Pamela Leonard, Deema Kaneff (Eds.) - Post-Socialist Peasant - Rural and Urban Constructions of Identity in Eastern Europe, East Asia and The Former Soviet Union-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2002) PDF

Post-Socialist Peasant?
Post-Socialist Peasant?
Rural and Urban Constructions of Identity
in Eastern Europe, East Asia and the
former Soviet Union
Edited by
Pamela Leonard
Independent Scholar and Adjunct Lecturer
University of North Carolina
and
Deema Kaneff
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
oatorave
*
Selection, editorial matter and Introduction © Pamela Leonard and Deema
Kaneff 2002
Chapter 3 © Pamela leonard 2002
Chapter 8 © Deema Kaneff 2002
Remaining chapters © Palgrave Publishers Ltd 2002
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library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Post-socialist peasant? : rural and urban constructions of identity
in Eastern Europe, East Asia and the former Soviet Union I edited
by Pamela Leonard, Deema Kaneff.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Peasantry-Europe, Eastern-Congresses. 2. Peasantry-

-Former Soviet republics-Congresses. 3. Post-communism-
-Europe, Eastern-Congresses. 4. Post-communism-Former
Soviet republics-Congresses. 5. Europe, Eastern-Rural conditions-
-Congresses. 6. Former Soviet republics-Rural conditions-
-Congresses. I. Leonard, Pamela, 1963- II. Kaneff, Deema, 1962-
HD1536.E852 P67 2001
305.5'633'0947-dc21
2001036353
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
11 10 09 08 07 06 OS 04 03 02
Contents
Notes on the Contributors vi

Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction: Post-Socialist Peasant?

Pamela Leonard and Deema Kaneff 1
2 Peasant Consciousness
John Flower 44
3 Old Corn: New Corn
Pamela Leonard 73
4 Just a Peasant: Economy and Legacy in Northern Vietnam
Regina M. Abrami 94
5 Rural Identities in Transition: Partible Persons
and Partial Peasants in Post-Soviet Russia
Louise Perrotta 117
6 Subsistence Farming and the Peasantry as an
Idea in Contemporary Russia
Caroline Humphrey 136
7 The Village, the City and the Outside World: Integration and
Exclusion in Two Regions of Rural Poland
Frances Pine 160
8 Work, Identity and Rural-Urban Relations
Deema Kaneff 180
9 Urban Peasants in a Post-Socialist World:
Small-Scale Agriculturalists in Hungary
Andre Czegledy 200
Index 221
Notes on the Contributors
Regina M. Abrami is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Polit-

ical Science, University of California at Berkeley. Her dissertation re-
search examines the role of socialist state class ideology in shaping
patterns of entrepreneurship and economic cooperation in northern
Vietnam and China. Beginning in the autumn of 2001, she will be
assuming a new post as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business
School.
Andre Czegledy is Senior Lecturer in Organisational and Business An-

thropology in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests in-
clude: cross-cultural business, organisational transformation, state so-
cialism and nationalism. He has conducted fieldwork in Hungary since
1989, and South Africa since 1999.
John Flower is Assistant Professor of East Asian History at the University

of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. His research and publications focus
on the cultural life of the Chinese countryside. He is also the director of
Preserving Living Traditions, a cultural exchange project partnered with
the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences, working on recording and
archiving the folk music traditions of Tibet.
Caroline Humphrey is Professor of Asian Anthropology at the Univer-

sity of Cambridge, England. Her recent publications include Marx Went
Away, but Karl Stayed Behind (1998) and two contributions on barter in
Russia in Paul Seabright (ed.), The Vanishing Rouble (2000). Her research
interests include contemporary social and economic transformations in
Russia, Mongolia and north-west China.
Deema Kaneff is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social

Anthropology, Germany. She has carried out fieldwork in socialist
and post-socialist Bulgaria. Forthcoming is a book on this material:
Who Owns the Past? The Politics of Time in a 'Model' Bulgarian Village.
She is currently establishing a new fieldwork site in Ukraine where
her focus is on property relations, a topic she has also researched in
Bulgaria.
vi
Notes on the Contributors vii
Pamela Leonard is an independent scholar who is presently teaching

part-time at the Department of Anthropology, University of North Caro-
lina at Charlotte, USA. She has carried out extensive fieldwork in rural
Sichuan Province, China. Her research interests include local politics,
civil society, and landscape - topics on which she has also published
articles.
Louise Perrotta works as a freelance social development consultant to

the major aid agencies active in the former Soviet Union. Her main area
of expertise is the adaptation of 'best practice' of market economies and
political democracies to the specificities of the post-Soviet context and
she has published on these issues. She has conducted research among
the rural populations of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Frances Pine has been conducting research in Poland since the late
1970s. She is the author of many articles on kinship, gender and econ-
omy in the Polish countryside, and is co-editor of the book Surviving
Post-Socialism (1998). Her current interests include history and memory,
migration, and anthropology and law. She is at present a Bye Fellow of
Girton College, Cambridge.
Acknowledgements
This book represents an ongoing project which has spanned a number of

years and activities, and involved a number of people. The project was
initiated by David Anderson and Pamela Leonard at the Department of
Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, England. The depart-
ment was a rich environment for the study of socialist and post-socialist
contexts, hosting many scholars studying a diverse range of countries in
eastern Europe, Asia and the former Soviet Union. The group which met
during that early period (1994-95) to discuss the themes of this book
included, besides Pamela Leonard and David Anderson, Andre Czegledy,
Clarissa De Waal, Myriam Hivon, Caroline Humphrey, Deema Kaneff,
Louise Perrotta and Frances Pine. The first results of our meetings were
presented at a panel at the American Anthropological Association's
(AAA) annual meeting in Washington, DC in 1995 which also included
the participation of John Flower. We would like to thank Rubie Watson
and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov for acting as discussants at the panel and
give special recognition to Rubie Watson for her incisive comments and
encouragement. We are grateful to Pam Leonard's parents for providing
us with accommodation and hospitality while in Washington. After the
conference, David Anderson was no longer able to continue with the
project and Deema Kaneff was delighted to take up the responsibilities
associated with the next step - the production of a book.
We thank David Anderson for his initial involvement in the project
and for comments he made to an earlier version of our introduction. We
are sorry that Myriam Hivon and David Anderson were not able to
submit papers to this volume but thank them for their participation in
the conference and in the group meetings that we had in Cambridge
leading up to the conference. At the same time, we value the addition of
Regina Abrami who joined the project after the AAA. Regina Abrami and
John Flower have each made substantial contributions, not only
through their chapters, but also by reading and commenting on ver-
sions of the introduction. We thank John Flower for his good sense,
advice and encouragement provided throughout the venture. We are
also grateful to Barbara Cellarius for her assistance in formatting the
manuscript and to the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology,
Germany, for providing facilities that made the completion of the
manuscript so much easier. Finally, we would like to convey our special
viii
Acknowledgements ix
thanks to Chris Hann and Frances Pine who offered important insights
to versions of the Introduction. Their input has considerably enriched
our work and we very much appreciate their guidance and encourage-
ment throughout the project. While grateful to all those who have
inspired the ideas contained in our Introduction, in the end, we bear
the responsibility for the contents.
Some time has passed since we first met to discuss the issue of post-
socialism and changing rural-urban relations and the contributors to
this volume now live in different continents across the world. However,
the book remains the concrete product of our cooperation. In the pro-
cess of putting together this work, the editors have also learned much
from each other and we would like to acknowledge the value of this
growing friendship born of academic cooperation.
1
Introduction: Post-Socialist Peasant?
Pamela Leonard and Deema Kaneff
'We have a goat!', Kalinka told me in a recent phone call. She

was visiting her parents who live in a medium-sized town in
north-central Bulgaria. Just completing her fourth year at uni-
versity in Plovdiv, Kalinka had come home for the Easter break
to find the goat grazing behind the flowerbed in the back
garden. We joked over the idea of Kalinka's mother trying to
milk the goat; she added in a tone indicating both amusement
and distaste, 'It's becoming like a village here/
Yang Zhengui made it clear to me that he never engages in any
agricultural work. He felt it was beneath him. The son of a
village landlord, he was at the bottom of the social heap - a
class enemy - during the Maoist period. This meant that he had
to haul more manure buckets to the agricultural fields than his
fellow villagers. Not surprisingly, he was one of the first in the
village to seize the new economic opportunities that came with
Deng's reforms, and with the help of an able wife and sons who
now do the farm work, he has freed himself of the necessity of
doing any agricultural labour. Nevertheless, he still lives in the
same old wooden house and dresses in the same blue clothes as
his most conservative neighbours. No one in China, meeting
him on the street, would hesitate to call him a peasant.
In the decade since the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe and
the former Soviet Union, and market-oriented reforms in China and
Vietnam, changes in lifestyle such as those described above are fre-
quently noted; the old boundaries that marked rural from urban have
radically altered. This book explores of the concept 'peasantry' in the
P. Leonard et al. (eds.), Post-Socialist Peasant?

© Pamela Leonard and Deema Kaneff 2002
2 Post-Socialist Peasant?
context of changing post-socialist rural-urban relations. We begin with

an initial assumption that the term 'peasant' expresses relations of
power between rural and urban identities. While there are many dimen-
sions to the rural-urban relationships that underpin the concept, we
focus on three groups: rural inhabitants, intellectuals and representa-
tives of the state. It is the relationships among these three groups, and
the implications they have for the concept 'peasantry', with which we
are concerned. Our fundamental orientation is the rural - from this
vantage point we look 'out' to the urban periphery.1
The setting
The three regions from which the papers are drawn - East Asia (China
and Vietnam), the former USSR and Eastern Europe - provide the spatial
context of the work. While the areas display considerable diversity, they
also present significant commonality - in terms of the main theme -
justifying their placement within the same work. In these regions agri-
culture has played and continues to play a significant role in the lives of
the people. Indeed the majority of the population in post-socialist states
maintains connections to the land, a situation quite different from that
in 'the west'. These regions have also been the geographical source of
much of the literature on 'peasantry' published from early this century
to the present - and more recently, the subject of important social,
economic and political reforms.
If we consider the post-socialist changes in their widest framework,
they are an attempt to dismantle the centralised state system founded
on Marxism-Leninism, replacing socialist ideologies - in their divergent
manifestations - with principles of the free market. The now symbolic-
ally important date of 1989, or 1991 for the Soviet Union, signifies the
point at which a critical upheaval of the political and economic land-
scape occurred. In many cases, however, the reforms were initiated
several years earlier. Gorbachev's perestroika was begun in the mid-
1980s, while in China 1982 marked the beginning of widespread agri-
cultural and market reforms (which were significantly extended in the
early 1990s). In the same period, capitalist countries have also taken
steps towards dismantling the welfare state and privatising once nation-
ally owned services, but these policies have not involved such massive
shifts in the state's aims and its ideology. Post-socialist governments are
now adopting principles once associated exclusively with capitalism -
that is, large-scale privatisation of property and the free-market
economy. In these states people are reassessing models of progress and
development that, in turn, have implications for economic and political

policies, as well as for the nature of social relations. The totality of the
change has been aptly described as a 'reordering of... meaningful
worlds' (Verdery 1999: 35).
Of course the specificities of the reform process that make up the
temporal context of the work vary greatly among Eastern Europe, the
former USSR and East Asia. Perhaps most significantly, China's reforms
to date claim to be primarily economic in nature, whereas in the former
USSR and Eastern Europe there are formal changes in political as well as
economic institutions. In China and Vietnam, the Communist Party has
maintained its dominant position, while the former USSR and Eastern
Europe have established multi-party systems. Yet, even in this respect,
differences are not what they may seem; for in China economic reform
has eroded the power of the one-party state, many citizens referring to
the party as communist in name only. In Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union, the former Communist Parties have re-emerged to play a
significant role in the political arena, largely as a result of strong rural
support. Thus while we recognise that the term 'post-socialist' is itself
problematic, the shared context of transforming state controlled
markets informed by socialist ideology justifies unified treatment of
these countries.
Although policies of political liberalisation in Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union might be a significant factor when considering
the way they have implemented economic reforms, the nature of the
changes among all three regions remains similar. The cornerstone of
the economic reforms - decentralisation and privatisation - has been
experienced, in the rural areas, largely through the decollectivisation of
agricultural production. In fact the single most important change
affecting rural inhabitants is the devolution of responsibility for land
proprietorship.2 After fifty years (or more) of rural 'backwardness' being
defined through reference to a 'small-holding peasantry', there has been
an effort to return to this very pattern of smallholding. In some East
European countries, land restitution and privatisation laws have expli-
citly aimed at restoring ownership to pre-World War II patterns (for
example, Bulgaria, Romania and Czechoslovakia). In all regions, reform-
ers have derided collective-type organisations as economically
inefficient, inappropriate and even 'undemocratic'. Thus state policy,
especially in the early stages of reform, showed an explicit preference for
private farming above collective endeavours, a decision that was less
economically informed than politically driven (Verdery 1995; Hinton
1991).
While some governments favourably received the attempt to create an

agricultural landscape dominated by private individual business enter-
prises or peasant smallholdings, the cooperative working of the land has
not disappeared. Particularly in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union, private ownership has not brought about a commitment to
individual forms of agricultural production (see Perrotta, Humphrey
and Kaneff, Chapters 5, 6 and 8, this volume). Indeed, rural inhabitants
have frequently responded to new policies that have resulted in the
fragmentation of property by re-establishing collective agricultural or-
ganisations, which for them are not just economically sound, but also
central in providing a variety of social, political and other benefits. Even
in China, where private farming has been more generally embraced and
the agricultural sector is a relative success story,3 rural inhabitants often
comment that the state was too extreme in privatising formerly collect-
ive resources, and they sorely miss many of the social and economic
benefits of the Maoist state. Requests for state involvement in agricul-
ture and the benefits it brings, is also a view echoed in Poland where
collectivisation of farming was never carried out. 4 In all the regions,
such views reflect the trauma caused by the withdrawal of administra-
tive, resource and monetary aid. The wide range of services, provisions
and benefits once provided by the communist governments have
shrunk and along with it the 'safety net' on which many had grown to
depend.
Decentralisation has also had an impact on informal rural-urban
interactions. Direct links in Eastern Europe and the former USSR be-
tween rural and urban regions are growing as unstable prices, un-
employment and high inflation force city inhabitants to fall back on
their rural contacts for help. New contacts take several forms: for
example, rural inhabitants may send food packages to urban kin or
urban folk may increasingly rely on land plots they cultivate in order
to meet household subsistence needs (Perrotta, Humphrey, Czegledy,
Chapters 5, 6 and 9 this volume). Nevertheless, significant migration
into rural regions, or in the reverse direction, has not occurred. China
too, has undergone changes in its urban-rural relations in the wake of
reforms. Unlike the situation in the other two regions, however, large
numbers of Chinese villagers are moving to the cities in search of new
employment opportunities. The cities have been the locus of the high
rates of economic growth in China, while many rural areas have
remained relatively stagnant. Given the relative terms of trade between
the two sectors, the rural sector is growing increasingly dependent on
the urban to make ends meet, while the urban economic boom depends
on cheap labour from the countryside. The effect in all three regions
includes: migrating populations resulting from unemployment, low
prices paid for agricultural products, changing laws and increasing re-
gional differentiation.
Growing interdependency between rural and urban peoples in a con-
text of an expanded market economy is leading, in turn, to the 'com-
moditisation' of social relationships, a phenomenon true for relations
within rural areas as between them and 'outsiders'. Everyday activities
once carried out as 'favours' - long-term exchanges between kin and
friends - are now given monetary form or at least reciprocated with a
valued precision which once would have been offensive to all parties
involved.5 At the same time, rural and urban inhabitants everywhere
comment on the moral disintegration they are witnessing, on growing
crime rates and on the deepening gap between rich and poor.
Since collectivised agriculture was not merely a means of production
with economic importance, but embedded in political and social rela-
tions (Hann 1998, Hivon 1998), the withdrawal of the state from rural
areas through decollectivisation has implications far beyond the strictly
economic. Apart from those points noted above - increasing connec-
tions between rural and urban regions and commodification of social
relationships - economic instability has also provided a framework for
rising nationalism and anti-western feelings. These tendencies are symp-
tomatic of the general disruption and destabilisation of social networks.
Decollectivisation has resulted in an increase of a wide variety of ten-
sions, including those associated with ethnic, generational, and gender
inequalities (see Bridger and Pine 1998). The divisions indicate a 'process
of individuation', where the pursuit of individual property rights has
made fragile many of the solidarities of the socialist period (Verdery
1994: 1108). Furthermore, greater village autonomy, arising from the
state relinquishing its command and control over agriculture, has
also meant a shift in political dynamics. Local figures now running
agricultural production are important actors with significant influence
and power in determining production and the control of community
resources. Most often these leaders are not accountable to anyone
further up the political hierarchy, as they were during the socialist
period.
Thus, decollectivisation has resulted in political, social, economic, as
well as physical upheaval, with far-reaching and often unintended con-
sequences (Bridger and Pine 1998: Introduction). In this book we focus
on one of the many inequalities which have come sharply into focus as a
consequence of post-socialist reforms: the growing polarisation between
rural people and urban-based reformers developing post-socialist policy.

Indeed the regions covered in this volume present a common irony: just
at the moment when the old stereotypes that defined rural and urban
difference have been undermined - with rural people increasingly in-
volved in the wider economy, rarely exclusively agriculturist - fractions
between rural and urban groups are intensifying. Such fractions are
related to differences in the way rural and urban sectors are positioned
with respect to the new state policies that often appear pro-urban.
Critical in this dynamic are patterns of migration and new elements of
dependency between the sectors. The increase in competition and con-
tact has resulted in expressions of tension and conflict that have served
to demarcate urban and rural identities in a more intense manner than
was previously the case.
The above discussion has aimed at making clear our reasons for con-
sidering Eastern Europe, the former USSR and East Asia within the same
work. It offers justification for considering the chosen regions together,
as places where parallel dramatic economic and political reforms have
occurred, affecting rural-urban relations and pointing to the need to re-
examine the concept of peasantry. A closer look at this concept will
reveal insights concerning the dynamics of identity formation and
power relations in the new post-socialist contexts.
Perspectives on the peasantry
Theories of the peasantry, like all theories, tell us as much about the
circumstances and conditions of the analyst, as of the subject being
described. It is with this spirit of reflection that this volume takes up
the category of peasantry. Of particular interest to the papers collected
here are the interactions, commonalities and differences between west-
ern social scientists on the one hand and political and intellectual elites
who determine policy in Eastern Europe, Russia and China and Vietnam
on the other. There has been some remarkable overlap in concepts used
by these distinct groups, although they have rarely used the same con-
cepts at the same time. The peasant emerged as an important socio-
logical category as theorists worldwide sought to construct models of
social progress and come to terms with the growth of capitalism. 'The
peasantry' have been a problem for these theorists; they embody a mode
of production and way of thinking that was felt to be antithetical to
capitalist and socialist development alike, while at the same time, their
subordinate class position and their sheer numbers have made them an
important revolutionary force that could not be ignored.
The common thread in all classical theories of the peasantry is thus

the view that the peasant is the antonym of progress.6 The teleological
orientation of Marxist-Leninist theory posits a process of proletarian-
isation where the surplus from agricultural production is harnessed to
industrialise society. The peasant in this framework is a historical dead
end, squeezed out of existence either by the inevitable processes of
social differentiation (see below) or by deliberate policies aimed at cre-
ating communist forms of social relations. Western non-Marxist theory
has its own developmental agenda, based on notions of 'economic
rationalism' and increasing levels of production and consumption. Cap-
italist ideology also locates 'the peasant' - a small producer not oriented
toward economic expansion - as external to its own progressive goals.
Influenced by the evolutionism of the early twentieth century, the
concept of the peasantry in western anthropology began in the works
of Redfield7 and Kroeber8 as a consideration of a polarity between rural
and urban communities, with 'the urban' representing progress and
change. As with socialist theory, the peasant mode of thought and
behaviour in anthropological theory has been represented as a develop-
mental cul-de-sac. The papers in this collection explore the sense in
which the concept of the peasantry derives its significance from an
idea of development where urban and rural progress is defined against
peasant stagnation. In other words, we view the concept of peasantry as
an artefact of a specific Enlightenment ideal of progress common to
both socialist and capitalist thinkers.9 We also explore the way in
which the term has been taken up and given new meanings by those
labelled as peasant. In some senses this project follows in the tradition of
Oscar Lewis, who recognised the limitations of Redfield's rural-urban,
folk-urban continuum, raising questions as to the usefulness of such
distinctions (Lewis 1953, 1965; also Hauser 1965).
The specific elements defining a backward peasant consciousness have
been re-assessed in socialist countries in the context of ideological and
political change; approaches to the peasantry have altered with the
vogues of state-sponsored development discourse. In the socialist period,
rural resistance to collectivisation inspired the conclusion that peasants
were backward and conservative. Now, ironically, in the new market
ideology adopted by Russia, its ex-republics, and Eastern Europe, rural
people have again been given the same label but for the opposite reason,
for their attachment to collective agricultural production. 10 Old models
of the peasantry are finding new currency in the former Soviet Union,
Eastern Europe, Vietnam, and China as the rural - sometimes migrant -
population appears, once again, out of synch with the new ideas about
development spawned in the urban capitals. If collectivisation of agricul-

