Peasants and peasant societies /
edited by Teodor Shanin
- Harmondsworth Penguin Books 1984
- 448 p.
Peasants, defined as traditional, self-supporting, family-based land-workers, make up the vast majority of the population in the world's poorest and most explosive areas. In recent years the study of the character of peasant societies - and in particular their changing nature in the face of 'modernization' - has rightly become one of the major growth points in sociology.
This volume of Readings looks at five aspects of the subject; first, the units of peasant social organization - family, farm, village community etc.; second, the typical: forms of production and exchange; third, the peasantry as a class; fourth, peasant cultural patterns including customs, religions and aesthetics; and finally, some of the prevailing attitudes towards peasant societies, and the shape of government policies.