar to historians of England. Agrarian credit of this and other varieties, and its organisation and importance, have been neglected. Much of his work is in such gaps, areas that have received little attention from other historians because of the difficulty and sparseness of the evidence, such as inland transport. His studies of the Jewish communities in Germany their location and function, their establishment and spread, immigration and internal growth, shows urban growth followed in the sixteenth century by rural relocation. Explanations in terms of the pull of opportunity against the push of violence, the threat of anti-Judaism and the rival interests of other power groups in the community are weighed against the evidence. He points to the form of internal migration, in extended family groups, as opposed to the movement historians are accustomed to expect of young single adults that characterises most western Short Notices 245 Parergon 21.1 (2004) internal migration. He also discusses the way in which emigration was promoted by a perceived need to protect capital from expropriation. His analysis of the size of the Jewish communities, and their stratification casts light on their cultural and intellectual development. Perhaps the most interesting article is the reassessment of Verlinden’s work that made the idea of Jewish dominance of the slave trade in the period before 1100 an orthodox historical assumption. This should be set for students as an example of the precise and careful examination of evidence and the nature of proof. Sybil M. Jack University of Sydney ...

Writing the Empire: Russia and the Soviet Union in Twentieth-Century Historiography

Geschichtsregion is not an essentialist concept made for deduction. A historical region is a point of reference for synthesis. It is always necessary to define in what field and period of history a historical region is created. Political, social, economic, religious and cultural histories can produce different maps of a historical region. The same holds true for different epochs of European history such as the Middle Ages, Early Modern and Modern history. Geschichtsregionen are constructed by comparison. Thus, it is important to define with what the comparison should be made. This article suggests imperial history as a field of comparative history and of Beziehungsgeschichte to create Russia as a historical region. Seven points of comparison are discussed: (1) space, (2) state, (3) foreign policies, (4) elites, (5) economy, (6) religion and (7) culture. Taken together, these issues provide a picture of Russia along the lines of imperial history. This does not mean to exclude other fields of research such as, for example, peasant history from creating historical maps of Russia as a distinct Geschichtsregion.

Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial. Edited and introduced by Vinayak Chaturvedi. London and New York: Verso, 2000. xix, 364 pp. $20.00 (paper).

Initially inspired by Antonio Gramsci's writings on the of subaltern classes, the Subaltern Studies authors adopted a history from below paradigm to contest elite writing of Indian nationalists. Later the Project shifted away from its social origins by drawing upon eclectic thinkers such as Edward Said, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. This volume is the first comprehensive balance-sheet of the project, presenting a collection of the most important writing from the last two decades and focusing the key debates between the main scholars in the field. The collection begins with the original manifesto of the Subaltern Studies project, by Ranajit Guha. In the following contributions Partha Catterjee and David Arnold, two of the founding members of the Subaltern Studies collective, examine concepts from Marx to Gramsci embedded in the writing of Indian peasant history. Critiques of the Subaltern project from C. A. Bayly, Rajnarayan Chandavarka, Rosalind O'Hanlon and Tom Brass set the terms for the controversies around which the book is organized. Marxist and deconstructionist tendencies cross and clash in the exchange between O'Hanlon, David Washbrook and the Subalternist Gyan Prakash. Sumit Sarkar charts the contemporary direction of Subaltern Studies in its movement away from a set of Marxist concerns, and Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gyanendra Pandey respond with a spirited defence of these new directions, criticizing not only Marxism but the whole idea of as Eurocentric. The volume concludes with an interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on the future of the Subaltern Studies project and its vexed relationship with Marxism and Feminism

Chinese Modernity and the Peasant Path: Semicolonialism in the Northern Yangzi Delta

Introduction: modernity, the semicolonial process and alternative histories Part I. Signposts: The Ming-Qing Transition and Beyond: 1. Agrarian class relations and peasant history in the Southern Yangzi delta during the Ming 2. The view from the periphery: Tongzhou and the Northern delta 3. Historical trends during the Qing Part II. The Semicolonial Process: 4. Shanghai, cotton cloth and the shaping of Nantong's modern merchant elite 5. Remaking local power: Zhang Jian's self-reliant path 6. Extending the sway of commercial capital 7. The politics of the peasant and modernist paths in the late Qing-early Republican years 8. Constituting 'semicolonial capitalisms': modern landlordism, commercial farming, and rural labor 9. Subproletarianization in the industrial districts Conclusion: semicolonialism and the peasant path Notes References Character list Index.