tural production undermined family-based production - the centrepiece
of most definitions of the peasantry - reform has attempted to bring it
back (the exceptions are Poland and former Yugoslavia). Where policy is
focused on economic development through market reform, collective
enterprises remain useful symbols of backwardness against which new
development strategies are defined. Since rural responses have been char-
acterised in a negative way by state agents irrespective of which ideology is
being followed, we conclude that it is rural inhabitants' perceived or real
opposition to state political-economic programmes that underlie this
depiction. This fact suggests that discourse on the peasantry, and the
implementation of policies rooted in such discourse, is a means by
which consecutive socialist and market-oriented regimes have attempted
to establish control over their (potentially) rebellious rural 'other'.
Further, the particular way in which the peasant has been defined in
the theoretical models of both intellectuals and politicians has had a
significant impact on the way rural populations have been encountered.
Models of the peasantry, developed by urban and educated elites, have
had important repercussions for the lives of the rural populations; peas-
ants have been variously idealised and vilified as revolutionary heroes,
as petty capitalists in need of forced collectivisation, and as a conserva-
tive drag on economic progress in need of 'liberalising' reform or ration-
alising order. Post-socialist representations of the peasantry as backward
and conservative provide state representatives with 'explanations' as to
why rural inhabitants are opposed to the new pro-capitalist changes. In
each period, rural dwellers, as much as other citizens, have been
expected to reject the previously held ideals and political alliances and
to alter their relations of production.
The following chapters explore the manifestations of this ideologically
loaded, politically determined relationship between rural and urban
groupings. How is this relation created, by whom, and why? What are
the histories behind the terms used for the 'peasantry', how were they
defined and developed, in what context and with what political conse-
quences? In the process, the roles of state agents and 'intellectuals' are
analysed. Even the terms and oppositions we have employed, such as
rural and urban, city and village, representatives of the state and intellec-
tuals, are problematic requiring critical examination. We might justify
their use since they have had real historical value as the basis of ideo-
logical constructs that have been practically applied. Nevertheless, in
looking at how these categories are deployed in specific local contexts,
we hope to demonstrate some of the pitfalls of such generalising terms.
There are innumerable definitions of peasants. Most of these empha-

sise - apart from a particular economic status and an underdog position,
both culturally and politically - an opposition between city and coun-
tryside.11 We view the concept of peasantry as signifying a relation
between the categories of rural and urban - typically it is an urban,
state-sponsored construction of a rural 'other'. The concept of peasantry
creates a hierarchical opposition which individuals and groups use to
define themselves. Michael Lipton (1977) has described the persistent
way in which state agents tend to be aligned with urban interests with
the result that policies consistently discriminate against rural interests.
In line with this thinking, we feel that the peasantry is a concept that
embodies the political dimension of this opposition between rural and
urban. But what to make of the fact that the rural-urban opposition is
itself a construction (with practical implications), one that is ever more
blurred as the expansion of suburbs, exurbs, the increase in rural factor-
ies, urban farming, and rural-urban migration make clear?12 Why does
the urban-rural distinction persist despite these changes?
Ching and Creed (1997), in their study of rural-urban dichotomies,
state that the distinctions endure because they are important dimen-
sions of identity and hierarchy - a hierarchy which is part of a cultural
war (as opposed to Lipton's political economy) that consistently values
urban over rural. They point out that even when rural people try to
invert the hierarchy, unless the power structure itself is questioned,
resistance in the form of assertions of a positive rural identity will
backfire; the very symbols of a positive identity embraced by rural
peoples will be turned back and used to oppress them. Their answer is
to insist on 'a place for rusticity within those areas of scholarship which
purport to challenge existing canons and cultural hierarchies...' (1997:
30). Our approach is compatible with this stance but we give greater
prominence to local politics. We feel it is important to recognise that
cultural constructions of rural and urban and their implied hierarchies
persist in part because they refer to practical political differences - that
is, the fact that policy planners tend to have urban identities. It is also
important not to overgeneralise; rural estates of gentry and urban slums
of workers are important historical exceptions to the stereotype that
urban classes unequivocally rank higher than rural classes. Lastly, we
do not wish to gainsay the effectiveness of rural political organisation,
including positive constructions of identity emanating from the coun-
tryside. After all, when considered from a rural perspective, strategies of
resistance may appear more successful than their typical portrayal in the
academic literature.13
Our position - tailored to dealing with a particular manifestation of

rural-urban relations, the concept of the peasantry - connects identity
to a constellation of political relations and histories on the one hand
and the particularities of place, on the other. The term 'locality' is an
attempt to reflect our analytical orientation: without any necessary
(read essentialist) hierarchies, 'locality' views rural and urban as con-
structions with historical and political implications. The association
between ruralness as a socially constructed category and a universalised
type of place14 is not assumed. We do not, therefore, presuppose that
rural or urban identities are necessarily connected to a particular kind of
place at all (for example, see Abrami who discusses peasant migrants,
Czegledy on urban peasants Chapters 4 and 9, this volume).
If we question our own assumptions about political hierarchies, the
nature of progress, and the meaning of development, it becomes evident
that developmental models can benefit from considering a variety of rural
viewpoints. While the events of 1989 have inspired some circles to declare
the triumph of capitalism and the failure of socialism, a careful examin-
ation of politics in the post-reform period demonstrates that what citizens
of these countries actually seek is a new order that cannot be easily sum-
marised by either of these terms (Hann 1995, Hann and Dunn 1996). If the
'revolutions' of 1989 were once broadly understood as movements toward
'democracy', emerging conflicts in these regions have made clear that
there is less than universal agreement on what democracy is, who will
receive its benefits and who is entitled to its privileges. Reform has gener-
ally widened the gap between the 'haves' and 'have-nots', as economic
restructuring has unevenly redistributed the advantages available to dif-
ferent localities, to different ethnic groups, and to different genders and
generations (Pine 1996; Bridger and Pine 1998). As a result of these new
inequalities and the increased pressures of a global economy, locality is
becoming an increasingly important social and economic signifier. Be-
cause the rural-urban dichotomy is emerging as an important battle line in
these processes of polarisation, the peasant question remains central. In
order to understand the full significance of the peasant construction, we
must explore the different ways in which rural people have responded to
urban-based policies/categories/definitions; and have even adopted the
category of the peasantry for their own purposes.
Post-socialist constructions of the peasant, whether from academics or

politicians, are building on the old, and cannot be understood without
reference to past events and theories. The following two sections deal
with theories developed before the reform period and are divided into
socialist theories of the peasantry and constructions of the peasantry
emanating from social science in the west. It is necessary to include both
these bodies of knowledge since approaches in the post-socialist period
are rooted in both capitalist and socialist social science and the histories
that underlie both types of state ideologies. We seek to demonstrate that
social sciences and political histories have followed parallel tracks that
have at times reinforced one another. The final section looks at the post-
socialist period when the marketplace has gained unprecedented prom-
inence with policymakers. It is in this current period that intellectuals,
amongst others, within post-socialist states have rediscovered the con-
cept of peasantry just as western anthropologists seem to be questioning
the enduring relevancy of the concept.15 These differences, once again,
relate to different underlying definitions of the meaning of social pro-
gress, a question we argue is best explored by including local ideas, a task
taken up in more detail by the following chapters.
The socialist lineage from Marx to Mao

The theoretical wellspring of both socialist and social science traditions
lies in Marx. In the 'Eighteenth Brumaire', Marx portrays French small-
holder peasants as representing both the conservative and revolutionary
extremes of political activism. Marx asserts that French peasants during
their 1848 insurrection demonstrated themselves incapable of effective
political organisation. He felt that because the peasantry tends to be
unable to function politically on their own behalf, their politics has
an authoritarian bent, symbolised by their support for the role of emperor:
The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the con-
servative peasant; not the peasant that strikes out beyond the condi-
tion of his social existence, the smallholding... not the country folk
who want to overthrow the old order through their own energies,
linked up with the towns, but on the contrary those who, in stupefied
bondage to this older order want to see themselves and their small-
holding saved and favoured by the ghost of the empire. It represents
not the enlightenment, but the superstition of the peasant; not his
judgement, but his prejudice; not his future, but his past...
(Marx 1978: 609)
Marx's judgement of the French peasantry has its foundation in his

commitment to a particular idea of historical progress. He judged the
peasants as superstitious, prejudiced and backward-looking, because

they failed to grasp the need to adopt a new form of property relations,
fundamental to the realisation of the historical goal of communism.
According to Marx, the French peasants were undone by their stubborn
attachment to the freehold, a form of property that had revolutionary
origins, but which had outlived itself. Their material conditions of
productive existence were both atomised and self-reliant. The freehold
was impoverishing and an impediment to their ability to organise pol-
itically; it made them a class in but not for themselves (Marx and Engels
1968: 170-1). They would thus need the leadership of the workers to
recognise their exploited status.
While it is clear that Marx saw peasants as acting out a conservative
and narrow-minded political agenda, he did not believe 'the peasant'
was necessarily so - conservatism and revolution represented the two
poles of potentiality. Peasants were inherently conservative in that their
political activism proceeded from the material conditions of their exist-
ence, yet Marx also recognised that they have the potential to be free-
thinking progressives - not all contemporary social commentators
would be so generous. The negative epitaphs Marx bestowed on the
peasant of his day - conservative, superstitious, lacking judgement,
backward - surface again and again in intellectuals' assessments of the
peasantry the world over; and almost as frequently they are considered
intrinsic to the peasant's nature. The assessment that the peasant is a
conservative force in history acting against social and economic pro-
gress has taken many forms over the course of the twentieth century.
The persistence of this position is ironic given the frequency with which
peasants have played a critical role in the social revolutions that have
led to the establishment of socialist regimes around the globe. Even
more surprising is the fact that this conclusion is as often as not drawn
directly from analyses of the peasant's role in these revolutions. Thus for
Marx, peasants had been a progressive force in overthrowing the feudal
order only to be undone by their attachment to the smallholding form
of property arrangement. For many socialist thinkers from Marx
onward, the ultimate interest of the bulk of the peasantry is judged to
conform with urban proletariat interests in the overthrow of the status
quo of capitalism. Nevertheless, 'the peasant' is consistently seen as
unable to follow through in creating a new order due to the limitations
of his/her revolutionary consciousness.
The development of peasant theory by political leaders of the Marxian
tradition was influenced by a necessity to translate Marxist theory into
revolutionary action. Russia, Eastern Europe and China all faced the
same problem: the contradiction of at once claiming to be led by the

party of the proletarian class, yet being forced to draw on a base of
support that was overwhelmingly composed of the rural sector. Lenin
in particular elaborated on how capitalist penetration acts to squeeze
the old peasantry out of existence, creating a rural bourgeoisie and rural
proletariat. In identifying the bourgeoisie peasantry as petty commodity
producers (1956: 175-6), Lenin locates them as an antagonistic class to
the proletariat - that is, to those responsible for realising the transform-
ation of the capitalist system into the historical goal of communism. He
wrote, 'the Russian community peasantry are not antagonists of capital-
ism, but, on the contrary, are its deepest and most durable foundation'
(1956: 175-6).
The predominantly rural - peasant - population, whether participat-
ing in wage labour activities or living purely off small land plots, were
viewed by Lenin as a feature of a capitalist system and ultimately a
threat to the potential development of a communist order. Although
he advocated a strategy of working with the proletarianised peasants to
effect social development, using workers to educate peasants to see their
true class identity, he also believed small farm life generated a mentality
and habit that would take generations to remould (cited in Kelliher
1994: 391). The best hope was to reorganise production, to alter the
conditions that create the peasant:
In order to abolish classes it is necessary.. .to abolish the difference

between factory worker and peasant, to make workers of all of them
... It is not a problem that can be solved by overthrowing a class. It
can be solved only by the organisational reconstruction of the whole
social economy, by a transition from individual, disunited, petty
commodity production to large-scale social production.
(Lenin 1968: 497)
Since antagonistic classes were seen as components of capitalist devel-

opment, the elimination of urban-rural differences (class differences)
was viewed as a necessary move in the pursuit of communism.
Stalin went further than Lenin in his suspicion of the bourgeois
character of peasant political consciousness, believing that a strong
peasant presence in Party ranks would undermine the revolution. If
socialist revolutions were to rely on peasant political power, strong
Party leadership was needed to keep the revolution on track. This
emphasis on Party leadership disadvantaged rural inhabitants as much
as Stalin's extensive industrialisation policy, which prioritised the
urban-factory sector above the rural one. While surplus profit from
agricultural production was channelled to the prioritised area - industry
- rather than being reinvested in agriculture, the position of rural in-
habitants was nevertheless aided by state investment, carried out
through collectivisation and the 'modernisation' of agriculture.
Such an approach underlined socialist policy, not only in the USSR,
but also after World War II, in the East European countries and China as
well. The close association between Moscow and the East European
Communist Parties originates from the inter-war period, when all but
the Czechoslovakia Communist Party were forced into illegality (Schop-
flin 1993: 51). It was under the USSR-controlled Comintern that
material resources were passed on to the East European parties. The
Comintern set policies, fostered closeness between the parties and
expected them to follow a Marxist-Leninist (Bolshevik) type of social-
ism. The pressure of Bolshevism especially in the initial inter-war period,
was an important component in the development of the communist
parties in Eastern Europe (Schopflin 1993: 47-51). Via the Comintern,
Soviet Marxism was given out as the true Marxism to Communists world-
wide. 'And it was still a scientific interpretation, only now it was the
vanguard group, the Communist Party (of the USSR) which was equipped
with the scientific understanding of history' (Marx and Beyond, 1973). The
parties never freed themselves from Soviet influence, although arguably
the period of de-Stalinisation allowed limited scope for diverging devel-
opments (for example, the cases of Hungary, Poland or even Romania).16
The fact that the East European Communist Parties were closely
bound to USSR dictates was clearly evident in the policy area with
which we are most concerned - agriculture and the 'peasantry'. Al-
though the countries entered the post-World War II period with
differing levels of development, the East European Communist Parties
modelled themselves on the Soviet Union form of Marxism-Leninism
that gave priority to industrialisation. Rapid industrial development
both in heavy and light industries was dependent upon the cooperative
organisation of agriculture, relying on the use of modern technology
and industry. In Eastern Europe, agricultural collectivisation provided a
surplus labour force that was absorbed by industry. The commitment to
industrialisation programmes thus created a huge population shift, as
once predominantly rural countries became urbanised. Thus the pre-
dominantly rural-located populations of the pre-World War II period
were reversed by the 1980s.
Agricultural production based on cooperative organisation was
viewed from the perspective of Marxist-Leninist ideology as decreasing
the class distance between all working people - between the urban
proletariat and the new agricultural workers in rural areas. The latter,
now enjoying conditions similar to the urban proletariat (including
pension schemes, holiday periods and so on), were placed on an equal
footing as regards the means of production, at least in the eyes of the
law, if not in practice. 'Agricultural Workers' became a term signalling
the merger. Such policies improved conditions for the peasant popula-
tion as a whole and contributed to the better opportunities available for
particular individuals of peasant background to climb up the political
ladder. The improvement in the peasant social standing was so pro-
nounced, that some commentators felt the revolution had been co-
opted by the rural population, transformed into what was then termed
'peasant socialism' (Tepicht 1975). Closing the gap between the urban
proletariat and agricultural workers was believed to provide the main
condition for the establishment of socialist equality, based on the elim-
ination of class difference. Ultimately this provided the means of transi-
tion of the socialist state into communism.
Despite the differing means of creating collective agricultural enter-
prises - from state-owned collectives formed by the nationalisation of
land in the USSR, to the legally privately owned land in Czechoslovakia,
Bulgaria and Hungary which was worked cooperatively - all were driven
by the same concern to create particular relations of production that
would allow the historically inevitable development of society. This
vision of social development necessitated the elimination of the 'peas-
antry'. An effect was to negatively position the 'peasantry', even the
newly termed 'agricultural workers', with respect to the more modern,
higher living standards of the urban proletariat who represented a
more advanced stage of Marxist-Leninist development. The discourse
of difference in terms of the town/village, urban/rural contrast was a
way of speaking about class relations (Kaneff forthcoming); while
the concern to eliminate distinctions between categories, to bring
about class unification, was viewed as a historical necessity. Interpret-
ations of rural workers as 'backward', 'conservative', 'resistant to change',
'insular' and 'uneducated' - amongst other negative labels abundant in
academic and other socialist writings of the pre-1989 period - logically
followed from their location in a Marxist-Leninist history.
The role of intellectuals in this project of socialist development is
complex.17 Populist variants of Marxism are particularly noteworthy as
alternative formulations ultimately persecuted out of existence. In
Russia, the term populist (narodnik) was applied in reference to a group
of intellectuals who were encouraged to 'go to the people' after being
driven from the University of St Petersburg in 1861. The resulting en-

gagement with Russia's large peasant population led to the creation of a
political group who called themselves populist and who differed from
Marx in their belief that Russian peasants would not require an inter-
mediate bourgeois revolution (Bourgholtzer 1999: 14-15). This position
and the practices they advocated led to an eventual split with the
Marxism of Plekhanov and his disciple Lenin. Later, A. V. Chayanov,
an important theorist of peasant economic behaviour was branded a
'neo-populist' when targeted for persecution by the Bolsheviks in 1930.
While the early populist viewpoints became heterodox as a result of
disagreements over the mechanics of the revolution, Chayanov sus-
tained a role as a leader of the Russian cooperative movement in the
1920s. He held his position due to an effort on the part of the Bolsheviks
to appease the rural population in the wake of devastating famines
(Bourgholtzer 1999: 18-19). Nevertheless, while most Marxist econo-
mists supported the large scale concentration of agricultural production
in order to mirror the tendency of capitalist development (Kerblay
1987), Chayanov's (1966) careful study of peasant economics and work
incentives (the organisation and production school) foresaw limits to
the advantages of such a course. Chayanov's understanding of social
differentiation in the countryside as a product of life cycle changes in
the peasant family also differed significantly from Lenin's account of
social differentiation in the countryside as a product of capitalist com-
mercialisation of the agricultural economy.18 Such differences resulted
in Chayanov's eventual arrest and he died in prison some nine years
later. Other populist versions of Marxism, in other countries,19 suffered
similar fates: ultimate political persecution at the altar of communist
revolution.
Circumstances in China, driven by a Maoist rendition of Marxism-
Leninism designed to specifically address Chinese conditions, resulted
in greater attention being paid to 'the peasantry'. The greater attention
to the (potentially constructive) role of rural people was seen as a
necessary modification in a predominantly rural society. Viewed as
smallholding producers, the peasants were subject to all the narrow
conservatism, short-sighted egalitarianism and acquisitive capitalism
considered typical of the petty bourgeoisie and as such were considered
a suspect class (Kelliher 1994: 391). As semi-feudal small producers, they
were a threat to socialist development. At the same time 'the peasantry'
was also seen to have a revolutionary instinct. Both dimensions consti-
tuted the 'dual nature' of the Chinese peasantry - positing peasant
personality as short-sighted, acquisitive yet revolutionary - and pro-
vided the basis of their representation by Chinese state officials as well as

intellectuals throughout the twentieth century (Kelliher 1994; Flower
Ch. 2 this volume).
Apart from the greater preoccupation with the revolution, including
the maintenance of its momentum, and considerable emphasis and
elaboration of issues associated with the 'peasantry', Maoism held in
essence the same common features as the Bolshevik model of Marxism-
Leninism. As with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, collectivisation
of the land - begun in 1956 - and industrialisation had considerable
importance in Chinese policy. However, this was not accompanied by a
major demographic shift from the rural to urban areas. A high popula-
tion - both in urban and rural areas - meant that industrialisation did
not result in a transfer of surplus ex-rural labour to the cities. Instead,
Maoist planning - most famously in the policies of the Great Leap
Forward - developed industry in a decentralised form, integrating it
with agricultural production. It is only in the last decade that significant
movement from rural to urban regions has occurred.
Maoism adopted the 'worker-peasant alliance' from the Bolsheviks. It
was a concept used throughout the USSR and Eastern Europe, but elab-
orated to a greater degree in China. This alliance 'gave the Party a
rationale for pursuing rural revolution while defusing the awkward
issue of being a Marxist organisation with a peasant base' (Kelliher
1994: 394). The alliance, led by the Party, amounted to a proletarian
leadership of the peasant masses. It maintained the position of the
peasant as subordinate to the workers, made evident in the less attract-
ive conditions granted to the former. Workers were privileged over
peasants in a strategy of urban development through appropriation of
agricultural surplus, unlike in Eastern Europe and the USSR where rural
workers had attained relative equality in terms of working conditions.
Ironically, however, peasants enjoyed advantages which were greater
than those of intellectuals, in terms of social position, due to their
inferred revolutionary consciousness.
The case of Vietnam is somewhat different, having its own particular
mixture of Maoism and Marxism-Leninism. With a short thirty-year
history, the general image of communist Vietnam is one of a 'soft'
state not capable of doing much in terms of socialist state-building,
more preoccupied with the exigencies of fighting the war. This is par-
ticularly true of the rural sector, where many of the cooperatives and
later collectives were so in name only. Unable to subsidise its workers or
restrict migration to the degree found in China, for example, the
divisions between city and countryside were not as extreme in Vietnam.
Indeed, most Hanoians, as with the citizens of many Eastern European

cities, are only second generation 'urbanite' and regularly visit their
native places. Due to the weakness of the communist state in Vietnam,
the market-oriented reforms should be seen more as an attempt on the
part of the state to gain control of the market than to create one.
Therefore, the social divisions resulting from the reform process have
been manifested more clearly in terms of 'citizen' and 'the state', than
along the rural-urban continuum. 20
In all three regions under discussion, the Party determined socialist
development toward the same historical goal of communism. The per-
vasive role of the state, the priority given to industrialisation generally
favouring urban interests above rural and the collectivisation of the
land, were all factors which served to determine rural conditions in
the socialist countries. At the same time, peasants did receive some
significant benefits under socialism relative to their capitalist counter-
parts: there were social advantages from being of relatively 'good class
background' (i.e. poor and exploited) and there were material benefits
from being a target of state development policies. When exploring the
parallels between post-socialist states and 'the west', however, some
important similarities become evident. For socialist orthodoxy was not
unique in its assigning industrialisation paramount importance over
traditional agriculture, in advocating central leadership over local con-
trol, or in making the terms of trade favourable to urban proletarian
classes. Policies aimed at extending capitalist penetration have been at
the core of the 'development' strategies implemented by western
nations, with the tacit if not explicit backing of western social science.
These same western models of 'progress' provided the cornerstone of the
reforms adopted by the post-socialist governments. In this sense, twen-
tieth-century theories of social and economic development, whether
capitalist or socialist, have followed a common thread.
Social science in the west

