Peasants and Political Mobilization: Introduction

Author(s): Eric R. Wolf

Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 17, No. 4, Peasants and Political
Mobilization (Oct., 1975), pp. 385-388
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/178297
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Peasants and Political Mobilization:
Introduction
ERIC R. WOLF

City University of New York

In the present issue, and the one to follow, Comparative Stu

together a set of papers which address themselves, in vari
understanding of how peasants come to take part in politi
and how they are affected by such participation. It is thu
the editors to contribute further to the ongoing discussio
the social sciences, about the nature and characteristics of
discussion has a secure and venerable genealogy in cont
relevant names which come to mind are those of the Fren
the German Riehl, and the Russian Vasil'chakov. Somet
legacy reached North American sociology through the
Polish sociologist Florian Znaniecki. But in the United Stat
peasantry remained marginal, until it took root in ant
marily through the efforts of Robert Redfield. Drawing o
Maine, Durkheim, T6nnies, and of the German-influenc
gists at the University of Chicago, Redfield elaborated the
folk society', possessed of a distinctive 'folk culture'. T
intended as a first approximation to the understanding of
Latin America: initially in Central Mexico, where it w
explicate the relations between city-wise correctos and
tontos ('dumbheads') in the municipality of Tepoztlan, a
tan. The years after the conclusion of World War II i
debate over the utility of Redfield's conceptions. As ant
others began to explore peasant life in areas outside Mid
many different rural populations encountered could not b
within the range of one overarching concept such as 'folk
were simply too many kinds of rural folk to permit such
At the same time, there was a shift away from the study
away from concern with the social and cultural concomita
in closely-knit, face-to-face networks of relations, toward
the larger involvements of rural folk with the market, wit
wide-ranging systems of ideological communication. Th
385

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386 ERIC R. WOLF
populations into the political arena-dramatized by the Chinese and
Cuban revolutions, and by the war in Vietnam-also raised questions
about the political role of peasantry, about peasant politics, peasant ties
with the state, peasant leadership, peasant readiness or reluctance to
engage in rebellion, peasant participation in revolution.
Not all social scientists have applauded the work generated by these
concerns. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz commented, in the early
'sixties, that peasant studies were not the place to look for new ideas or
systems of ideas (1962). This sentiment has recently been echoed by the
economic anthropologist George Dalton (1972). Yet the enlargement of
the scope of peasant studies has had three important effects. First, it has
brought about a notable convergence in the efforts of sociologists, an-
thropologists, political scientists, and of economic and social historians.
One by-product of this convergence has been a common interest in patron-
client systems (for a critical discussion of this area of research, see Robert
Kaufman in 16:3). Second, it has prompted a significant increase-not
perhaps in wide-ranging, global theory-but in studies falling within the
'middle range' between theoretical efforts cast at high levels of abstraction
and narrowly conceived local studies. Third, these studies all evidence a
growth in sophistication both in the questions asked and in the kinds of
materials utilized to provide the answers (see, for example, Henry Lands-
berger in 15:3). Thus concern with the problems of peasantry has become
one of the growth points of interdisciplinary comparative research, less
through institutional organization than through convergent interests shared
by a number of scholars. The appearance of Ltudes Rurales in Paris, of the
Journal of Peasant Studies in London, and of the Peasant Newsletter, based
at the University of Pittsburgh, further aids in the spread of this growing
network of communication.
The studies brought together here sometimes complement each other,
sometimes move in different directions. They all share a common focus
upon the nature and structure of the political field in which peasants move
as one set of actors among other sets of protagonists. The first study, by
Peter Singelmann, is set in Latin America, more specifically in the Andean
region: it deals with peasants as clients in networks of political patronage
operating on the level of the region and the nation. Over the last decades,
research into the modes of political action or inaction on the part of
Peruvian and Bolivian peasants has produced some very productive
models for analysis, notably the concept of 'the closed triangle' developed
by the Peruvian social scientist Julio Cotler. Singelmann reviews the
relevant literature, points out some of its limitations, and suggests alter-
native and more flexible models for viewing the actions of peasants and
their patrons under changing political circumstances. Ronald Waterbury,
in turn, takes up the study of peasant participation in the Mexican revolu-