The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia.

This 1991 book describes the history of peasants in Catalonia, the wealthiest and politically dominant part of the medieval Kingdom of Aragon, between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. It focuses on the period from 1000 to 1300, when free peasants who had held property under favourable frontier conditions were progressively subjugated by their lords. Between 1462 and 1486 Catalan peasants mounted the most successful peasants' war of the Middle Ages, and achieved the formal abolition of servitude. Professor Freedman seeks to explain both the process by which servitude was strengthened over the centuries, and its eventual weakening before a direct moral and military challenge. He addresses both the causes of enserfment and the limitations on its effectiveness. The book integrates archival evidence with the theories of society elaborated by medieval jurists. Comparisons are drawn between Catalonia and other regions, and its experience is situated within a spectrum of different social and economic conditions.

<sc>david ludden</sc>. <italic>Peasant History in South India</italic>. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1985. Pp. xix, 310. $45.00

Journal Article david ludden. Peasant History in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1985. Pp. xix, 310. $45.00 Get access Ludden David. Peasant History in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1985. Pp. xix, 310. $45.00. Sugata Bose Sugata Bose Tufts University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 92, Issue 4, October 1987, Pages 1019–1020, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/92.4.1019 Published: 01 October 1987

Peasant History in South India

This study of the Tirunelveli region of Tamil Nadu challenges the conventional view that subsistence, isolation, and immobility characterized village India before modern times. Examining the agrarian history of Tirunelveli during the millennium before 1900, David Ludden shows that peasant communities not only transformed rural society but shaped states and empires, including British India.

Redefining the Peasant Community in Medieval England: The Regional Perspective

Historians of the medieval English peasantry have tended to assume that the history of peasants and their culture can best be revealed through the history of the village as a social and economic unit. As a result, the important recent advances in our understanding of peasant culture have been made by historians who, borrowing heavily from the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, have written studies of particular villages or small towns. The mystique of the “village community” has retained a hold on the historian's imagination. Even as the peasant and his family now attract more attention from scholars, studies of family size, household structure, and inheritance and marriage patterns are usually carried out within the context of a particular village or small town, largely because collections of local records naturally coalesce around a parish name. These close examinations of specific vills have been made possible primarily through the exploitation of the village court rolls that survive from the mid-thirteenth century. Ironically, it has been these very village court rolls that, in the end, have forcefully demonstrated that the assumptions identifying peasant history with village history must now be abandoned.The numerous studies of medieval English villages that have made possible the study of peasant family structure and behavior are now demonstrating that the history of the peasant family and the history of the particular village must part company. Certainly, the study of a single series of village court rolls makes possible the discovery within the village of family groups with characteristic behavior patterns.

The Lost Paradise of Regionalism: The Crisis of Post-Modernity in France

Abstract Until very recently, little attention has been paid to folklore, peasant history and French ethnology. After the 1970s, however, French folk traditions have become fashionable. Almost every French cultural institution has devoted time and money to promoting this “new” knowledge. Previously, French folklore and ethnology were considered the poor relatives in the social sciences. But then the Ministry of Culture sanctioned a social movement which had arisen in the early 1960s by creating a directorship and Committee for the patrimony to promote research on popular traditions, the development of ecomuseums, and local campaigns to revive craftsmen's songs and popular theater.

Peasant History and Peasant Symbols.

K. Crehan — Histoire paysanne, symboles paysans. ; Compte rendu de deux ouvrages (Ranger et Lan) sur la lutte paysanne pour l'independance du Zimbabwe. Les regions etudiees sont aussi differentes que les methodes d'etude, lesquelles restent cependant complementaires jusqu'a un certain point. Ranger, historien, focalise sur le changement ; Lan, anthropologue, sur la continuite. Le second s'attache a la permanence des structures symboliques, le premier a la transformation des rapports sociaux, en evitant la reification des ideologies que cotoie parfois son collegue.

Indulgence and Abundance as Asian Peasant Values: A Bengali Case in Point

The author questions the assumptions of an “Asian school of scarcity and risk,” of which James C. Scott is the principal exponent, using Bengali peasant history as a case in point. He argues that it is more likely that the subsistence traditions of Bengal derive from locally generated values of abundance and indulgence than from a universal “moral economy” and suggests that detailed accounts of subsistence traditions in other parts of Asia will confound attempts to prove that European experience is a reliable guide to Asian practices.