If the peasant class posed problems for Marxist theoreticians, who re-
sponded by insisting on the need for enlightened Party leadership,
similar sentiments have been evident in the writings of western social
scientists who have also questioned the ability of peasants to represent
their own political interests. In the west, peasant studies came of age in
the wake of a groundswell of peasant movements in the late 1960s and
early 1970s.21 Theodir Shanin and Eric Wolf were among the first
scholars within western social science to take a new look at the theme
of peasants from a political perspective and Shanin, in particular, looked
at the position of peasants under socialism. Academics, no less than

the political figures we have looked at, focused on peasants because they
saw in them a means of creating their own social engagement with
the themes of class conflict, colonialism, national liberation and revolu-
tion. Whether they are of a socialist bent or not, the overall tenor of
studies of peasant rebellion in western social science parallels socialist
political theory in that peasants are considered to be unable to success-
fully represent their own interests. As Scott writes of peasant rebellions:
The vast majority are smashed unceremoniously. When, more rarely,

they do succeed, it is a melancholy fact that the consequences are
seldom what the peasantry had in mind. Whatever else revolutions
may achieve - and I have no desire to gainsay these achievements -
they also bring into being a vaster and more dominant state appar-
atus that is capable of battening itself on its peasant subjects even
more effectively than its predecessors.
(1985: xvi)
This view, shared by many theorists, raises the questions: is the weakness
of peasant political movements a social fact, or is the problem that many
theorists judge the peasant movements according to their own idea of
what constitutes a social revolution? What exactly are the criteria for
effective political action?
Too frequently peasant political movements are held up to the im-
probable standard of wholesale rejection of capitalism in the abstract
and/or a sublime resolution of class conflict. James Scott has recognised
that such an abstract approach is alien to the village context; it is 'too
remote', and fails to 'capture the texture of local experience' (1985: 348).
For this reason Scott concludes that resistance by subordinate classes
'begins close to the ground, rooted firmly in the homely but meaningful
realities of daily experience' (ibid). This focus on the quotidian may be
closer to judging peasant political action by the actors' own criteria, but
does Scott's focus on resistance, with its stress on class oppositions, leave
us with a one-dimensional account of peasant political life? If the argu-
ment against peasant revolutionary consciousness is tautological, with
change measured by the terms of the analyst, rather than by the pea-
sant's own categories, then perhaps we need to appreciate the particu-
larities of peasant moral codes, worldviews and historical schema that
lie behind their revolutionary political actions. As Evans (1986: 40-1)
has noted, 'While the content of the peasants' vision is the raw material
of his analysis, it is never the aim of Scott's analysis and so the "good
life" is never taken to mean more than petty struggles for small material
gains.' The shift in emphasis from revolutionary consciousness to every-
day resistance seems to reproduce the idea that the peasants have no
larger sense of where they are headed. 23
Cultural and material analytical frameworks

Clearly this brings us back to the point that theoretical approaches affect
the way we encounter the rural 'other'. How are we to assess the content
of rural political activities and what are the implications of differing
theoretical frameworks in addressing this question? Theories of peas-
antry vary in terms of how they ground their definitions - some empha-
sising a political or economic dimension, others preferring a cultural
definition - and these various constructions have implications for how
one locates the peasant in history. Cultural definitions have tended to
imply that the peasant operates outside and in opposition to the main-
stream of history, while political and economic models have implied
that the peasant is responsive to the same basic variables as any other
class of petty capitalist entrepreneur.
While it would be impracticable to attempt a comprehensive review of
peasant theory,24 a closer look at two traditions in peasant studies
identified by Sydel Silverman (1979) sets the stage for the approach
taken by papers in this collection. Silverman links a concern with mean-
ing and values to the work of Redfield, for whom the central problem
was how 'the quality of life and the quality of human relations are
shaped in different communities and in different phases of the human
career' (1979: 54). This she opposes to the work of the students of Julian
Steward, whose use of political economy led them to see meaning as a
function of a people's 'stakes within a structure of power, wealth and
authority' (Mintz quoted in Silverman 1979: 64). These two different
ways of approaching questions of meaning have evolved into different
ways of assessing the worth of a rural point of view.
For Redfield, urban centres were more likely to host the interactions of
class and culture; therefore, new ideas (and thus progress) emerged with
greater frequency from cities. While culture in the remote areas was
more fully integrated, innovation in these areas was for the most part
a function of the introduction of new ideas from outside. 25 Redfield
followed Kroeber's well-known definition of peasants, 'Peasants are def-
initely rural - yet live in relation to market towns; they form a class
segment of larger populations which usually contains urban centres,
sometimes metropolitan capitals. They constitute part-societies with
part-cultures,' ((Kroeber 1948: 284) quoted in Redfield 1956). For Red-
field, the peasant represented 'Little Tradition' in contrast to the 'Great

Tradition' of the cities (Redfield and Singer 1971). Such views demon-
strate the legacy of diffusionist anthropology of an earlier time, the
attempt to preserve the dualisms of Durkheim's anthropology,26 and
an implicit teleological evolutionism that equates industrialisation
with modernity, evident also in socialist political theories about the
peasant. The opposition between rural stagnation and urban innovation
was also related to another opposition according to Redfield: rural com-
munities had well-developed systems of symbolic meanings, while ur-
banised areas were more instrumental in their use of cultural forms
(1962). The symbolic-centred approach to the study of rural forms was
relativistic in as much as it encouraged the ethnologist to take these
alternative modes of constructing meanings on their own terms. Yet the
fact that the constructs of the actors were not seen to be grounded in
any wider political concern, but in reference only to their own internal
structure, left room for the assertion that rural ways of interpreting
reality were in fact backward and out of time.
The opposition between progressive urban ideas and rural peasant
stagnation, as it was cemented to a meaning-centred concept of culture
popular in the 1960s and 1970s, is seen clearly in the works of F. G.
Bailey and of George Foster. These authors used this concept of culture
to explain the failure of western or urban styles of development in the
countryside. Foster asserted that a peasant worldview sees increases in
wealth in the context of a zero-sum equation, making peasants
(wrongly) resistant to projects that aimed at improving their conditions.
Bailey, observing that the fundamental categories of thought are imper-
vious to direct ideological attack, concluded that 'the moderniser' needs
to provide novel experiences in order to change patterns of thought that
stand in the way of his/her objectives. Thus in both Foster's work on
'Peasant society and the image of limited good' (1965) and in Bailey's
'On the peasant view of the bad life' (1971), the superior intuition of
reality is assumed to be the lot of the urban progressives, with the
agenda of 'the moderniser' adopted uncritically. Since these writers did
not see culture in the countryside as an expression of actors' own
interests,27 but rather as a more passive outcome of received tradition,
they assumed that the peasant had little reason to be sceptical of the
programmes of the moderniser. Peasant attitudes were the result of a
fundamental cultural conservatism. As Bailey writes:
It makes little sense to ask why people hold these values, in the hopes
that, discovering the causes, we can bring about change. At this level
values and categories of thought are ultimate and given; they have no
causes and they cannot be further reduced.
(1971: 295)
Thus the late 1960s and early 1970s saw the emergence of the 'modes
of thought' debate which considered the question of whether 'science
and rationality' was a qualitatively different way of interpreting reality,
separating its adherents from the rest of the primitive world (Horton
and Finnegan 1973; Wilson 1970). This 'us and them' division repro-
duced the older opposition between superstitious and backward peas-
ants and rational and progressive modernisers. As Flower demonstrates
in Chapter 2 of this volume, it is an approach which still has currency
with Marxist social scientists in China today.
In a political economy framework, however, this cultural division
dissolves. The focus on relations of power gave the political economists,
such as Eric Wolf (1969) or Sidney Mintz (1973), a more dynamic ap-
proach to meaning which put all belief systems on a more equal footing.
For political economists, cultural constructs are seen as a reaction to
changing circumstance rather than simply the inherited values charac-
teristic of an ancient way of life. Cultural meaning is no longer idiosyn-
cratic but rather has a universal basis defined by the pursuit of economic
and political interest.
This perspective as it relates to peasantries has had a most articulate
and sophisticated proponent in Eric Wolf. Although Wolf's earlier work
on peasants (1955, 1966) was focused on delineating peasant social
types from ethnographic example, in his later work (see below), he
emphasised the processual nature of culture formation. He stressed
that culture, even so-called traditional culture, should be seen as a
process, not a given (1982: 387), and thus the persistence of cultural
practices required explanation as much as the advent of new forms
(1969: xiii). Here, cultures are conceived of as responses to identifiable
determinants (1982: 388). In Europe and the People without History (1982),
Wolf's anthropology examines the implications of modes of production
for understanding social classes, advancing an approach focused on the
exercise of power. He explored particular modes of production such as
those based on kinship, tribute, and capital, their attendant power
relations and intrinsic contradictions, looking at the ways in which
they have tied people together for better or worse. His project, moreover,
was to look at the world as a whole, a totality, a system (1982: 385).
Importantly, he states that modes of production represent neither stages
nor even types, but rather represent ways of thinking about key strategic
relationships that form the context of human lives (1982: 100). This
refusal to reduce people to the typologies that inform social scientific
analysis means that Wolf avoided the worst pitfalls of an essentialising
discourse.
Nevertheless, because of his earlier work, Wolf has been placed along-
side Scott as a 'moral economist', an approach that asserted that peasant
society was a distinct type of moral community. Wolf asserted that peas-
ants typically aim to keep the destructive aspects of market penetration at
bay; and where they are self-provisioning closed corporate communities,
they can be somewhat successful in this effort (1966:44-8; 1969: xiv). For
Scott, it was specifically the peasant's economic position on the brink of
survival that committed him/her to communal over individualist strat-
egies which were better able to address the urgent priority of risk aversion
(1976: 1). Wolf and Scott both assert that as new forms of social relations
attending market formation are accepted to various degrees, traditional
aspects of peasant life come under siege (Wolf 1966; 1969: 48; Scott 1976:
1-11). Capitalism progresses by playing to tensions already present
within the peasant communities, for example the interests of provincial
elites against others; and ultimately, market development means peas-
ants are displaced as land is commoditised (Wolf 1969: 280-3). This
notion of social opposition has a strong resonance with Lenin's model
of social differentiation articulated in his work The Development of Capit-
alism in Russia (1956). In Lenin's view, increasing commercialisation in
the countryside was transforming the bulk of peasants into a proletariat
in opposition to a class of large-scale capitalist agricultural producers.
Scott (1976) explains that the peasant tends to look back nostalgically to
tradition because, in contrast to the new relations of production, it was a
system which guaranteed the right of subsistence, just as Wolf (1969)
interprets peasant political movements of the twentieth century, (fre-
quently found in the form of socialist revolutions), as backlash efforts
to stave off the destructive aspects of capitalism and preserve traditional
rights. Both Wolf (1969: 275) and Scott (1985: 346) quote Bertold Brecht:
'it is not communism that is radical but capitalism'. From this perspec-
tive, socialism and peasantries have a natural alliance in their opposition
to the transformations of the market-place.
Popkin (1979: Ch. 1) asserted that such views of peasant behaviour
made Wolf and Scott (as well as Polanyi and Hobsbawn) moral econo-
mists as opposed to political economists. He set out to demonstrate that
peasants are ultimately just as individualistic, self-interested and calcu-
lating as the shrewdest corporate players, possessing no special claim to
moral frameworks. By questioning the risk-averse characterisation and
their special attachment to collective norms aimed at ensuring welfare,

Popkin's peasants embody no special contradictions with capitalist
modes of development. Despite Popkin's assertion that Scott falls short
of the political economy label, however, the mode of analysis Scott
employs in his moral economy approach shares with Popkin the under-
pinning of economic calculation. They are all part of an enduring
tendency within most modern literature on peasant studies to under-
stand the significance of peasant thought and action as reducible to an
economic bottom line. 28 True, old debates in anthropology between the
'formalists' and the 'substantivists' tended to concentrate on the nature
of the cultural 'filter' which determined actors' responses to the market.
But even for substantivists such as James Scott, the significance of this
filter lies in its role as a mediator for class interests, where a variety of
interests are defined, rather than as a determinant in its own right. By
default, then, where a political economy framework has been employed,
the question of what characterises interest has been left at the level of
economic rationality.
Viewed from a culturalist standpoint, political economy tends to
reduce cultural content to a function of utilitarian desire for material
gain. Whether located at the collective level (for example Scott 1976) or
the individual level (Popkin 1979), political economic approaches have
focused on the common concern with economic rationality, attributing
to peasant mentality a universal logic and transparency. A culturalist
critique of political economy has been articulated in the work of
Michael Taussig (1980), who highlights the way in which such a theor-
etical concern with utility is ethnocentric and reproduces the logic and
culture of the theorist, rather than savouring the meaningful content of
the people under study. In Taussig's view, cultural meanings represent
creative responses to change, permeated with historical significance;
and are indeed the very symbols of that history and experience. In this
sense cultural meanings are seen as the particular outcomes of particular
experiences and are worth considering in their own right, not merely as
instances of a more generalised theory of a universal peasant conscious-
ness. Taussig's project, like that of Scott, is not content to leave these
observations at the level of the particular, but uses specific meanings to
make more general assertions about the differences between peasant
and market economies as sociological types.
Gudeman and Riviera are critical of researchers with predetermined
models who use ethnography to verify their ideas (1990: 1). They em-
phasise the importance of anthropological fieldwork as a means to
expand and diversify models of economic experience that are discussed
by 'the core', as well as a means to better understand processes at 'the

periphery'. By juxtaposing native models with theories from 'the core',
they hope to inspire new ways of thinking about the economy, rather
than create a single definitive or hegemonic model of economic behav-
iour that might exclude other voices (Gudeman and Riviera 1990: 190).
They apply the trope of the 'conversation' to emphasise what they feel
should be a conscious open-endedness in academic modelling. Their
book Conversations in Columbia (1990) portrays 'the house model' of
economic behaviour employed by rural Columbians, but shared by
older western sources. The house model gives guidelines for strategies
of subsistence beyond the margin of profit, as an alternative to the pre-
eminent corporate model of profit-taking. Neither the corporate model
nor the house model are definitive models of types of human behaviour,
but coexist as competing institutions, albeit with differing levels of
associated social power; the corporate model is associated with the
core and the house model is associated with the periphery. The core/
periphery trope is itself relational; it is used at times to refer to the
opposition between industrial city and rural subsistence-oriented
farmers, or even different kinds of agricultural units in the countryside
- the large hacienda versus the smallholder. It is instructional to learn
how rural Columbian's models of the market emphasise what they feel
the market ought to be (just and fair), rather than how it actually
appears to them (unreliable and exploitative). Gudeman and Riviera's
account encourages other anthropologists to present their findings from
the periphery in order to enable the core to move beyond the corporate
model of economic profit-taking taken as a human universal. By encour-
aging such multivocality, they provide a satisfactory balance between
models that emphasise culture and models that emphasise economic
rationality.
Perhaps Ranger (1985, 1987) comes closest to offering an approach
that sets the framework for our own project. He reflects on how
the introduction of a concept of 'agency' in historiography in the late
1970s finally acknowledged that peasants have a pro-active role in the
creation of their own history (1987: 311-12). His own work examines
how peasants in Zimbabwe have constructed their own identities from
a range of alternative possibilities of their own making and suited to
their own interests. This focus on identity makes clear that history
is particular and that the differences between peoples and places
are more striking and more important than similarities when consider-
ing how to create policy (1987: 327). The point is demonstrated in
this collection by the different responses to the reform policy of
land privatisation. With his appreciation of the particularity and

variability of social experience, Ranger, like Gudeman and Riviera, offers
the possibility of doing away with lingering tendencies to define
history along a single axis, an axis which has tended to box off
peasants as a problematic anomaly antithetical to social progress, or
alternatively, to assume that their historical trajectory and their interests
are of the same form as has guided the growth of capitalism in the west.
As observers of post-socialist contexts, what strikes us is the variety of

the arrangements that make up the modes of production in the post-
socialist states. Neither socialism nor post-socialism can be seen as
preserving pre-capitalist modes of production. In the post-socialist states
(as in other political systems, including capitalism), ownership of land
is rarely fully commoditised, but it has fundamentally changed since
the pre-socialist period. Agriculturalists include profit as well as moral
and/or subsistence concerns among their many motivations. Signifi-
cantly, however, the papers in this collection demonstrate that
desires to keep market forces at bay are not exclusive to rural agricultur-
alists (Czegledy's urban peasants) and there is ample evidence that
particularistic relationships have blossomed in both the city and coun-
tryside in reaction to the deepening of market influences.29 While
Wolf's work addressed a need to see the connections between societies
engaged in a common global process, the current context of expanding
markets calls out for greater appreciation of the variety of reactions to
this process. Highlighting this variety becomes a difference of emphasis
in our work rather than opposition to Wolf's theory. Focusing on
economic interests helps anthropologists see the common connections
between 'us' and what was perceived as a radically different 'them'. Now,
looking at how interests can be defined in ways that go beyond simple
economic rationality (by focusing on identity and native models of
social change) gives us a greater appreciation of the diversity of
the economic systems engendered by post-socialist realities, at a
time when policy-makers too easily assume that everyone has gone
capitalist!
The current context of peasant studies
Both western and socialist political theories have thus contributed to a

