Peasant Tenure Research Articles

Palms, Pastures, and Swidden Fields: The Grounded Political Ecology of ?Agro-Extractive/Shifting-cultivator Peasants? in Maranh�o, Brazil

This article examines transformations associated with changes in resource use and land cover dynamics in the community of Sao Manoel, Maranhao state, in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. The shifting cultivator peasants in Sao Manoel integrate swidden fields for annual cropping, the extraction of babassu palm products, and pastures for cattle ranching. Since the early twentieth century, predominant vegetative cover patterns have been altered from species-rich mature forests to secondary succession with babassu dominant to pasture or swidden fields containing palm stands of various densities. A grounded political ecology of resource use in the area suggests that management strategies and the resulting land cover dynamics integrate site-specific decisions of peasant producers. I discuss the trajectory of production strategies in Sao Manoel since the establishment of the community in the 1920s, and identify the multiple dimensions affecting resource use and environmental outcomes, with an emphasis on the period following land struggles and the recovery of peasant tenure rights in the mid-1980s. The analysis indicates that socionatural trajectories that optimize resource use and address the socioeconomic needs of the community include the maintenance of palm/pastures associations.

POPULATION TRENDS AND AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS FROM THE WARWICKSHIRE HUNDRED ROLLS OF 1279

HE significance of the Hundred Rolls of 1279 has been appreciated since the end of the nineteenth century by those historians concerned with the social and economic evolution of England in the early middle ages. The latest, most comprehensive and authoritative treatment of this source is by E. A. Kosminsky;' his chief preoccupation, however, is with the correction of a previously over-simplified or idealized concept of manorial structure, and consequently much of his book is devoted to this central theme, together with the allied topics, of peasant tenure and rent, the evolution of social and economic differences within the peasantry, and the function of the small landowner in medieval England. These studies are based mainly on categories of information which the 1279 Hundred Rolls afford in reasonable detail and accuracy,2 although variably for each manor. Essentially these are: i. A survey of the demesne: arable land, and sometimes meadow, woodland, mills etc. 2. A survey of the land in peasant tenure and of the scattered possessions of the larger landlords, which includes a list of the tenants by name, the size of their holdings and the nature of their rent. These lists are sub-grouped in the folios for land in free tenure, in villeinage, and that held by cottagers. The contention of this paper is that problems outside the scope of Kosminsky's work can be clarified through a regional and comparative analysis of the Hundred Rolls. Accordingly from the unpublished Warwickshire folios 3 two groups of statistics have been abstracted: first, the number of the total landholding population, and secondly, the total of recorded arable land, given in both cases for the manorial unit. It is proposed to employ this information to assess: i. The regional pattern of population change by direct comparison with Domesday figures. 2. The relationship of these changes to agricultural development, specifically as expressed by the amount of arable land recorded in the manor.