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 PEASANTS AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION: INTRODUCTION 387
tion which began in 1910 and develops an elegant counterpoint between
the revolutionary Zapatista movement in Morelos and the passive or even
anti-revolutionary stance of peasants in the State of Oaxaca. While the
Zapatistas built upon strong sentiments of solidarity among the Morelian
peasantry, the rural population of Oaxaca either stayed safely within the
perimeters of their local communities, or mobilized-if at all-through
politically divisive sets of patrons and clients.
Robert Wasserstrom examines still a third, rebellion-laden setting in
Latin America, that of Guatemala in the years between 1944 and 1954. His
paper draws on studies carried out by anthropologists in five 'Indian'
communities, but subjects them to far-reaching alternative interpretations.
He rejects the prevalent thesis that the political responses of these peasants
can be explained by recourse to differences in values and world view which
divide them from the non-Indian ladinos. He demonstrates instead that
they become explicable when viewed in terms of class. He shows how the
settlement of ladinos among the Indian populations accompanied the
extension of capitalist relations into the countryside. The Revolution
sought to extend these relations still further. The poor and rich in these
communities reacted to this threat not in terms of ethnic identity, but in
terms of differential class interest.
The second set of papers, to appear in 18:1, shifts the scene from Latin
America to the Balkans. In his comparison of the different ways in which
Greek and Bulgarian peasants met the encroachment of market and state,
Nicos Mouzelis lays stress on the different ways in which peasants here and
there encountered the influence of commercialization. Greece, far more
than Bulgaria, was early on a pivot of commercial development; the Greek
peasantry entered into the processes of market growth and state-building
as recruits for political factions, oriented towards commercially and
politically sophisticated patrons. In Bulgaria, Turkish insistence on a
policy of agricultural provisioning long delayed the spread of market
forces into the countryside; what little marginal trade there was fell mostly
into the hands of foreigners. The peasant population thus confronted the
city as an organism created by strangers. 'The village and the town', the
Bulgarian peasant leader Stamboliiski once said, 'are inhabited by two
peoples, different in their appearances and needs.... The town and the
villages are centres of two different world views, two different cultures....
The way of life in the village is uniform, its members hold the same ideas
in common. That accounts for the superiority of the village over the city.
The city people live by deceit, by idleness, by parasitism, by perversion'
(quoted in Jackson, 1974, p. 289).
In a study unique in the literature, Betty Denich examines still another
different, yet complementary, problem, that of leadership among a peasant
population caught up in war and revolution. She raises the question of

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388 ERIC R. WOLF

whether peasants are led mainly by peasants or by outsiders, and traces

the origins of a cadre of Yugoslav partisans to a provincial town, but a
town very close to the surrounding setting. (By implication, Denich's case
study initiates still further questions. To what extent were the new Eastern
European elites recruited from the petty bourgeoisie of provincial towns ?
Was political and military involvement for them a vehicle for social
mobility, as it was for their fascist opposite numbers in Central and
Southern Europe, only under the influence of reversed ideological signs ?)
Darlene Ferguson's paper on rural-urban relations and peasant radical-
ism finds a useful place at the end of these contributions. It is directed at
laying bare in a systematic way the most important factors pushing peas-
ants to take part in social revolution. By inference, her effort raises the
question of what kinds of models will prove to be most productive in
comparative studies in society and history. Are we striving for the develop-
ment of diagnostic models which would allow us to examine recurrent
constellations in the flow of events ? Or is our aim to identify context-free
variables which will serve as the necessary components in the construction
of a 'revolution machine' ? In view of the fact that generals always tend to
refight the last war, it is probably wise to avoid premature closure in studies
of revolution, including revolutions of the peasantry. As an experienced
leader of peasants put it, in 1936: 'All the laws for directing war develop
as history develops and as war develops; nothing is changeless' (Mao
Tse-tung, quoted in Friedman, 12:2, p. 139).

REFERENCES

Dalton, George (1972) 'Peasantries in Anthropology and History',

Vol. 13, No. 3-4, pp. 385-415.
Friedman, Edward (1970) 'Neither Mao, nor Che', Comparativ
History, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 134-9.
Geertz, Clifford (1962) 'Studies in Peasant Life: Community a
J. Siegel (ed.), Biennial Review of Anthropology. Stanford: Sta
Jackson, George D., Jr. (1974) 'Peasant Political Movements
Henry A. Landsberger (ed.), Rural Protests, pp. 259-315. Lon

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