general perception that there is an essential peasant nature despite the
fact that the concept of peasantry is 'ever more out of alignment with
reality' (Kearney 1996: 6; see also Cohen 1993). Myron Cohen has
described how the term 'peasant' (nongmin) was adopted in China with
Marxist and non-Marxist western notions of the peasantry 'putting the
full weight of the Western heritage to use in the new and often harshly
negative representation of China's rural population' (1993: 156-7, also
Flower Chapter 2, this volume). Cohen is a champion of the peasants/
farmers against their unfair characterisation - as 'backward', 'feudal' and
'stagnant' - at the hands of the Chinese elite who, he points out, persist
in the stereotype despite the fact that many rural areas have undergone
rapid economic diversification, mechanisation, and modernisation.
If the peasantry is a politicised concept it is not surprising that sources
differ on its enduring relevancy. Chinese applied anthropology con-
tinues to adhere to a Marxist evolutionary schema while western
anthropologists perceive this approach as having a primary aim of
assimilating 'primitives' into Han civilisation (Guldin 1994: 247).
Cohen, for his part, argues that intellectuals would do well to replace
the essentialised peasant cultural identity with an approach to Chinese
economic culture based on the 'family as a corporate unit creating,
deploying, and managing its human resources and its property in a
highly commoditised environment so as to provide for family survival
or enhance family welfare' (1993: 165). Cohen's suggestion that we
abandon essentialised notions of peasant culture cuts to the heart of
the matter. We are less comfortable, however, with his suggestion that
the old notion be replaced with a definition so narrowly focused on
family economy. While it is certainly true that 'enhancing family wel-
fare' leaves plenty of room for subjective pursuits, we are concerned that
positing this kind of economic identity makes it an attractive tool in the
hands of economic reductionists; a means to undermine consideration
of the substantive content of the political visions and cultural practices of
the people we study. It seems preferable to develop an anthropological
perspective that neither assigns to the peasant an essential identity
outside of history, nor assumes his/her views are of the same logic and
same intent as that which drives capitalist economies. The point here is
not that rural inhabitants renounce wealth or the hope of economic
progress, but rather that their critiques of particular programmes for
progress have content worth considering in their own right.
Our focus on identity is an attempt to look at rural-urban relation-
ships in terms of rural people's broader goals. Whereas economic experts
and policy-makers initially predicted a quick and smooth transform-
ation to market capitalism, the fact that socialist forms have persisted
demonstrates the complexity of social concerns that are not resolved by

the introduction of neo-liberal market individualism (Hann and Dunn
1996: 8-9). We try to emphasise the way in which economic relations are
embedded in broader political and moral frameworks, as well as other
wider social and cultural concerns. Unfortunately, there are many scholars
and policy-makers who continue to reduce peasant behaviour to little
more than an attempt to gain resources and strategies for economic sur-
vival, without considering how economic relations are shaped by family
and community ties, political interests, environmental concerns, aes-
thetic tastes, desire for long-term stability or religious commitments.
Modern anthropological treatments of identity have tended to oper-
ate with a constructivist logic that, like its common associate, political
economy, presents its own set of problems. One of the chief values of the
constructivist approach lies in its capacity to question the foundations
of beliefs in essentialised identities by portraying them as contingent
and 'invented' 30 positions adopted strategically in response to prevail-
ing power relations. This is valuable because there is a general percep-
tion that such beliefs, seen in the construction of nationalisms or of
cultural others, have hampered cross-cultural understanding and com-
plicated the political process from time immemorial. Deconstructing a
cultural concept, however, necessarily entails identifying the 'real' de-
terminants of particular cultural concepts in an alternative narrative
generated by the anthropologist. This raises the question of who is the
authorised reader of culture; how is it decided whether a particular
narrative interpretation is or is not legitimate? Constructivist interpret-
ations have tended to see cultural phenomena as inspired by the desire
to create strategic expressions of economic interest and/or cultural re-
sistance.31 This tendency toward certain themes in analysis indicates the
sense in which not even the anthropologist can escape categorical pre-
dispositions (itself a form of the essentialising tendency). Moreover, as a
political stance, deconstructivism can be problematic when it under-
mines the political position of the very people the anthropologist wishes
to support.
In an effort to address this problem, our focus on people's construc-
tions of identity is an attempt to understand why particular issues are
important to people, not just in terms of what they stand against but
also in terms of what they stand for. Thus, while we advocate a con-
structivist approach, we realise that constructivist descriptions them-
selves imply particular social values and that the critical tools of
anthropology, including the focus on resistance, political-economic
interests32 and rationality, can only be part of the story. We aim to use
the concept of identity to go beyond these categories for interpreting

social realities, and to create a space for the appreciation of the sincerity
and depth of cultural stances.
Post-socialist peasant?
Many of the papers in this collection explore the qualitative issues

engaging social actors in the post-socialist states. As Humphrey so in-
sightfully phrases it, 'identity does matter, because it affects motivations
and strategies in the real world' (Humphrey, Chapter 6 this volume).
How the term peasant is used, by whom, and when, reveals much about
people's self-conception and how they see themselves as fitting into
fundamental historical processes.
Looking at the concept of peasantry as a strategic component of
identity construction, reveals that it can operate either as a set of posi-
tive ideals or as a negative reference. Flower's (Chapter 2) contribution
details how Chinese intellectuals have constructed a negative peasant
category abstracted from history. The peasant in the discourse of Chi-
nese intellectuals becomes an essentialised embodiment of the very
qualities - characteristics such as a 'small producer mentality' - that
the intellectuals would like to see purged from the national soul, an
inverted image of those qualities that they, as intellectuals, aspire to lead
their country toward. This fact has unfortunate implications for how
intellectuals actually encounter rural people in their everyday lives.
While Flower makes clear the detrimental impact of the intellectual's
abstracted constructions, he does so through an appreciation for the
historical experience of Chinese intellectuals that has inspired their
viewpoints. Recognising that the peasant construction is a dimension
of intellectual's political activism, an effort to effect a break with a
painful past, Flower also makes clear that the result adds to the danger-
ous and growing division between rural and urban realities and values in
China, realities which are engaged in a 'contest for the national soul'.
Abrami (Chapter 4) by contrast, shows how being a peasant can
represent a somewhat privileged category, one that is felt to have a
historical and moral right to engage in otherwise suspect activities.
She examines the context in which street traders in Hanoi refer to
themselves as 'just peasants'. Being peasants implies that they are off-
season agricultural labourers engaged in trade, not for capitalist-style
profit, but in an effort to meet basic subsistence needs. The significance
of traders referring to themselves as peasants is partly to be found in the
fact that this label does not fit with the reality of their livelihoods (urban
and non-agricultural); partly that they use this label strategically to

resist periodic efforts to remove them from the streets; in part, also,
their choice of this label indicates that despite their entrepreneurial
activism, they are cultivating a moral conception of society that extends
beyond market individualism.
Humphrey (Chapter 6) demonstrates that while the notion of peasant
embodies some characteristics admired by Russian farmers of today (such
as identification with or a sense of ownership of the land), it hardly
represents the social ideal to which farmers now aspire or even consider
possible, given intervening changes in the production system. Despite
the fact that post-socialist policies have intentionally sought to recreate a
peasant economy, nowadays running a farm in Russia is not about
working the earth but rather it is about how to organise and make money
and how to realise intellectual and managerial potential. Since Russian
farmers are concerned by the uncertainty of the present, the salient
comparison for them is not the pre-socialist peasant past. Rather they
draw inspiration from the relative security they experienced during the
socialist period. During socialism the people Humphrey writes about left
behind their peasant identities to become specialists within the coopera-
tive structures; and the continued sense of themselves as specialists, as
part of a larger whole, Humphrey asserts, acts (ironically in terms of
Marxist theory) as an inhibitor to their political activism. These rural
people do not wish to recreate the peasant past - and for urban people
engaged in farming, the vegetable plot is an expedient to feed themselves,
not a way a life. The variety in the social reality belies the peasant
model.
A return to peasant or private farming remains both undesirable and
an unpractical alternative in post-socialist Russia. Perrotta (Chapter 5)
details the economic and social realities that inhibit a move away from
collective agriculture. Off-farm factors, such as the supplier and process-
ing monopolies created in the socialist period in an effort to realise
economies of scale, make re-peasantisation a losing proposition. And
while trading in commodities such as cigarettes may not fit the old
Russian peasant stereotype, it is part of the reality of making ends
meet on the farm in the post-socialist period. Thus the failure to gener-
ate more interest in private farming is not, as some would have it, a
failure to push the free-market model at the household level, but rather
is a function of the everyday realities of the modern economy.
While an examination of the disjuncture between urban-based reform
ideas and rural realities must include a consideration of economic con-
straints on farming practice, even the most quotidian details of what are
thought to be questions of economic efficiency possess within them

aspects that speak to questions of social value. Leonard (Chapter 3)
reasons that because rural people express their identity through con-
crete and particular choices when engaging in agricultural production,
the choice to grow hybrid or native corn - new or old, respectively - is a
significant issue. The preference farmers show for planting old corn is
not only an economic choice but also makes sense in terms of socially
determined aesthetic criteria (old corn tastes better) and labour arrange-
ments (new corn requires intense labour over a short period, something
unsuitable for many households). The practical consequence of such
views is to reinforce the historical, economic and social splits between
farmers and officials who have an ideological commitment to produc-
tion and science. Leonard reveals, therefore, how the choice of corn
ultimately implies different ways of valuing community and is central to
reinforcing rural identity against that of urban people.
Whereas models of the peasant moral economy have emphasised that
rural people are more likely to play-up community-sustaining factors in
their economic calculations, Czegledy (Chapter 9) demonstrates that
not even urban people should be seen as narrowly economic in their
reasoning. Czegledy discusses 'urban peasants' who have no economic
need to engage in agriculture, yet are as deeply involved in producing
food on their private plots as many of their rural counterparts. In so
doing they create meaningful social relations and reaffirm their sense of
national identity in an increasingly globalised economy.
The importance of work and labour in rural-urban relations is sug-
gested in a number of the papers (especially Leonard, Czegledy and
Pine) and this theme is given central stage in Kaneff's Chapter 8. She
suggests that rural-urban tensions evident over the last century in a
rural Bulgarian community can be attributed to city-based 'attacks' on
both the conditions of rural work and the products of local labour. Post-
1989 reforms demanding the liquidation of the socialist cooperative -
an institution constructed by villagers using their own resources and
labour - was thus viewed as an assault on the very heart of local identity.
However, 50 years of centralised state rule has resulted in villagers
being much better versed in how to successfully deal with city-based
officials. Thus, rather than practising open resistance, the collective,
formal response shown to current reforms by the community has been
one of compliance. In this way, villagers have successfully managed to
retain their cooperative institution, while simultaneously not souring -
at least formally - their relations with urban pro-reform state offi-
cials.
At least in one of the two regions of Poland given attention in Pine's

Chapter 7, opposition is not at issue - rural people show genuine ease in
their relations to urbanites. While in this Lodz region the city/country
dichotomy holds little relevancy and the city is not portrayed nega-
tively, the Gorale, from southwestern Poland, represent a very different
case. In the latter instance, the city is perceived as far away and the
village is always at the social and economic centre of the rural people's
world. Pine's comparative perspective emphasises how the urban-rural
distinction has been expressed differently at various times in different
regions according to patterns of integration with the central state. She
reminds us of the value of the rural-urban division, a distinction which
acknowledges distance and inequality and is therefore useful in under-
standing the 'metaprocesses' influencing local identity: issues of place,
problems of boundaries and relations of power.
Failure to consider issues related to identity may explain why econo-
mists and reformers have tended to overlook the enduring nature of
socialist institutions and values. Yet, as this volume demonstrates, com-
mitment to socialist forms is expressed by rural citizens in a number of
ways: past ideologies are used to further interests; pre-1989/1991 times
are viewed with nostalgia, citizens displaying a degree of appreciation
for the previous political system that was not evident earlier; and social-
ist institutions have been given new significance and value. Abrami
(Chapter 4 this volume) explores the way in which socialist ideologies
have become a 'resource' used by Vietnamese seeking to justify their
activities. The street traders she describes ground their practices firmly
within socialist moral values which legitimate small-scale, as opposed
to large-scale, trading. And they portray their primary concerns as agri-
cultural rather than market-oriented. In many areas throughout the
post-socialist region, rural inhabitants speak with fondness about the
socialist period, pointing out the ways in which their standard of living
or quality of life was far higher under the previous system. A conse-
quence of the security provided by socialism is seen in the reluctance to
dismantle the agricultural collectives across Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union. Humphrey, Kaneff and Perrotta each highlight
some of the specific economic, political and social advantages of main-
taining cooperative forms of agricultural production from the viewpoint
of local actors. In some instances, socialist forms of organisation have
also been attributed new meanings. As Czegledy shows, self-provision-
ing which existed in Hungary as a coping strategy for socialism's short-
ages, persists among wealthy people.
Interestingly, a number of the papers indicate that moral frameworks

appear to be an important part of how rural inhabitants construct their
distinctive rural identities (Abrami, Czegledy, Kaneff, Leonard). And
perhaps it is because control over the means of production was such a
central and politicised concept in signifying both the advent of state
socialism and its demise, that the notion of 'work' appears central
within these moral codes. Abrami's traders assert that their status as
peasants gives them a moral entitlement to engage in the otherwise
morally suspect world of trading. Leonard makes explicit a connection
between Chinese rural identity and the nature of agricultural work. The
introduction of what are perceived to be morally inferior new types of
corn is directly associated with changing labour patterns, increasing
dependency on chemical fertilisers leading to greater dependency on
the state; and ultimately, greater engagement in the cash economy. (A
dependency that, as Humphrey shows for the Russian case, is useful in
understanding the politically passive stance of rural people.) For Bulgar-
ian villagers, the physical labour that characterises their activities is a
means of claiming moral superiority: rural inhabitants see themselves as
hard working and not afraid of 'dirtying their hands' (Kaneff). This same
grounding of moral virtue through hard work is also evident in urban
Hungarians' desire to maintain their links to the land. As Czegledy
notes, urbanites view agricultural work as a means to maintain social
cohesion between family members through joint participation in culti-
vation. Further, through agricultural work, urban people engage a na-
tional identity that is 'rooted in the soil' in a long tradition that involves
particular distribution and consumption patterns which require the
sharing of agricultural produce. This is a far cry from the Russian situ-
ation described by Humphrey, where agricultural work is no longer
viewed as a pleasurable enterprise by many urbanites. Rather, economic
hardship - at levels well exceeding the Hungarian case - have trans-
formed the degree and type of work carried out by urbanites. The extra
burden is viewed with disdain and rather than cementing relations, it
causes rifts within households.
These papers demonstrate that the term 'peasant' conceals more than
it reveals (Abrami). By looking at the issues of identity, the following
chapters display the diversity that characterises rural inhabitant's lives
and the complexity of their relationships. Kinship ties connecting urban
and rural families (Humphrey and Czegledy), changing patterns of mi-
gration (Abrami, Pine), mixed occupations that combine agricultural
pursuits with trading or other activities (Pine), problems of defining
subsistence (Abrami), and the difficulties of establishing private individ-

ual farming (Perrotta, Humphrey), are all factors which serve to muddy
the notion that the concept of peasantry can be fruitfully applied to the
post-socialist context. Where peasants are described in abstracted terms,
the concept obscures an understanding of history (Flower).
At the most simple level, the peasant concept works against outsiders'
understanding of rural viewpoints. Notions of peasants as 'backward',
Tacking in education' or 'conservative' tend to blind reformers to ex-
pressions of political resistance (Kaneff, Leonard). If farmers in China
prefer to plant less productive old corn, there are officials who have
misconstrued the phenomenon as backward peasant thinking prevail-
ing against progress. They failed to grasp how past policies focused on
agricultural production may have left a bad flavour, or that the icons of
wealth seen blossoming in urban areas might be wholly beyond the
reach of agricultural people (Leonard). In short, the peasant paradigm
obscures the fact that rural folk are thoroughly modern people with
their own priorities appropriate to their unique positions. As Pine
reminds us, rural people harness the rural-urban distinction for their
own purposes: they use it to place themselves at the centre of the social
world and to manipulate their political and economic relations with
others. What the peasant concept does reveal is something of the self-
conception, political ambitions and agenda of those who apply it or
avoid it, be they rural or urban people.
In reading the following chapters, we are struck by the different values
and degree of ambiguity attributed to the peasant label by rural and
urban folk alike. In the ethnographic cases, the term is shown to convey
a multitude of values, ranging from the negative to the positive. Highly
skilled in manipulating the peasant label for their own purposes, rural
inhabitants apply the term to themselves when it suits them (Abrami)
and distance themselves from it when they feel it is not appropriate (for
example, Humphrey, Pine). As in the case of successful middle-class
Russians who have built their livelihood on the successful manipulation
of foreign donor agencies (Bruno 1998), so in this case we witness the
skill of rural folk in the way they negotiate their relations with urban
folk through the use of the peasant concept.
Urban inhabitants behave in a similar way. Intellectuals have proven
themselves skilled at manipulating the concept of peasantry in a way
that serves their own political interests. Raising the peasantry as an
object of study has, for example, enabled high production levels
amongst academics(l). Moreover, as Flower shows in the Chinese case
- but the point has far wider relevancy - academics legitimate their own
position of power by distancing themselves from the peasantry. This

process of creating a peasant archetype creates a desirable political
distance - in both space and time - between urban elites (intellectuals
and other state agents) and their rural counterparts. The irony is cap-
tured by Humphrey who points to the dominance of the peasant
category amongst official circles, while at the same time establishing
that most people practising subsistence farming - urban or rural - are
reluctant to apply the term to themselves. Wealthy urban Hungarians,
on the other hand, may not refer to themselves as peasants, but their
continued participation in farming activities reveal their (limited) ap-
preciation of the peasant archetype insofar as it provides them with a
sense of identity which has both local and national significance (Cze-
gledy). An important role of the state is to help citizens maintain a sense
of national identity in the face of social upheaval and urban degrad-
ation. To this end the old-fashioned peasant life is revered as an import-
ant source (see Kligman 1988).
As the hybrid corn that was received differently by various sectors of
the Chinese community - promoted by state officials, accepted only
with qualification by the farmers (Leonard) - so the concept of peas-
antry has undergone numerous mutations and receptions. Unlike the
case of corn, in the end all we are left with is an abstraction at the service
of interest groups - state agents, intellectuals and rural people (by no
means a unified group) - who position themselves in different ways with
respect to the term for various purposes at different times. The process is
thoroughly political; a relation of power frequently manifested in terms
of the rural-urban split which is constantly under negotiation. State
agents and intellectuals may have greater advantages in this power
relation, but within this framework there is room for local manipula-
tions. This approach clearly subscribes to the notion that cultural view-
points are contingent and strategic, but the analysis does not stop there.
We must try to search out the meaningful content of various positions
in order to understand what they reveal about how people would like to
live their lives, searching out the substantive values to which individuals
and groups demonstrate commitment.
Our concern in this book should be understood, then, as a means of

focusing on the variety of relationships that exist between state agents,
intellectuals and those known as peasants. From our perspective, the
construction of identity takes on a broad political significance as part of
a process of negotiating power and as constitutive of meaning and

value. An approach focusing on the construction of identity at the
local level explicitly rejects the macro approaches of economism,
avoiding one of the fundamental problems of literature on the peas-
antry, where the logic of actors is deduced from a priori theoretical
assumptions. For the articles in this collection, a consideration of polit-
ical and economic contexts is fundamental, but we seek to understand
recent developments on both social and symbolic levels in order to
demonstrate that people at the grassroots have drawn on a wide range
of concerns (i.e. not simply economic) to respond dynamically to
changing circumstances. National policies, driven by ideological stances
of global geopolitics, are realised in specific contexts; local conditions
provide the framework within which reform policies are played out.
Through the medium of fieldwork, anthropologists bring to the fore-
ground subjects' own qualitative values and conscious reflections on
their experiences, thereby taking into account local variability.
The implication is that social science perspectives grow out of political
relationships and ideas about the nature of social and economic devel-
opment. This implies that our own focus on localised identities is by no
means an objective viewpoint. In the turmoil that forms the political
environment of the post-socialist states, social scientists, national and
international elites, as well as ordinary citizens, are political actors with
stakes in the process of development. Where there exists a dialogue
between western social science and intellectuals in the post-socialist
states, the latter may claim that our social distance - what some might
call our 'objectivity' and others our 'romantic attraction' to a peasant
way of life - is a contrivance designed to veil the political nature of our
own partisan position. 33 This viewpoint challenges us to ask the ques-
tion, on what basis do we presume to 'take the part of the peasant' and
what are the larger social costs of the programmes we advocate (Bern-
stein 1990)? While there is no easy answer to the question of how the
current alliance between western social science and local people's polit-
ical views is grounded, it is surely true that nationalism and economic
expansionism continues to perpetuate the dualistic thinking (for
example: us/them, developed/undeveloped, free market/centralised
state control, primitive/advanced) that underlies the continuation
of the peasant category.34 Attributing priority to local perspectives
allows us to begin to get beyond these dualisms and at the same time
gain an understanding of some of the realities of post-socialist develop-
ment.
Notes
1. We are aware that labels such as 'state agents', 'policy makers' and 'intellec-
tuals' mask as much diversity as the term 'peasant'. A number of chapters in
this work highlight some of the complexity and variation existent in urban
identities. However, for our purposes of understanding the rural perspective,
a more detailed exploration of urban categories has to be limited.
2. In the case of China, land has not been privatised, nevertheless, there is
individual responsibility for rights over the land.
3. Kovacs 1998: 139.
4. Personal communication, Frances Pine.
5. In an inversion of this process, gift-giving may also be used to create a sense
of distance from pervading commoditisation (Czegledy Ch. 9, this volume).
See also Flower and Leonard 1996 for an account of traditional gift-giving
and the process of increasing commoditisation in the Chinese countryside.
6. In an interesting exception to the portrayal of peasants as antithetical to
progress, Humphrey notes that contemporary reformers in Russia called for a
return to the old peasant archetype as a model for decollectivisation. It may
be worth noting that this idealisation of peasantness took place in a context
where there was no living group thought to represent this peasant ideal.
7. Redfield (1947, 1950, 1956, 1962), Redfield and Singer (1971).
8. Kroeber (1948), Kroeber and Kluckholm (1952).
9. See Kearney (1996) for a more complete exploration of the idea that the
concept of peasant in social science proceeded out of the dualistic thinking
of the cold war era.
10. The case of Poland offers the exception that proves the rule. There it was the
peasant's attachment to small family farms that became problematic, since
the family farm was the form that prevailed in Poland under socialism.
11. See e.g. Redfield (1956), Shanin (1966), Wolf (1966).
12. An irony also discussed by Cohen (1993), Kearney (1996) and Ching and
Creed (1997).
13. The notion that peasants are intrinsically narrow-minded and politically
weak is very persistent. On page one of a recent book on Village China,
Christiansen and Zhang write: 'Yet we do not wish to take the notion of
peasant "power" too far. Kate Xiao Zhou (1996: 12) is right in regarding
peasant behaviour as a "spontaneous, unorganised, leaderless, non-ideo-
logical, apolitical movement". Her formulation reveals both the strengths
and limitations of "peasant power". Peasants are strong because they are
spontaneous, unorganised, leaderless and so on, but they are weak for the
same reason. They cannot coordinate and aggregate their political interest.
They can react only to their different realities, indifferent to and oblivious of
the proclaimed policies of the state, and only occasionally respond to them if
they intrude into the village reality, or they can bend and break the rules
imposed from outside' (1998). For an account of (a successfully) organized
political action in the Chinese countryside involving the conscious construc-
tion of a positive rural identity see Flower and Leonard (1997).
14. Evident in Ching and Creed's Introduction (1997).
15. For example Kearney (1996) and Cohen (1993).
16. Cf. the marginal position of Tito's Yugoslavia with the compliant position of
Bulgaria.
17. Verdery (1991: 88) indicates the tense position of intellectuals in socialist
Romania, as a group both necessary to the legitimisation of the state but also
posing a potential danger to it. However, the Party's control of culture's
means of production (Verdery 1991: 89), and internal competition within
the intellectual domain between factions vying for resources controlled cen-
trally (Verdery 1991: 92-4), frequently served to bring about intellectual
compliance with Party goals.
18. Lenin offers his critique of the populist position in The Development of Capit-
alism in Russia (1956). See e.g. his comments on how the 'Narodnik econo-
mists' got it wrong (182).
19. See e.g. Pickowicz (1994), Hann (1987).
20. We would like to acknowledge Regina Abrami (personal communication) for
outlining these differences. Abrami also observed that 'the corrupt' versus
'the society' held significance in Vietnam.
21. See discussion in Shanin (1971: 470). Also see Gamson (1991) for a descrip-
tion of Wolf's invention and participation in the first 'teach-in' on the war in
Vietnam.
22. Wolf (1966; 1969) Shanin (1971, 1972, 1987, 1990).
23. See Kelliher's (1992) account of peasant political action in China leading up
to the reform.
24. Kearney's recent work (1996) offers a more comprehensive account; see also
bibliography in Gutkind et al. (1984).
25. See Redfield (1947, 1956 and 1962), also Redfield and Singer (1971 esp. 358-
59). For a critique of this position, see Lewis, who recognises the ethnocen-
trism implicit in the rural-urban dichotomy (1965: 494), the danger of
generalisations about the nature of social life in the city (1965: 497), even
the limitations of seeing primary relations as less important in the cities than
in rural areas (1965: 497); criticisms also discussed in Lewis (1953).
26. Shanin (1971: 471).
27. This may seem ironic given that Bailey is ultimately known as a major
proponent of transactionalist theory, a school which analysed human behav-
iour as consistently based on gaming-like calculations of self-interest (see e.g.
Bailey 1971). Nevertheless, in this work he is concerned with discerning
calculations of interest as founded on peasant 'cognitive maps' and peasant
notions of a 'moral community' of insiders versus outsiders. While the
peasant is calculating his interest, he does so from a foundation of potentially
misguided cultural notions that may actually confound his interests.
28. It is in this tradition that the rediscovery of the theories of Chayanov by
western social scientists can be placed. Chayanov emphasised that his theory
of the labour-consumer balance (asserting that peasants limit their self-ex-
ploitation when basic subsistence needs are met) should not be seen as 'a
sweet little picture of the Russian peasantry in the likeness of the moral
French peasants, satisfied with everything and living like birds of the air'.
Peasants' behaviour was instead to be seen as a function of the economic
circumstances wherein they had to win 'every kopek by hard, intensive toil'
such that even if Rothschild 'for all his bourgeois acquisitive psychology' was
obliged to engage in peasant labour, he would obey these same rules of

conduct established by the theory (quoted in Bourgholtzer 1999: 44).
29. See Yang (1994) or Flower and Leonard (1996) for examples from China.
30. See Hobsbawn and Ranger (1983), Andersen (1991), and Cohen (1991).
31. The theme of resistance emerges as a particularly salient aspect of anthropo-
logical work on identity. See e.g. a discussion in Fischer (1999).
32. In a kindred stance, Harries-Jones (1993) describes how the UK political
system encourages positions to be phrased in the language of 'interests' and
how this unnecessarily restricts dialogue on environmental concerns and
even misses the point.
33. Guldin (1994) for example, has documented the fact that Chinese anthro-
pologists have consistently rejected the wholesale importation of western
anthropology characterising it as a bourgeois perspective.
34. See also Kearney (1996).
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2
Peasant Consciousness
John Flower
I am conscious of the 'earthbound China'. Many of my own

characteristics derive from this type of mentality... If I had the
choice, I might well prefer to go back to the old days, to the life
of a well-to-do-farmer. I would then enjoy a peaceful mind, a
stable life, and a friendly environment... such thoughts reflect
a backward mentality. They are entirely inappropriate in the
modern world.
(Fei Xiaotong, Chinese anthropologist)
In 1992, my wife and I went to the small city of Ya'an in western Sichuan
to attend the babahui, a large rural market held on the annual festival of
the city god. We walked to Ya'an with a group of young people from
Xiakou, a mountain village of 400 people, ten kilometres from town,
where we lived during our fieldwork. One of our companions was Yao
Suhui, a seventeen year-old girl who often served as our guide. Suhui
faced a future of limited possibilities, and a past that was equally restrict-
ing. She also faced discrimination as a 'peasant', as witnessed in my
fieldnotes for that day:
We spent babahui walking around town... At the end of the day we

stopped at the Bureau of Animal Husbandry [our official host work
unit] to pick up mail, and Suhui went along with us. We stopped to
chat with [a middle-aged woman, an official at the Bureau], who
offered us two chairs. We asked Suhui to sit, which she did. But no
sooner did she sit down than [the official] walked over and bodily
lifted Suhui out of the chair. She did this without missing a beat of
her monologue about how her work was so important and so helpful
to the peasants! Suhui was mortified and tried to hide herself as best
44

John Flower 45
she could by studying the seeds for sale very intently. As we left, her
reaction was to downplay the incident and to say that 'We peasants
(nongmin) always run into that kind of thing.' Later we heard reports
that our appearance in the city with a group of peasants had aroused
a lot of city people's vicious comments behind our backs...
I relate this story both as an example of the pervasive discriminatory

attitudes Chinese urbanites hold against rural people, and as a confes-
sion of my own repudiation of those attitudes. Admittedly, both the
observation and the sensibility are commonplace among western
scholars of contemporary China. There is nothing new in pointing out
the 'under-caste' status imposed on villagers by the household registra-
tion (hukou) system, or in decrying the 'second-class citizenship' suffered
by rural labourers migrating to the cities; the broader impact of the
attitudes invoked against Yao Suhui are practical, obvious and well-
documented. 1
What is less obvious in the issue of anti-peasant discrimination is the
way state agents and intellectuals in China - groups often seen as
adversaries - find common cause in a discourse of peasant backward-
ness. Further, these anti-peasant attitudes do not simply reflect a peren-
nial elitism of the official and scholar, but rather arise specifically in the
post-socialist context, and precisely in the conscious redefinition of
inherited identities. This chapter examines the shared discourse around
which Chinese intellectuals in the post-socialist period have created
both their group identity and, writ large, China's cultural identity. I
argue that the concept of an abstracted 'peasant consciousness' - con-
structed by intellectuals - is central to this discourse, serving as a posited
stereotype of the peasant 'other', a negative typology against which
intellectuals measure and define themselves.
In historical terms, the reforms initiated in the 1980s under Deng
Xiaoping's post-socialist pragmatism have dramatically transformed
China from a command economy directed by a powerful party-state
ideologically committed to class struggle, to a market-oriented economy
under an authoritarian nationalist regime committed to modernisation.
If Deng can be considered the architect of this transformation, China's
farmers are its chief builders, both as rural entrepreneurs and as a labour
source for urban industrialisation. Yet, despite the contribution of rural
dwellers to China's post-socialist development, both state agents and
intellectuals routinely refer to 'peasants' as obstacles to modernisation.
This contradiction is explained, in part, by the renegotiation of iden-
tities in the post-socialist reform era. Along with economic reform came
the 'thought tide' (sichao) renaissance of the 1980s, during which many
intellectuals reflected on what they perceived as their historical failure
to modernise China. These intellectuals renewed the unfulfilled mission
of creating a modern, 'enlightened' China through science and democ-
racy - a mission bequeathed by an earlier generation of intellectuals in
the first decades of the century, and given an added sense of urgency by
the resurgence of 'feudalism' and brutal suffering inflicted on intellec-
tuals as a class in the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). This combined
sense of mission and historical experience reinforced the conviction
that intellectuals in the 1980s needed more than ever to undertake
both national construction and the reconstruction of the national char-
acter. Establishing a new intellectual identity involved defining relation-
ships with other segments of Chinese society, especially with China's
peasants. Intellectuals asked, what was the nature of that relationship,
historically, and how had it influenced the development of China's
cultural identity?
One critical view of the way Chinese intellectuals have answered these
questions is that they are elitist in their attitudes toward peasants.
Myron Cohen (1993) highlights the invented, contingent nature of
the peasant cultural category by pointing out the new language that
appeared in intellectual discourse during the modernisation campaigns
of the New Culture Movement (1915-27). The radical break from trad-
ition engineered by new 'intellectuals' (zhishifenzi) in this period was the
conceptual precedent for social scientists and political activists in the
1920s and 1930s to introduce neologisms such as nongmin (peasant),
mixin (superstition) and fengjian (feudalism). Intellectuals working
under the new imperative of modernisation-through-cultural icono-
clasm found their concrete target in peasants and in what peasants
were made to represent: a historical force blocking progress, an eco-
nomic system perpetuating poverty, and a stubbornly persistent reposi-
tory of feudal values. 'Rural backwardness' and the 'peasant question'
became not just a pragmatic problem to be solved, but also the symbolic
realm through which competing visions of China's cultural identity
were defined.2
Chinese Marxism and the construction of a peasant identity

The idea that 'peasant' and 'intellectual' became fixed caricatures within
a totalising ideology of modernisation is even more persuasive when
viewed in light of the Marxist/Maoist representation of rural backward-
ness, and intellectuals' complex responses to that historical experience.3
John Flower 47
The Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1921, was itself a product of

the New Culture Movement's goals of cultural iconoclasm and national
modernisation. Marxism appealed to enlightenment intellectuals' ra-
tionalism and uncritical worship of science (Kwok 1965). The doctrine
of historical materialism offered an all-embracing explanation of world
events, and the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, along with
the cachet of Marxism's foreign origins, recommended the new 'scien-
tific socialism' to Chinese intellectuals in search of a new system of
belief.
While Chinese revolutionaries initially applied Marxism 'top-down'
to the Chinese context by targeting the nationalist and anti-imperialist
sentiments in the cities, the more important step in the sinification of
Marxism began with the realisation that revolution in an overwhelm-
ingly agrarian China could only be achieved through mobilisation of
the peasant masses. This viewpoint was most enthusiastically (and suc-
cessfully) developed by Mao Zedong. Mao's strategy of developing rural
Soviets and carrying out a guerrilla war that would surround the cities
with the countryside eventually triumphed in intra-Party struggles, and
the Communist war-time base area in Yan'an seemed to establish a
model of nativist Marxism that championed the 'peasant values' of
frugality, honesty, and self-reliance even as it clamped down on dissent
from 'bourgeois liberal' intellectuals.
But the victory of Maoism and its apparent lionisation of the peasant
masses posed problems for Party theorists, who faced the contradiction
of at once claiming to be a party of the proletarian class, yet being forced
to draw on a base of support that was overwhelmingly composed of
peasants. As Daniel Kelliher (1994: 392-6) explains, in the theoretical
formulations of the 1920s and 1930s that came to rule Party thinking
and policy, the peasant class was understood as possessing a 'dual
nature': on the one hand, as an exploited class of labourers, the peasants
were a powerful revolutionary force in the struggle to overthrow capit-
alism, imperialism and the feudal system of exploitation; on the other
hand, as smallholding producers the peasants were subject to all the
narrow conservatism, short-sighted egalitarianism and acquisitive cap-
italism of the petty bourgeoisie, and, as such, were a suspect class. Thus
Party historiography could point with approval to peasant rebellions as
precedents for revolutionary action, while castigating the peasant
rebels' limited goals and 'feudal' psychology that simply reproduced
the old social order, keeping rebellion from becoming true revolution.
As the Party's ranks swelled with peasant recruits, this class identity
crisis and the danger of being infected with 'peasant consciousness'
became acute. Party theoreticians solved this problem of class identity

with the idea of a 'worker-peasant alliance,' where the presence of Party
cadres, representatives of the worker class, amounted to proletarian
leadership of the peasant masses. After Liberation in 1949, when na-
tional construction became the primary goal, the worker-peasant alli-
ance that had served as theoretical justification of the peasant
revolution underwent a subtle transformation into policy aimed at
containing the dark side of the peasantry's dual nature. Now peasant
acquisitiveness, egalitarianism and 'localism' were seen as threatening
to the Party's plans for collectivisation and the development of heavy
industry (and the urban proletariat class). The worker-peasant alliance
privileged workers over peasants, prioritised a strategy of urban devel-
opment through appropriation of agricultural surplus, and controlled
peasant behaviour and the possibility of peasant unrest.
Perhaps the greatest irony of the Maoist period was that this deep
Marxian mistrust of the peasant class - and concomitant exploitative
state policies that proved disastrous for the countryside - were paradox-
ically paired with a romantic idealisation of the peasant identity. The
peasant was glorified as a paragon of revolution even as he was relegated
to second-class social status behind workers, and, in the case of the
Great Leap Forward and subsequent famine, quite literally exploited to
death. 4
In the realm of symbol, Mao reversed the relationship between peas-
ant and intellectual identities in a process of purging intellectuals and
promoting the revolutionary peasant ideal. If the blueprint for using an
idealisation of the peasant to suppress 'bourgeois' intellectuals was de-
veloped in the Yan'an period, the practice of silencing dissent by send-
ing intellectuals down to the countryside became widespread in the
anti-rightist movement of 1957. This process reached its height during
the Cultural Revolution, when the bastions of cosmopolitan intellectual
culture were invaded, inverted and replaced with a nativist glorification
of proletarian and peasant culture: technical expertise was scorned in
favour of revolutionary enthusiasm, callused hands and good class
background were considered higher qualifications than academic
degrees, universities were closed and re-opened as 'worker peasant sol-
dier' schools, foreign possessions were destroyed and cosmopolitan af-
fectations reviled as 'imperialist', classical works of Chinese art were
castigated as 'feudal' and destroyed. Most importantly, intellectuals
were cast at the bottom of the social hierarchy, the 'stinking ninth'
category of class enemy, and subjected to physical and psychological
torture by young Red Guards eager to demonstrate their fanatical loyalty
John Flower 49
to Chairman Mao and the revolution. As a final humiliation, as in the

anti-rightist movement of the 1950s, intellectuals were once again
pulled from their positions of cultural authority and sent down to the
countryside to 'learn from the peasants' through manual labour.
In the early years of the revolution, especially the 1940s and early
1950s, many intellectuals felt admiration for the honesty, simplicity,
and 'nobility' of China's peasants, whether in the self-sufficient base
area of Yan'an or among the well-disciplined peasant troops occupying
the cities. The virtues of these 'peasant values' were highlighted even
more by contrast to the corruption and social chaos that marked the last
years of the Guomindang regime. In a deeper sense, the organisation of
the peasant masses into a nationalist, anti-imperialist force seemed to
represent the very vitality China needed to save itself as a nation -
especially if that vital energy could be channelled into the cause of
modernisation led by intellectuals. But if intellectuals' early admiration
for the peasants was tinged with patronising elitism, it was also motiv-
ated by feelings of ambivalence and guilt toward their own 'bourgeois'
character, and by a real desire to reform themselves to serve the Chinese
nation (Link 1992: 135).
The post-Mao reaction
From the historical vantage point of the post-Mao era, many intellec-
tuals, especially younger scholars, rejected this positive stance toward the
peasants, some going so far as to criticise what they perceived as the older
generation's complicity in their own persecution. Emboldened by Deng
Xiaoping's 1978 rehabilitation of intellectuals as 'thought workers' -
symbolically encoded in the appearance of a bespectacled scientist along-
side the worker-peasant-soldier triumvirate on Chinese currency - social
critics began to call for a return to the New Culture Movement ideal of
developing a politically 'independent personality' in intellectuals, and
for a reassertion of their rightful place of leadership in society. Where
intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s faced the peasants hat in hand in an
attitude of humility and admiration, ready to sacrifice themselves for the
nation, the generation who took the stage in the 1980s saw peasant
values in a negative light, and blamed China's backward condition -
and their own low social status - on the 'peasant consciousness' (nongmin
yishi) that had permeated Chinese society. Intellectuals defined peasant
consciousness as a way of thinking, born of 'primitive' subsistence agri-
culture and stubbornly resistant to historical change, that stood as an
essentialised reflection of all that is wrong with Chinese culture.
This reversal in attitudes, from admiration of peasant values to criti-

cism of peasant consciousness, was a reaction to 30 years of Maoism,
culminating in the Cultural Revolution. Intellectuals in the post-Mao
period almost universally assessed the Cultural Revolution as 'chaos', or
'madness' - the very archetype of irrationality to those who value ration-
ality so highly - which left in its wake a mood of disillusionment, mis-
trust, and the degradation of relationships, manners and even language.
During the Maoist era intellectuals encountered the Chinese peasantry
not as a noble, liberating force, but as the backward power of feudalism
persisting within the Chinese personality, a power that was the condition
for the possibility of despotic rule, and a power to which they fell victim.5
As Chinese intellectuals 'reawakened' after the long nightmare of the
Cultural Revolution, they found themselves victims of peasant conscious-
ness on two mutually reinforcing levels. First and most immediately,
intellectuals experienced peasant consciousness in the day to day frustra-
tions of confronting obstructionist cadres of peasant background, or of
simply being subordinate to less qualified or educated peasant leaders in
their work units. These persistent conflicts with peasant cadres, combined
with the historical experience of being sent down to the countryside, may
have led many intellectuals to analyse peasant consciousness in terms of a
critique of Party history, explaining the failure of the revolution by the
dominance of peasants recruited during the 1940s and 1950s.
In addition to understanding peasant consciousness on the level of
experience - feeling resentment toward what they perceived as peasant
status and power - Chinese intellectuals in the 1980s also understood
peasant consciousness on the level of abstraction; that is, they discussed
peasant consciousness as a reified spirit or force, even a disease, that had
seized control of society. As expressed by a professor in Beijing,
'Peasant consciousness' has soaked into our system, into our daily
life. It's everywhere. When you fight it, it just becomes part of you.
I've tried to be rid of it, but I'm afraid it has seeped into every cell of
my body.
(Link 1992: 138-9)
Discussions of an abstracted peasant consciousness were often

couched in less emotional and more analytical terms. Some Chinese
scholars revived the Marxist theory of the peasantry's 'dual nature', not
only as a way of judging Party history against the Party's own standards,
but also out of a genuine conviction that peasant consciousness had
infected the revolution and corrupted it.
John Flower 51
Intellectuals used the dual nature theory, and the idea of feudalism, as
ready-to-hand explanations of historical failure, but in doing so they
took the discussion of peasant consciousness out of history and into the
realm of 'human nature'. As Chinese intellectuals in the 1980s began to
'rediscover humanity' and reflect on the Chinese national character,
they developed a positive identity and set of values associated with the
idea of the intellectual's 'independent personality' (dull renge) (Wan
1991: 72), and a corresponding negative identity and set of values in
the concept of a peasant personality or peasant consciousness.
Culture fever
In the post-Mao renaissance of Chinese intellectual life, the evaluation
of tradition and development of Chinese culture were the central ex-
pressions of intellectuals' sense of social concern. After 30 years of
Maoist rule, during which 'culture' was relegated to the epiphenomenal
level of 'superstructure' or cynically manipulated in revolutionary class
struggle, Chinese scholars rediscovered culture as a live issue determin-
ing the fate of their nation. As Lin Tongqi describes the new place of
culture in Chinese intellectual discourse, 'now it is widely held that
culture as patterns of behaviour, as value systems, or as structures of
meaning not only has an independent existence of its own, but also is
sedimented into the deep psychological structure of each individual'
(Lin 1995: 741).6 Scholars explored the new field of 'culturology' (wen-
hua xue) in search of a qualitative definition of the 'humanity' they had
rediscovered after years of Marxist dogma.
'Culture fever' began in the discipline of history, when, in the early
1980s, the question of reviving the study of Chinese culture first arose.
By 1986, research on Chinese culture had reached a flood tide, and the
'fever' had spread to philosophy and social sciences such as anthropol-
ogy and folklore studies. The debates focused on interpreting the 'deep
structure' 7 of Chinese traditions (especially Confucianism and, to a
lesser extent, Daoism), on the comparative study of Chinese and west-
ern cultures (Li and Zhang 1988), and on questions of methodology in
culture studies.8 In its most basic sense, culture fever put humanity, the
'subjective', at the centre of the intellectual agenda, using it as a criter-
ion, along with scientific rationality, against which the cultural trad-
ition could be judged.
Just as culture fever had many dimensions, it also was carried out on
many levels. Dialogue on the valuation of Chinese traditional culture
was not limited to the 'cultural luminaries' of Beijing University, Fudan
University in Shanghai, or the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
although these served as the focal sites of debate. The very nature of the
topic discussed - Chinese cultural identity - was inclusive, and interest
ran high among not just less famous academics but the educated public
in general. In addition to over 1500 articles published in academic
journals and in more popular periodicals such as New China Digest
(Xinhua Wenzhai) and Du Shu, many new book series dealt with Chinese
culture, as did articles in national newspapers, especially the People's
Daily and Guangming Daily. Culture fever peaked in intellectual circles
in 1986, but it reached its zenith among a broader audience in 1988 with
the airing of the television documentary River Elegy (Heshang), which
presented a distilled version of many of the more iconoclastic ideas
developed in culture fever debates.9
Heshang is a kaleidoscope of images, interviews and historical refer-
ences, a documentary designed to topple the blocks of received wisdom
that form the edifice of Chinese cultural patriotism. One by one the
symbols, national heroes and historical legacy of an 'ancient people' are
toppled and replaced with a (largely) negative assessment of Chinese
culture.
Perhaps the most celebrated example of this inversion of symbolic
meaning is the treatment of the Great Wall, seen not as a symbol of
Chinese greatness, but only 'a great and tragic gravestone forged by
historical destiny' which 'can by no means represent strength, initiative,
and glory; it can only represent an isolationist, conservative and incom-
petent defence and cowardly lack of aggression' (Su and Luxiang 1991:
130). The iconoclast reinterpretation of the Great Wall proceeds through
a kind of 'naturalism' or 'cultural objectification' from a physical object
to a characteristic 'psychology', or 'spirit'. Thus Xie Xuanjun, a lumi-
nary of the 'culture fever' movement, and a consultant and co-author of
Heshang, raised the idea of China's 'Great Wall spirit u(changcheng jing-
shen)" characteristically long on conservatism, short on innovation; it
pays attention to defensive methods but lacks the will to attack; it
promotes virtue while scorning efficiency; it is content with poverty
and with fate but unwilling to take risks...' (quoted in Su and Luxiang
1991: 130, fn 48).
In episode four of Heshang, 'The New Era', this social science icono-
clasm is extended to the human half of the naturalist metaphor in a
commentary on peasant psychology. In the traditional Confucian hier-
archy, the social status of peasants was the highest, a recognition of their
importance as producers of food. In Mao's time, the peasant - and
especially the 'poor and lower middle peasant' - was elevated to a high
position in the new revolutionary hierarchy, and peasant rebellions in
John Flower 53
the past, such as the Taiping rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century,

were praised as progressive precursors to the Communist revolution.
Thus the peasant came to be understood not only as a social force, but
as a symbol associated with both the Confucian tradition and Maoist
values as well. In addition to reversing the historical verdict on peasant
rebellions by recasting them in terms of destructive social floods,
Heshang also contests the meaning of the peasant-as-symbol.
The argument is nominally economic. China's failure to develop a
'modern industrial civilisation' is historically based in the absence of
capitalism. Overpopulation and the resulting subsistence farming
economy gave rise to a struggle for survival and the national psychology
of negative egalitarianism. The argument continues along the
same reasoning that equates symbol and psychology in the 'Great
Wall spirit', here sighting the 'character' or 'quality' (suzhi) of the peas-
ant:
The style of small-scale production has also created a whole set of

values stressing setting low targets in order to keep oneself on a
psychological equilibrium. Are not philosophies of life such as
'being content with one's lot,' 'taking things as they come,' 'not
taking risks,' and 'even a bad life is better than a good death' still
practiced by the great majority of people? When we asked this youth
in this northern Shaanxi village why he remained at home in poverty
and didn't go out to seek his fortune, he responded 'my mom and
dad didn't give me the guts to do so!' In the vast, backwards rural
areas, there are common problems in the quality [suzhi] of the peas-
ants such as a weak spirit of enterprise, a very low ability to accept
risk, a deep psychology of dependency and a strong sense of passive
acceptance of fate. No wonder that some scholars sigh with
regret... 10
These negative peasant values explain the 'backwardness' of China's

agricultural civilisation. The text goes on to ascribe to this peasant
psychology the exaggerated yields of the Great Leap Forward and the
subsequent tragedy of famine and 'social turmoil'. This reading of his-
tory goes beyond the need to hide political criticism in cultural allegory;
the negative conception of the Chinese peasant as 'backward' and
'lacking quality' is an integral part of the iconoclast thesis. The peasant
here symbolises anti-modernity, the active resistance to modernisation.
This anti-peasant strain runs through much of the iconoclast critique of
Chinese culture. 11
The typology of peasant consciousness

By the end of the 1980s, dissatisfied intellectuals' negative critique of
Chinese culture had found concrete embodiment in the peasant. 'Peas-
ant consciousness' became a kind of catch-all representation of what
was wrong with China; it caught the educated public's imagination, and
reflected the intellectual Zeitgeist on the eve of Tian'anmen. 12
While most intellectuals used the term 'peasant consciousness' (and
'feudalism') in a rather unreflective way, as a reference to conventional
wisdom, two works dealing quite specifically with the concept were
published in May of 1989, just as protesters were taking to the streets
of Beijing. These works - an article reprinted in the popular New China
Digest and the book-length study Peasant Consciousness and China -
reveal both a detailed typology of the meanings intellectuals ascribed
to peasant consciousness and the importance of the idea in the broader
process of intellectuals' self-discovery. I have chosen to analyse these
two works below at some length, because of the significance of their
timing, and because they are at once representative of the way many
intellectuals used the term peasant consciousness, yet make explicit the
implicit assumptions underlying the concept.
Peasant Consciousness and China,13 written by the prominent scholar
Feng Chongyi, is a historical analysis of how the values, beliefs and
behaviour of Chinese peasants, developed in the crucible of China's
long feudal past, constitute an enduring peasant consciousness that
has played a decisive role in shaping modern China's historical experi-
ence. Feng Chongyi aims to redress the shortcomings of ahistorical
accounts of peasant consciousness that stop at the level of economic
determinism and the 'small agricultural producer' mentality. He is fre-
quently sympathetic to the plight of peasants, especially in laying blame
for the 'pathological psychology' of peasant consciousness on the he-
gemony of the feudal 'ruling class' in Chinese history. Still, Feng's
portrait of peasant consciousness reflects the negative attitudes toward
the peasantry broadly held by Chinese intellectuals in the post-Mao
period; indeed the book can be seen as a collection or synthesis of the
many dimensions of meaning embraced in the concept of peasant
consciousness.
The message of Feng's book lies in the possibilities, lost in history, of
establishing democracy in China: the failure of the emergent middle
class/intelligentsia to join forces with the peasantry at the beginning of
the century, and the lack of leadership and sustained tutelage by the
Party that starved a nascent democratic consciousness among the peas-
John Flower 55
ants in the communist base areas. In this sense, the story Feng tells is as
much about the unfulfilled mission of intellectuals as about peasants.
Indeed, peasants appear as an abstract consciousness, a historical 'force',
but the historical 'subject' is the intellectual class who lead or fail to lead
that force toward the ideals of democracy and rationality. Thus peasant
consciousness is a sin not of moral failure but of ignorance; a sin that
can only be expiated by the leadership of the enlightened.
Feng develops a typology of peasant consciousness that breaks the
concept down into its constituent abstract 'isms' (zhuyi): egalitarianism
(pingjun zhuyi) in economic consciousness, the worship of power (bai
quan zhuyi) in political consciousness, 'ethicism' (lunli zhuyi) as the
hallmark of moral consciousness, 'closedness' (fengbi zhuyi) in social
relations, and the 'obscurantism' (mengwei zhuyi) of religious conscious-
ness. This approach that combines abstraction with historical analysis
makes Peasant Consciousness and China a blueprint of the negative peas-
ant identity, and a mirror to intellectuals' thinking on their historical
relationship with that peasant 'other'.
Feng's typology of peasant consciousness builds from the axiomatic
proposition that 'Chinese peasant consciousness is a unity possessing a
dual nature,' and his historical explanation of the peasantry's dual
nature closely follows Marxist theory. As he expresses this widely held
point of view, Chinese peasants
both demand egalitarianism and selfishly pursue self-interest; both

oppose oppression and are sycophants to authority; both demand
equality and worship power; are both dissatisfied with and accepting
of the status quo; both simple and kind, and rude and harsh; both
conservative and following the times; both arrogant and suffering
from an inferiority complex; both headstrong and orthodox; both
lacking religious faith and having superstitious belief in ghosts and
spirits... The dual nature of their consciousness was precisely the
deep reflection of the social position they had to deal with and the
profound contradiction of real life itself. The peasants were both
oppressed and exploited labourers, and spiritually enslaved, culturally
deprived smallholders. They could possess all the fine virtues of la-
bourers, but also possess all the psychological pathologies of small-
holders. As exploited labourers, both the peasant class and worker
class detested the system of exploitation, but as peasant small produ-
cers they could in no way have the kind of lofty ideals and broad
mindedness of the worker class. The peasants, too, sometimes were
anxious to bury their suffering and embrace a beautiful new life, but
the moral education they received made them incapable of creating a

theoretical ideology that both reflected the interests of their own class
and conformed to the demands of historical development.
(Feng 1989: 4-5)
Feng portrays the Chinese peasant as a victim of his own ignorance, in

need of intellectuals' guidance to raise him out of backwardness. Thus
he maintains that the roots of the peasants' dual nature lie in a particu-
lar economic consciousness that Feng contrasts with the higher con-
sciousness possessed by intellectuals:
Due to the limitations of living conditions and cultural level, the

peasants' economic consciousness can only be a kind of perceptual
consciousness, only a kind of intuitive reflection of economic phe-
nomena, and can in no way correctly recognize, from the high ground
of reason (lixing), their own economic position, nor grasp the laws of
economic development and carve out their own economic future.
(1989: 6)
Feng calls this peasant economic consciousness 'egalitarianism' (pingjun

zhuyi), which he characterises as a universal attribute of human nature
at a more primitive stage of development, a 'just' and 'reasonable' strategy
for securing survival in conditions of material shortage. Peasant egalitar-
ianism played a positive role in Chinese history by opposing the injustice
of 'the feudal system of exploitation', but it outlived its usefulness, since it
'can only be a kind of revolutionary principle... as a principle guiding
construction, egalitarianism can only lead the people down a dead-end'
(1989: 7-8).
Feng maintains that the egalitarian urge of the peasant's economic
consciousness was originally the spirit of opposing injustice, leading to
violent rebellion that solved nothing and only created new injustice.
Given peasants' inability to rationally construct a new system, it was 'no
wonder the peasants' countless attempts to realise egalitarianism
through war could only end in countless defeats', (1989: 10). Feng
describes the reason for these defeats as lying in the 'conservative,
obsequious, numb and docile peasants' and their characteristic 'indiffer-
ence to polities'. But, he hastens to add, this does not mean that the
peasants in feudal times did not seize opportunities to 'struggle against
their cruel fate'. On the contrary, peasant war and rebellion are also
longstanding Chinese traditions, even persisting into the present. For
Feng,
John Flower 57
The tragedy is that, in terms of their spontaneous tendencies, the

peasants were typical 'worshippers of power'... Even if they did
manage to overthrow the ruling class, their 'new' political order was
constructed completely according to the ideology of their opponents,
inevitably displaying hierarchy not equality, autocracy not democ-
racy, enslavement not freedom.
(1989: 11)
The argument ostensibly deals with the feudal period of Chinese history,
but it applies equally as an indictment of the egalitarian economic
policies and political campaigns under Maoist 'peasant socialism'. The
criticism of the failed revolution is not simply suggested in veiled alle-
gory, but rather follows from the internal logic of the abstraction itself,
where peasant consciousness was produced by historical social relations,
yet exists outside of history - affecting it, obstructing it, persisting
through history but remaining unchanged by it.
This process of abstraction can be seen in Feng's account of the
political dimension of peasant consciousness. In keeping with a Marxist
perspective, Feng attributes the peasants' faith in both the absolute
power of the emperor, and in the ability of the 'upright official' (qing
guan) to exercise paternal benevolence, to the peasant economy and its
corresponding mindset/consciousness. Since 'in the peasant's inner
world (nei xin shijie) it was difficult to develop an independent, self-
determining personality' peasants 'lacked the internal demand' for rep-
resentative, democratic government, and 'over the course of time the
"spirit of rule by man" [renzhi jingshen] penetrated into the peasants'
soul', (1989: 13). This psychology played itself out on the historical stage
in empty victories and the pointless sense of eternal return. But just as
importantly, Feng's conceptualisation of peasant consciousness in terms
of a characteristic psychology inimical to the spirit of democracy reflects
a contemporary conflict of values between intellectuals and peasants, a
contest for China's soul.
Feng shows this conflict of values between intellectuals and peasants
in his treatment of 'ethicism' (lunli zhuyi), the moral orientation that
informs both the economic and political components of peasant con-
sciousness. Once again, Feng highlights the dual nature of peasant
consciousness, and its incompatibility with modern life:
The peasants of ancient China were both protected by and sacrificed

to ethicism. In terms of economics, the peasants began from an
ethical perspective, demanding restraint on the wealth and luxury
of the few in exchange for meeting the basic needs of all; demanding
restraint on the development of the commodity economy in order to
guarantee the stability of the small peasant economy. While it is true
that these kinds of demands have a certain sense of 'justice,' they
necessarily sacrifice the progressive development of the social econ-
omy and at the expense of inhibiting the individual... In terms of
politics, the peasants 'ethicised' politics, and saw the 'benevolent
government' of their rulers as the ideal politics... Generation after
generation of being enslaved and lacking freewill made it difficult to
make the transformation to 'the morality of citizenship' (gongmin
daode), in the modern sense.
(1989: 15)
The peasantry's dual nature is a function of anachronism; as peasant

consciousness persists past its appropriate historical stage it turns from
reasonable to irrational, from good to bad. Thus Feng sees the shortcom-
ings of peasant ethicism most prominently in the apparent virtues of
'human sentiment' (renqing), here characterised by Feng as typical of
peasant 'narrowness':
It is regrettable that this 'human sentiment' has such a strong com-

ponent of exclusivity, existing only within the family or among the
small circle of social relations, friends and acquaintances. Using the
ethics of human sentiment as the standard for handling all social
relations inevitably negates its suitability as a common standard for
all members of society...
(1989: 17)
Feng voices the common criticism against the 'particularism' of peas-

ant ethics, which intellectuals see as an absolute obstacle to the march
of progress through the establishment of rational 'universal' standards.
Feng underscores this idea when he sets the problem in its world histor-
ical context, observing that the peasants' particularist ethic of renqing 'is
a kind of legacy handed down from clan-based society to early class-
based society' and that 'Western Civilization' had once experienced, but
eventually overcome, a similar preoccupation with particularist ethics
in its early development.
The narrowness of the peasants' ethical consciousness Feng attributes
to their isolated living environment, which bred ignorance and a psych-
ology of isolation. This criticism extends to China as a whole under the
self-sufficient isolationism of Maoist policies. The peasant consciousness
John Flower 59
affecting both Mao and his peasant supporters left them 'absolutely no
way of imagining the diversity and richness of the world', in a state of
'idealizing everything intrinsic to oneself and 'unable to take a meas-
ured approach to anything "from outside," especially things from
abroad' (1989: 19). Feng characterises this isolation as a kind of path-
ology corrupting peasant ethics to 'the point where the purity and
kindness expressed in peasant social relations were not built on the
rational foundation of moral belief, but were intertwined with the
backwardness and ignorance suitable to the isolated environment
of life in the countryside, and in large degree dependent on that
isolated environment for its persistence.' The cure Feng prescribes to
restore a healthy relational consciousness consists of moving 'from
isolation to openness (kaifang), from ignorance to open-mindedness,
and most importantly to build complete social institutions', (1989:
21). The impetus for these changes must clearly come from outside,
from the leadership of intellectuals endowed with the perspective of
rationality.
In Feng's account, rationality serves as the universal standard against
which the flaws and shortcomings of peasant consciousness are judged;
conversely, peasant consciousness is the mark against which rationality
is measured. It is significant that Feng completes his typology of peasant
consciousness by tracing its flaws back to the height of peasant irration-
ality - religious obscurantism or superstition - and at the same time
makes clear his own project of exposing peasant consciousness as the
obstacle to reason/rationality he and most intellectuals champion. In
the light of 'cold rational reflection', the religious beliefs of Chinese
peasants are superstitions, reflecting the peasants' 'need to comprehend
the world, to grasp for the kind hope of fate'. Despite his sympathy for
the plight of the peasants, Feng completely negates the value of their
religious consciousness since it stands in such contradiction to his own
value system based on rationality. In the critique of peasant conscious-
ness, intellectuals frequently used 'feudal superstition' in this way, as a
blanket negation of peasant irrationality.14
The themes which appear most frequently in intellectuals' character-
isations of peasant consciousness can be seen in Feng's typical account:
the 'small producer economy' as article of faith and determining factor
in peasant makeup; the metaphorisation/reification of the peasantry as
a violent natural force; a sense of history as a cruel and ironic 'eternal
return'; and (most reliably) positing an abstract peasant identity
through 'psychology', 'spirit', 'consciousness', 'personality'. Added to
these are further characterisations of the peasant life of the mind that
are widely held and frequently aired by intellectuals: the 'ethicism',

'closedness', and 'superstition' of peasant culture that really becomes a
stand-in for Chinese culture as a whole.
Feng's lengthy account of peasant consciousness was an attempt to
explicitly analyse and historicise a widespread assumption implicit in
the Chinese intellectual discourse of the 1980s. To the same end, the
article 'On the socio-cultural perspective and peasant culture', written
by Qin Hui, a 36 year-old assistant professor of history at Shaanxi
Normal University, is also an attempt to make explicit the implicit
assumptions behind peasant consciousness, and is also indicative of
the move away from blaming culture and toward blaming the peasant.
On the surface, Qin's approach seems to go against the trend of
abstraction, refuting those who assert fundamental differences of
'human nature', and arguing instead that cultural differences between
China and the west are due to 'the difference between the peasant
community under the natural economy and the independent individu-
ality (duligexing) under the commodity economy', (1989: 155). Qin uses
historical examples comparing east and west to develop his thesis,
countering the most popular arguments revolving around essential dif-
ferences in political cultures, 'modes of thought' (siwei fangshi), cultural
personality, and especially discussions of 'the differences between Chi-
nese and western cultures in terms of the relationship between the
individual and the whole [of society]' (1989: 155), in favour of a univer-
sal model of human development.
Qin's analysis is squarely Marxist, yet he goes beyond the standard
critiques of the small producer economy and the dual nature theory.
Gone are the positive attributes of the peasantry's dual nature, the 'good
peasant/bad peasant' dichotomy commonly voiced by intellectuals (for
example peasants are honest/naive; frugal/stingy, etc.). In its place Qin
presents a different, starker duality, that of a negative peasant culture
against which a positive 'modern culture' is defined. The terms of Qin's
analysis form a symmetrical schema of opposing value systems: the
peasant lives in a 'patriarchal community' (zongfa gongtongti) 'bound'
(shufu) by ties of social dependency, as a 'man of nature' (ziran ren);
while the 'modern' man (read intellectual) lives in a context of 'free
individuality' (ziyou gexing) as an 'independent subject' (duli zhuti).
The argument is nominally one of economic determinism - the nat-
ural economy yields material isolation and social dependency, while the
commodity economy produces material inter-dependence and social
independence - but the terms used are redolent of 'culturology', with
the same goal of creating identities. Zongfa means patriarchal in the
John Flower 61
sense of recalling all the rites and duties of the Confucian familial order,
and is here opposed to ziyou - freedom; literally, 'self-possession' - the
yearning for expressing individuality at the heart of both intellectuals'
quest of self-discovery, and the demands of the protesters of 1989 for
'freedom and democracy'. In the same way, shufu (bonds, fetters) in-
vokes the 'four bonds and five relationships' of the traditional Confu-
cian social order - and loyalty to the state - in opposition to duli gexing,
the goal of independent individuality sought by intellectuals after their
experience of repression and subservience in the Maoist era. Ziran ren,
the 'man of nature' is clearly the backward peasant, just as zhuti refers to
the post-Mao intellectual's exploration of 'subjectivity'.
Qin thus opposes the abstraction of cultural iconoclasm, since it puts
traditional culture as a determining cause rather than a reflection of
'social relations', but he is recasting the discussion of culture around the
abstraction of peasant culture. In fact, Qin's position essentially validates
the cosmopolitan aspects of the Chinese cultural tradition by isolating
the universal problem of peasant culture:
The cultural predicament that we face, our dependent personality,

our irrational collective unconscious, our deficit of 'human nature'
(renxing) and surfeit of 'human sentiment' (renqing)... exist not be-
cause we are Chinese, nor because one billion people all 'live and
breath' the teachings of Confucius, but because we are in the situ-
ation of living in the midst of a patriarchal community. This com-
munity is not mysterious; it can be rationally explained. It was once
produced by logic, and can in the future be eliminated by logic.
(1989: 156-7)
Qin goes on to explain that the scope of the patriarchal community of

peasant culture is not limited to the agricultural sector, nor necessarily
associated with it; rather, it is a kind of behaviour or mindset historically
rooted in, but not exclusive to, the natural economy of rural commu-
nities. Thus the real threat of peasant consciousness is that it has 'seeped
into' the intellectual identity, and now needs to be 'rationally' ab-
stracted and purged:
in the atmosphere of the natural economy, the patriarchal commu-

nity is like a 'light illuminating all things', reproducing the social
relations of the village in cities and non-agricultural areas, making
the cities, in terms of culture, 'villages within cities', their residents
become 'urban peasants', and intellectuals become 'educated
peasants'. In this situation, non-agricultural residents also have a

peasant personality and are controlled by peasant culture, to the
point where they can rely on their position as urban disseminators
of education to distil peasant culture into the 'culture of luminaries'
\jingying wenhua, a play on intellectuals' self-identity as 'cultural lu-
minaries'], and then feedback into the countryside by undertaking
the responsibility of 'educating' the peasants to suppress the sprouts
of free individualism, and using peasant culture and the spirit of the
patriarchal community to 'reform' the peasants.
(1989: 157)
Qin presents the content of this insidious peasant culture in terms of an

archetypal duality, that of the selfish 'concrete peasant' and the moral
economy of the 'abstract peasant', both of which reflect value systems at
odds with modern rationality and progress. Here the extent to which his
views go beyond the standard dual nature theory becomes clear: there is
no 'good side' to peasant culture.
The political implications of his views also become explicit: the Party's
elevation of peasants' status and repression of intellectuals is wrong. Qin
critiques both the received conception of peasants presented by 'capit-
alist dialecticians', who mistake peasant selfishness (the concrete peas-
ant) for evidence of the eternal validity of private ownership in human
nature, and the counter-argument raised by socialist theoreticians, that
'turns Marxism into a theory of "original goodness", looks at primitive
man as a paragon of selfless morality, and sees communism as a gentle-
man's kingdom where "everyone recites Lei Feng" [chairman Mao's
good warrior].' 'In fact' Qin argues, 'narrow short- sighted peasant self-
ishness is precisely the product of the natural economy and patriarchal
community, due to the isolated, relationally impoverished, socially im-
mature, instinctive "animal individualism" of the "man of nature"'
(1989: 158). If the value system of the concrete peasant is extreme
utilitarianism - whatever brings immediate personal profit is 'the
good' - that of the abstract peasant is extreme anti-utilitarianism,
where 'maintaining an ethical equilibrium is much more important
than personal profit'.
Qin concludes that peasant culture is antithetical to both capitalist
and socialist democratic development, going so far in his critique of the
Maoist idealisation of peasant culture as to declare that 'peasant socialism
is itself a kind of feudalism'. Qin sees the 'nobility' of peasant culture as a
lie; the 'ethicism' and 'human sentiment' of peasant consciousness
are just as backward and anti-rational as its selfishness and narrow-
John Flower 63
mindedness. Having completed the construction of a negative 'other' in

peasant culture, Qin ends by contrasting it with the positive values of
the intellectual identity:
the utilitarian values of the 'concrete peasant' obstruct the love of

wisdom and search for truth at the heart of the spirit of rational
understanding - the growth of the scientific spirit - while the anti-
utilitarian values of the 'abstract' peasant make science even more a
handmaiden to ethics. Because of this, the value system of peasant
culture is incompatible with modern culture's 'Mr. Science'.
(1989: 158)
The reference to 'Mr. Science' - a slogan of the student protesters in

1919 - invokes the May Fourth legacy of the intellectual identity, the
spirit of science, rationality, and modernity. It also indicates just how
deeply many Chinese intellectuals identify with cosmopolitan values,
and how desperately they want to escape from the provincial 'bonds' of
their own Chineseness. By bringing the conflict of values between peas-
ants and intellectuals so vividly to the surface, Qin Hui's article redirects
the force of cultural iconoclasm away from tradition and toward the
peasant.
Qin and Feng point the way out of China's modern cultural predica-
ment: blaming the pathology of traditional culture on peasant con-
sciousness made it possible to save the healthy part of that tradition;
isolating the pathogen held out hope of a cure for the soul-sick patient.
Qin and Feng also agree that the healthy portion of the cultural trad-
ition to be saved is that which corresponds to rationality, as embodied in
the May Fourth ideal of science and democracy, and that rationality can
prevail only when peasant consciousness has been eradicated 'under the
progressive guidance' of intellectuals.
Although each starts from a different vantage point - Feng's historical,
Qin's 'socio-cultural' - both aim to qualify the generalisations in the
discourse of peasant consciousness. The irony is that neither Qin nor
Feng escape the essentialism they purport to attack; they both posit
peasant consciousness as an abstraction, Feng in his typology of 'peas-
ant-isms', Qin in his analysis of the 'man of nature' in the 'patriarchal
community'. Neither address historical research supporting the view
that even in late imperial times the Chinese peasant was not isolated
in a state of primitive subsistence agriculture, but actively engaged in a
highly commercialised market economy.15 This oversight, calling into
question the very axiom from which their definitions of peasant
consciousness proceed, is perhaps not attributable to ignorance so much

as to the compelling need for an answer to the question of China's
backwardness, the need to define the intellectual identity in negative
reference to peasant consciousness.
Conclusion
Here we should acknowledge the significant parallels between the con-

structions that define 'peasant consciousness' in Chinese discourse of
the 1980s, and earlier western social science concepts concerning the
peasantry. For example, the idea that peasant society is doomed to
eternal return and unable to cultivate real change has parallels in the
western literature on peasant rebellion (for example Chesneaux 1973:
173); the notion that peasants are characterised by irrational modes of
thought different from scientific reasoning has also been considered in
western debates on rationality (Horton and Finnegan 1973; Wilson
1970). The idea that peasant egalitarianism is vestigial, a holdover
from a previous historical period counterproductive in the current con-
text of modernisation was also put forward by western social theorists
(for example Foster 1965), and the 'abstract' and 'concrete' peasants
described by Qin Hui seem to correspond to the 'moral economy'
(Scott: 1976) and 'rational peasant' (Popkin: 1979) debate in peasant
studies.
Placed in a wider focus, these parallels suggest the historical role
western social science has played in Chinese intellectuals' representa-
tions of peasant consciousness. In the pre-revolutionary social science of
the 1920s through the 1940s, all the different ideological answers intel-
lectuals formulated to the peasant question fundamentally shared a
conceptual alienation from the peasant - redefined as a reified cultural
category - an alienation that mirrored the widening rural-urban gap.
Whether the ultimate aim was rural construction, observation and data
gathering, rural revolution, or the revival of traditional rural social
structures, the intellectuals involved were all returning to the country-
side as outsiders (Douw 1991).
Fei Xiaotong, the well-known, western-trained anthropologist, articu-
lated the theoretical foundation of a peasant consciousness model in his
1947 book Xiangtu Zhongguo (From the Soil (1992)). Fei, like Feng Chon-
gyi, expresses sympathy for the peasantry but ultimately sees their
sedentary agricultural mode of production as determining a worldview
(1992: 41-3 and passim) and a type of morality (1992: 71) which he
judges to be inadequate for coping with changing modern conditions
John Flower 65
(1992: 38). Fei believed that China needed to move from being a society
based on human sentiment, to one where decisions relied instead on
rationality (127).16 His ultimate hope was that Chinese intellectuals
would return to their native places to help lead a transition from this
'earthbound' consciousness to a rational democracy (1992: 145-6).
As an influential apostle of western social science theory in China, Fei
Xiaotong in many ways exhibits the 'self-colonising' tendency historic-
ally present among China's modern educated elite. Interactions with the
peasant 'other' were invariably undertaken from the conviction of the
intellectuals' superiority, since social science by its very foreignness 'was
privileged over native categories' (Barlow 1990). It is ironic that, in the
hands of Chinese intellectuals, western social science became the criter-
ion for asserting their own modern, rational, progressive elite status and
for fixing a feudal, superstitious and backward identity on to the peas-
ants. Thus social science research and activism in the countryside all
proceeded a priori from fundamental assumptions of an all-encompass-
ing, 'totalising' abstraction.
The implications of this social science legacy were not simply aca-
demic. As intellectuals in the late 1980s asserted their identity against
peasant consciousness, they ran headlong into the Party, the very real
manifestation of the power of peasant consciousness to dominate their
lives. Still, intellectual critics of the Party shared with Party reformers a
common cause of modernisation. Thus, both Feng and Qin spoke the
same language as Party reformers, criticising the Chinese attitudes of
'dependency' and 'isolation' obstructing modernisation, promoting the
commodity economy, and basing their analyses on Marxist theory. In
the same way, the pragmatist mainstream within the Party justified
market reforms in terms of Marxist theory by locating China in the
gradualist 'first stage of socialist development' - an explicit rejection of
the Utopian voluntarism of Maoist economics, which sought an epipha-
nal 'great leap forward' into communism through 'putting politics in
command' of production. Party reformers spoke of 'smashing the iron
rice bowl' of dependency on the work unit, of breaking China's isolation
by not only 'opening up' to the west but also opening up an entrepre-
neurial attitude in people's minds to spur the commodity economy.
Even on the issue of political reform - the 'fifth modernisation' of
democracy - intellectuals and Party reformers shared some common
ground: neither group supported universal suffrage that would give
peasants the vote, and both were in favour of giving intellectuals more
influence in policy decisions. The point is that when intellectuals criti-
cised the Party, they were attacking the elements of peasant consciousness
within the Party; when they opposed socialism, they opposed peasant
socialism. Critiques of peasant consciousness were not simply allegor-
ical attacks on the Party, rather intellectuals' criticism of the Party
reflected the degree to which the Party was identified with peasant
consciousness.
Put in this context, the idea of peasant consciousness developed by
intellectuals in the 1980s had more than theoretical significance; it
served to legitimate the rural-urban split that continued to grow
throughout the 1990s. Stagnating incomes in the countryside fuelled
massive migration of rural labour to the cities and coastal areas, yet
policy-makers kept in place the restrictive household registration
system, and carried out campaigns to clear cities of the destabilising
'floating population' of migrant workers.17 Even as urban labour outlets
were being closed to rural people, local state agents began to give out
IOUs for farmers' crops, and to levy ad hoc fees and taxes to fund
business ventures of little benefit to villagers.
Rural Chinese reacted to these developments with widespread protests
in 1992-3 (just as Deng Xiaoping and Party pragmatists signalled their
commitment to even deeper market reforms), and the central govern-
ment responded with assurances that they would 'lighten the peasants'
burden' (jianqing nongmin de fudan). But in the new market-oriented
development scheme, the central government had difficulty making
good on its promise: the success story of rural development through
'TVEs' (township-village enterprises) remained largely confined to ad-
vantaged coastal and 'exurb' areas, and the highly touted village elec-
tions initiative advocated by the Centre had only limited impact, and in
some cases even met resistance from local authorities.
In this new climate of shifting power relations, 'peasant conscious-
ness' served as a conceptual lynchpin of the shared modernisation
discourse among intellectuals, policy-makers, and state agents - a con-
sensus that in many ways filled the vacuum of receding state power and
delegitmated ideology in the post-socialist context. Even as the central
state's influence waned with the rise of the 'socialist market economy',
local state agents (especially at the county and township level) grew in
power, and could justify their continued authority over local affairs
through the concept of peasant consciousness.
Constructing identities was all about the scramble for power and
position, in other words, and each construction provided different
answers to the question, 'who will be the decision makers in the post-
socialist constellation?' Would it be intellectuals reclaiming their pater-
nalistic role of enlightened, concerned conscience of society? Would
John Flower 67
state agents at the provincial, county, and township level continue to

control resources and make planning decisions (including taxes and
fees) based on their 'knowing best' local conditions? Would control be
exercised by the central government's coalition with think tanks, insti-
tutes, academies, and international development agencies? Or, would
rural people themselves have a voice in the running of their own affairs?
The last possibility seems unlikely, precluded by the assumption of
peasant consciousness. After all, the infantilised peasant of the peasant
consciousness abstraction is seen by the state-intellectual elite as patho-
genic to post-socialist, commodity-driven growth, just as it was per-
ceived as pathogenic to the development of socialism.
Beneath questions of power and policy, theoretical observations on
peasant consciousness can obscure the whole emotional level on which
the concept is not only believed, but resented - even feared. Overbur-
dened state agents frequently express frustration at local resistance to
their modernising agendas, and see the peasant as a fundamental 'prob-
lem'. The alienation many intellectuals feel toward peasants is some-
times expressed indirectly, in disparaging remarks about the peasants
clogging the streets in search of work, resentment of nouveau riche
peasant entrepreneurs and complaints of their own declining status, or
more directly, as in the outraged reactions to newspaper reports that rich
peasants were 'buying' university graduates for brides - the very idea
that an intellectual would marry a peasant being a category mistake, a
sign of the chaotic times.
These reactions on an emotional level suggest that a very real reper-
cussion of the 'peasant consciousness' discourse is the perpetuation of
harmful, divisive stereotypes, no matter how cloaked in the distant
language of theory. If sanguine predictions about rural development
through 'township-village enterprises', and about democracy in the
countryside fostered through village-level elections are to be realised,
both intellectuals and state agents will have to move beyond framing
the 'peasant question' in terms of abstraction, and begin to confront
specific problems and particular people.
Notes
1. Examples of works by western scholars sympathetic to Chinese peasants in
their analyses of systematic underclass include Cohen (1993) and Potter and
Potter (1990). For a Chinese view of the household registration system's
discrimination against peasants, see Dutton (1998).
2. On intellectuals' framing of the peasant question in the 1920s and 1930s, see
Luo (1989: 22-8). The conceptualisation of rural backwardness in the same
period is explored by Douw (1991). Modernisation campaigns Duara (1988a).
3. Douw (1991) attributes this phenomenon to the historical pressures of polit-
ics during the republican period (as do Li Zehou (1986) and Vera Schwarcz
(1986)), but other critics (Cohen (1991; 1993) and Metzger (1990: 270-1))
point to persistent strains of elitism in the thinking of Chinese intellectuals.
4. For a discussion of state-peasant relations during the Great Leap Forward, see
Leonard, Ch. 3 this volume.
5. Chinese intellectuals' self-perception as victims can be seen beginning with
the outpouring of 'scar literature' (shanghen wenxue) in the immediate after-
math of the Cultural Revolution (Link 1983a, 1983b; Barme and Lee 1979),
and the genre of intellectuals as victims is well represented in western litera-
ture on modern China (e.g. Thurston 1987). Western sinologists are generally
sympathetic to this view (see especially Link 1992), but Barlow (1991: 226)
notes the phenomenon more critically.
6. The ideas of cultural 'sedimentation' and exploration of the 'subjective' Lin
derives from Li Zehou's introspective archaeology of the Chinese national
character. Li's historical project aimed to not only to reclaim an objective
account of the development of Chinese thought, but also to achieve self-
understanding through uncovering elements of the cultural past still living
in the modern Chinese personality.
7. The idea of 'deep structure' was introduced in 1983 by Sun Longji (Lung-kee
Sun) in a book that was tremendously popular among Chinese intellectuals.
See Sun (1988) and his article (1991). Barlow (1991: 225) also notes Sun's
popularity.
8. In terms of their approaches to the study of Chinese culture, scholars such as
Li Zehou, Pang Pu, and the philosopher and intellectual historian Tang Yijie
adopted a humanist, historical perspective in their interpretations of trad-
itional thought and culture, while Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng developed
an abstract, scientistic philosophy based on 'systems theory' to explain the
'superstable system' of China's feudal society. As much as they differed in
style and content, both the historical and 'natural science' methodologies
shared a commitment to 'humanism' and 'rationality' (Lin 1995: 738).
9. Heshang not only popularised culture fever after it had reached a crescendo of
momentum in academic circles, it also brought this 'reflection' to a critical
mass by upping the political stakes: after Heshang the politics of culture broke
out into overt antagonism between iconoclast intellectuals and conservative
elements of the Party leadership who objected to its 'ethnic nihilism' (Bod-
man 1991: 22). By 1989, Heshang had become associated with pro-reform
thinking and embroiled in factional struggle. As the standard-bearer of 'cul-
ture fever' and an emblem of dissident thinking in general, Heshang became a
primary target of official renunciation after the suppression of the protest
movement of 1989, and intellectuals involved in the project either fled the
country or were imprisoned.
10. The quotation is from Su and Luxiang (1991: 168-9), with the alteration of
suzhi translated as 'quality' instead of the term 'makeup' used by Bodman. In
a note Bodman explains: 'The term suzhi is here translated as "makeup"
instead of "character" or "nature". It really means something more like
John Flower 69
"quality", with especial reference to moral and educational standards. Unlike

"character" or "nature," suzhi can be raised or lowered.' 'Makeup', however,
does not carry the pejorative connotation of suzhi when used in a negative
context. There is an almost eugenic sense with which the term is used in
Heshang's social scientistic argument; for example, the passage cited above
continues: 'the decline in the quality (suzhi) of the general population is
caused precisely by the rapid increases in its numbers'.
11. A good historical discussion of this anti-peasant theme can be found in
Cohen (1993: 151-70).
12. For discussions of peasant consciousness and peasant feudalism by iconoclast
intellectuals involved in the 'democracy movement', see Chi Lai (1991), Yan
Zhen (1990), Kelliher (1993). Dai Qing (1986) interviews the 'culture fever'
scholar Li Peng on Feudalism. Wang and Bai (1986) is a seminal work that
sees peasant consciousness as an obstacle to economic reform.
13. Peasant Consciousness and China appeared in the series 'Collected Reflections
from the Repository of One Hundred Scholars' (baijia wenku, fansi ji) pub-
lished in Hong Kong, a series which also included works by Liang Shuming
(An Outline of Eastern Academic Research), Liu Zehua (Autocratic Power and
Chinese Society: Collected Reflections) and Lin Qiyan (Chinese Intellectuals and
Modern Democratic Thought), among others.
14. For a case study of the conflict between contemporary Chinese local popular
religion and modernisers' campaigns against 'feudal superstition', see Flower
and Leonard (1997); Feuchtwang and Wang (1991) cover the topic as re-
flected in Chinese media; Duara (1988b) treats the theme historically.
15. The logic of abstraction in Qin and Feng's metahistorical accounts of peasant
consciousness sidesteps the issue of peasant production, past or present,
contributing to what Cohen (1993: 154) describes as the process of 'turning
farmers into peasants'. For accounts of the controversy surrounding histor-
ical interpretations of the rural economy in late imperial and republican
China, see Feuerwerker (1990); Myers (1991) and Huang (1991). More
extended works include Huang (1985, 1990) and Rawski (1989).
16. Mayfair Yang (1994) in many ways inverts Fei's argument, while still working
within the same conceptual framework, by casting 'human sentiment'
(renqing) as a useful 'horizontal' subversion of the bureaucratic mentality's
'vertical' loyalty.
17. Abrami (Ch. 4, this volume) makes a similar observation about state attitudes
toward 'uncivilised' rural migrants in contemporary Vietnam.
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Sun Longji (Lung-kee), (1988), The 'Deep Structure' of Chinese Culture (Huayue
wenyi chubanshe).
(1991), 'Contemporary Chinese culture: structure and emotionality', The

Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 26 (July) 1-41.
Thurston, Anne F. (1987), Enemies of the People (New York: Knopf).
Wan, Pin P. (1991), 'A second wave of enlightment? Or an illusory nirvana?
Heshang and the intellectual movements of the 1980s', Deathsong of the River:
A Reader's Guide to the Chinese TV Series Heshang, film script by Su Xiaokang and
Wang Luxiang (eds), introduced, translated and annotated by Richard W. Bod-
man and Pin P. Wan. (Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University).
Wang Xiaoqiong and Bai Nanfeng (1986), Funao de pinkun: Zhongguo luohou diqu
de jingji kaocha [The Poverty of Wealth: An Economic Investigation of China's
Backward Areas] (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe).
Wilson, Bryan R. (1970), (ed.), Rationality (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Yan, Zhen (1990), 'Di san tiao lu: Zhonghua mizu de lixing xuanze [The third
way: the rational choice for the Chinese people]', Zheng ming, 158, 50-2.
Yang, Mayfair (1994), Gifts, Favors and Banquets (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
3
Old Corn: New Corn
Pamela Leonard
Introduction
In China, the post-socialist context has been characterised by a
deepening of market reforms along the lines of what is termed a 'social-
ist market economy'. While the new opportunities that come from the
market have undermined old definitions and boundaries that formally
defined the Chinese peasantry (the system of household registration,
the primacy of agricultural production), the rural-urban split in this
particularly Chinese form of market economy is even more stark than
in the past. The term peasant (nongmin) far from becoming extinct is
finding new life in the reformed economy (see also Chapter 2, by John
Flower). This chapter looks at evidence of a new politics of identity
emergent in China's socialist market economy.
To understand the complex issues that attend modernisation in
China, and rural dwellers' place in that process, the notion that we
analyse peasant motivation as reducible to a rational or moral calculus
is impoverishing. Such analyses tend to homogenise farmers perspec-
tives along the lines of an economistic model, 1 whereas a close look at
the ethnography demonstrates that rural peoples' decision making
shows economic considerations intertwined with value judgements
and alternative social visions. The concept of 'identity' has been a useful
innovation in the anthropologist's toolkit; it encourages a more inclu-
sive analysis that can put economic life into a broader frame and in
terms closer to the subject's own categories. Most importantly, it creates
a space for the inclusion of people's conscious reflections on their life
situation. This paper suggests that one useful way to analyse rural view-
points is to look at how farmers express themselves through their inter-
actions with the landscape. It asserts that rural people express their own
73

sense of identity in the very concrete and particular choices and attitudes
related to agricultural production. Such a portrait of rural people's inter-
ests and identities focuses on issues that are important to the villagers
themselves and is expressed in terms which parallel their own.
In a mountainous region of Sichuan province, China, each spring the
farmers of Xiakou village decide how much of their land they will plant
in 'old corn' (lao pinzhong) and how much in 'new corn' (xin pinzhong).
Old corn signifies varieties of corn which have been passed down among
the generations of farmers who have lived on these steep slopes. New
corn is purchased from the state, and is comprised of hybrid varieties
capable of higher production. Old and new corn operate like metaphors
for old and new social values, but being more than a metaphor, the
choice of corn embodies the complex and even contradictory realities of
lived experience.
In the course of fieldwork (1991-93) I became fascinated by the many
factors farmers considered when deciding whether to plant old variety or
new variety corn. While an understanding of these issues yielded respect
for the farmers' ability to make rational economic choices, as well as
validation of the hypothesis that security can be more important than
pure profit, it also revealed that the choice has a significance that goes
beyond its immediate economic rationale. The symbolic significances
which inhere in the choice of old or new corn entail value judgements
on the nature of farmers' relationship to the land, to each other, and to
the state. Old and new corn are each emblematic of different social values
which are unequally appraised by farmers and officials or even different
farmers. Embedded in the differing assessments of farmers and bureau-
crats are different ideas of what it means to be modern, and separate
identity constructs which, in turn, are the result of differing historical
experiences. Looking at farmers' own interpretation of their past experi-
ences suggests that rather than being resistant to change, farmers seek
change on their own terms, based on their own set of interests and often
at odds with the interests of urban-based state agents. A look at the
farmers' mode of interpreting the landscape demonstrates the import-
ance of 'public morality', and the focus on farmers' historical conscious-
ness brings out the ambiguity, competing interests, and contested group
identities at the heart of modernisation discourse in China today.
A history of recent agricultural change in Xiakou
Every family in Xiakou has access to arable land which they farm
themselves by hand. Some families in Xiakou plant exclusively old
Pamela Leonard 75
corn while others plant exclusively the new corn, but most families mix
the two with about 60 or 70 per cent of the land planted going to the
new variety. There is a township regulation, often flaunted, that farmers
should plant 80 per cent new corn. New corn, also referred to as hybrid
corn (zajiao yumi), produces significantly more kernels per mu planted. 2
Old corn, also called 'native corn' (bendi yumi), propagates from seed
harvested the year before. Old corn is less demanding of labour and cash
for its cultivation. Before liberation in 1949, farmers in this village relied
almost exclusively on the cultivation of old corn for their food grain;
rice was considered a luxury and hybrids had not yet been introduced.
According to their own accounts, before Liberation, each family
achieved total corn harvests comparable to those of today, but with
more land and labour invested in its cultivation. Hybrid corn was intro-
duced during collective times but only became widespread after the
market reforms of the 1980s.
Villagers say that with reform of the production system in 19823 came
the widespread adoption of new variety corn, significantly greater use of
chemical fertiliser, and a doubling of crop yields over the preceding
period. The connections among a range of innovations that came at
that time are subtle. The reform increased farmers' willingness to work
by rewarding those who worked harder. An efficient labour force made
viable the use of improved hybrid varieties of grain. People also empha-
sise that native corn has a better taste and before reform, corn was the
staple food. After reform, people consumed more rice, and because rice
replaced corn as the staple, they were more willing to grow the relatively
tasteless hybrid corn. At the same time, the advent of improved varieties
of grain, along with expanding opportunities for off-farm income in-
creased reliance on chemical fertiliser. Increased use of chemical fertil-
iser and hybrid corn, in turn, generated its own cycle of increasing
dependence on the cash economy, because increasing amounts of pur-
chased chemical fertiliser were needed to sustain yields and this cash
came from off-farm wage labour. To understand these connections and
how they have changed farmers' lives, it is necessary to look more
closely at what farmers say about the differences between old and new
corn, and about the nature of chemical versus organic fertiliser.
Native corn can be propagated from the seed of last year's harvest,
while hybrid seed must be purchased each year from the state as the
kernels it produces are sterile. The price of hybrid seed is significant
enough to deter some farmers. In 1992, the year of my initial fieldwork,
Wu Wenxue planted all native corn. Other families planted more native
corn that year because they said they did not have the money to buy
hybrid corn seed. Since his is one of the poorer families, I suspected Wu
Wenxue did not have money for the seed. But this is not the answer he
gave, and his answer threw additional light on properties of the two
corns. First he said that the new variety corn requires strict and prompt
management. If the leaves go a little brown indicating it needs fertiliser,
it needs it immediately, and if it does not get chemical fertiliser at that
moment, the yield will be next to nothing. The same principle applies to
weeding. Native corn has several weeks leeway in which one can weed,
whereas for hybrid corn there are only several days. Furthermore, with
native corn one can wait until it is fully ripe to harvest, while hybrid
corn must be harvested when it is only 80 per cent ripe. If one is not
prompt with the new variety corn, worms come and the cobs fall down
and the farmer gets nothing. Therefore, he says, many people call native
corn a 'lazy' crop.
Since during the collective period, no one went off-farm to labour,
and there were no days off, more time was spent at agricultural labour in
the village. Nevertheless, because people wasted a lot of time, they could
not manage the extra work required for hybrid varieties. 'People took a
lot of rest breaks and did not work hard. At that time, if one person
worked hard, the person next to him might be half as fast, and so they
would see there was no advantage to their speed and they, too, would
begin to slow down.' If these conditions were bad for the old native
corn, they were impossible for the more unforgiving hybrid corn. But
the story does not end there.
The common perception is that the old corn is better tasting and more
nutritious than new corn. It is said to be drier and stickier and sweeter.
Old corn also has a more porous texture, while new corn becomes too
fine when it is milled. Poorer households eat more corn, since rice is
mostly purchased, so they are likely to prefer old variety corn. Wu
Wenxue planted old variety corn because he felt he was unprepared to
meet the labour requirements of new variety corn, and because he said
he liked the flavour of the old corn. Before decollectivisation eating corn
cakes was standard. As incomes expanded in the wake of reform, as a
result of the introduction of dairy goat farming and increased income
from wage labour, people were increasingly able to buy rice, the pre-
ferred grain and an important local symbol of affluence. Some people
would quip that they were 'eating milk' when they ate rice because it
was often the milk money that was used to buy it. People now eat more
rice because they can afford it, but they also eat less corn cake because
the old stone mills are no longer in service and people do not like the
texture of corn milled in the new electric mills. Now corn is rarely
Pamela Leonard 77
consumed by humans, but rather it is fed to dairy goats and pigs. People
use the cash from the dairy goats and wage labour to buy rice, and at the
same time have more pork to eat than before. Some of the poorer
families, however, continue to eat corn cakes.
Not only did the advent of new variety corn depend on a motivated
and timely labour force, and less human consumption of corn cakes, it
was also favoured by increased availability of chemical over organic
fertiliser, or in other words, a greater availability of disposable income.
It is not that hybrid corn cannot be grown with only organic fertilizer; it
can and is in the vegetable gardens. This requires much more labour
invested in carrying buckets of manure, however, and farmers are un-
likely to be willing to do this for the more distant and extensive
cornfields. Since chemical fertiliser is not used in their vegetable gardens
(see discussion below), they have grown different crops of corn next
to each other - one crop using only organic and one crop using
chemical fertiliser. Thus they are clear about the differences between
chemical and organic fertiliser as they relate to the cultivation of corn.
Chemical fertiliser has a quick result, while household fertiliser, they
say, is more slow acting. New variety corn has more rigorous cultivation
requirements so favours using fertilizer with a fast effect. Farmers
frequently point out that where the soil is poor, old variety corn will
produce better results than new corn. New corn is rigorous in its require-
ments because it is short and fast developing. The old variety is more
forgiving in poorer soil and copes better with the slower effect of house-
hold fertiliser because it grows taller and more slowly, taking an add-
itional month to reach maturity.4 Thus as land becomes poorer, one can
expect more and more old variety corn to be grown.
The choice of old or new corn is thus based on a complex set of
considerations, with the general effect that a more wealthy household
is more likely to plant more new corn, while a household with less cash
and/or less labour will favour old corn. The general trend since decol-
lectivisation has favoured new variety corn. The increased cultivation of
new variety corn fits with the increasing off-farm demands on young
men's labour. These demands, along with rising expectations of a life
more free from drudgery, have meant that there is now a greater reliance
on chemical fertiliser over household manure. Reliance on chemical
fertiliser, in turn, has further consolidated farmers' reliance on having
an available supply of cash in order to buy seeds and fertiliser.
To fully understand the dynamic of this cycle of increasing depend-
ence on the cash economy, it is necessary to take a closer look at what
farmers say about the nature of chemical fertiliser. Today farmers view
chemical fertiliser paradoxically as both indispensable to their well-

being and as an insidious development the full implications of which
they have only slowly became aware. While enthusiastic about the
greater yields that are now possible with less effort, people are wary of
the rising costs of chemical fertiliser that make earning a living from
agriculture nearly impossible. Fertiliser is a major item in the budgets of
local households, and people say that each year they must use more to
achieve the same results. In addition, the price has risen significantly
due to the withdrawal of government subsidies, and in the early 1990s
there were frequent interruptions in the supply, and many people sus-
pected the quality of fertiliser also declined.
While farmers believe the decline in the quality of fertiliser has been
part of the problem, they also say that, as time passes, more chemical
fertiliser is required for the same effect in the same way more of an
addictive drug is needed. Worse still, chemical fertiliser makes the soil
'tighter' (jin di) leading to its exhaustion. Nevertheless, leaving off
chemical fertiliser is not considered a reasonable option given the time
it would take for the land to begin producing adequately with organic
fertiliser and because it would require more labour dedicated to carrying
manure. The greater labour that would be required is not possible when
young men are off earning the wages on which the families have come
to rely. Even when they are home, as has happened during economic
downturns, the young people have no desire to return to the drudgery of
agricultural labour. Thus while doing without chemical fertiliser would
rarely be considered a realistic option, particularly older villagers ex-
pressed resentment of the double bind chemical fertiliser has put them
in. I frequently heard farmers draw an analogy between using chemical
fertiliser and being addicted to opium. They cannot not use it.
This story of agricultural change is distilled from information gleaned
from many long and detailed discussions with farmers about their agri-
cultural practices past and present. While officials are very active in
promoting the use of fertiliser and hybrids, I never heard officials discuss
the problematic aspects of the new methods. In fact, when it came to
assessing new and old corn, officials and farmers had two very different
approaches to the issue.
The problem of n e w and old corn: two views
Several months after I began village fieldwork, I decided to make an

informal call on the local township leader, an educated man who hailed
from the city some ten kilometres distant and, in fact, commuted to his
Pamela Leonard 79
rural post each day by bicycle. The township head told me that he felt it
was unfortunate that the second team of Xiakou was the village chosen
for our fieldwork, as, in his opinion, they were not a particularly pro-
gressive village. He offered as evidence the fact that they still planted a
fair amount of old variety corn and required continual pressure to get
them to plant the more progressive hybrid varieties. He revealed that, to
his mind, the central dynamic at play in production is the opposition of
superstition (mixin) and science (kexue). He brought up as an example of
superstition the idea of fengshui, a traditional mode of interpretation
that focuses on the movement of energy (qi) through the landscape.
Adherents of fengshui seek to understand how the movement of qi is
affected by the shape and placement of mountains, trees, and rivers, as
well as man-made features, through time, since the fengshui of a particu-
lar location is believed to have a strong influence on the fate of those
connected to that place. This was problematic to his mind because:
You can have the same 1 mu piece of land and get different produc-
tion results. One person who is capable can get a lot out of it; another
guy who is lazy and doesn't work hard produces very little. But
instead of blaming himself, he blames the fengshui of the land!
The official's major complaint about peasants and their superstitions

had to do with their resistance to new ideas and new methods - their
conservatism and backwardness. He grew quite agitated and in the space
of three minutes of conversation produced this additional list of invec-
tives against the peasants: stupid, lazy, short-sighted, inbred (lacking
human quality) and disobedient (bu tinghua).
By contrast, a barefoot doctor, who identified himself with the
farmers, had a positive view of old variety corn in Xiakou. For him,
the corn stood in opposition to what he perceived as distressing devel-
opments in the direction of agriculture (and politics) in recent years.
Focusing on increasing corruption and worsening conditions for the
farmers, his analysis incorporated the changes in agriculture as part of
a trend of social decay. On the front porch of a farmer-friend's home he
explained with some agitation:
Now the leadership is talking about 'lightening the burden on the

peasants' - ha! It sounds nice, but it means nothing. How are they
going to lighten the burden? There's no way! The best thing they can
do is get rid of all these worthless cadres... These people call them-
selves the Communist Party, what a joke! What Communist Party is
there today? Peasants always get the worst of it. They have to pay
more and more for fertiliser, and they have to use more and more.
This is a big problem because our earnings stay about the same, but
the price of fertiliser keeps going up. In the Old Society agriculture
was good. We did not grow this soft spongy corn you have now, but
like the white corn you can still find in Xiakou it was tasty and
strong. We used to use household fertiliser (nongjia fei) to fertilise
the rice and it tasted much better and grew well. Today the ammonia
(tang an) actually contains poison - one part in ten thousand. Fertil-
iser is addictive; you have to use more and more. When fertiliser was
first imported from Japan, you only needed a little pinch and waaah,
what results! Big green leaves and good growth. Now you have to use
a big handful to get the same crop to grow. England addicted us to
opium; Japan addicted us to fertiliser!
In these two assessments of the state of agriculture in the village of

Xiakou an opposition is apparent. For the township official, the pres-
ence of the old variety corn is emblematic of rural conservatism and an
inability to embrace rational scientific reasoning that would lead to
economic progress. For the country doctor, old variety corn evokes an
older more independent system of agriculture whose produce was quali-
tatively better, but which has been compromised by the self-serving
policies of government officials. These two viewpoints are representa-
tive of a deep divide in China today between state agents who have
aligned themselves with urban interests and rural masses. These differ-
ences are not just rooted in economic interests, but also in historical
identities and social values.
Neither the official nor the old country doctor stand alone in their
judgements over the state of agriculture in Xiakou, but are each to some
extent representative of intellectuals and bureaucrats on the one hand,
and farmers on the other. Ambivalence about modern agricultural
methods was widespread in the village. The most prosaic example is
the use of two standards for food: grain and vegetables produced for
their own consumption - always using organic fertiliser - and chem-
ically fertilised produce ('tasteless') rendered to the state or sold on the
market. People also remark on the negative impact of chemical fertilisers
and pesticides on other aspects of the local ecology, for example, the
disappearance of frogs and 'paddy eels' from their rice fields and dinner
tables. While the negative impact of chemical fertiliser is an obvious fact
of daily life in the village, its conceptual connection to a sense of social
decay is more subtle, though nearly as prevalent. The old doctor con-
Pamela Leonard 81
nected the use of fertiliser to historical memories of the breakup of the

old order, an order he felt was more just and caring. While his conclu-
sions were harsh, they were not unique. When I asked my host in the
village, Wu Guangxing, about the possibility of returning to traditional
methods of agriculture, including more use of organic fertiliser, he
responded with a quotation from Deng Xiaoping, 'It doesn't matter if
the cat is a black cat or a white cat; if it catches the mouse, it's a good
cat.' He was informing me that as regards government policy today, it
does not matter what the methods are, as long as they raise production
levels, they are correct. Then he added a bitter commentary that 'now it
is not the relations between people that are important, it is money'. The
source of this seemingly non sequitur observation is the seamless asso-
ciation of political policy, relations with the land and moral order.
Planting old variety corn runs counter to the value placed on increasing
production. While he identifies with the aim of increasing production,
he also sees a problem with it - he, like the doctor, connects it to a
changing moral order that values money over human relations. New
methods increase production to the detriment of the land, at the ex-
pense of the farmers, and by undermining the old social fabric that had
been built around agricultural labour.
For farmers, old corn and organic fertiliser or new corn and chemical
fertiliser are each associated with different kinds of economies based on
different value systems. New corn, because it is more productive, is
considered progressive and in this limited frame farmers and officials
mostly agree. Because it is associated with chemical fertiliser, and be-
cause its seeds need to be purchased, it also connotes a greater involve-
ment in the cash economy. Because wage labour in this region is often
obtained at the cost of being away from home, and because wage labour
is easier to obtain for men than for women, and for young men than for
older men, it has created new pressures dividing the family. For older
people who grew up under the old system of agriculture, ability in
growing good crops was a point of pride. Now, with the cost of produc-
tion higher, and more off-farm opportunity available, young people feel
agriculture is not worthwhile (hua bu cuo) and are leaving the villages.
Thus one might observe that crossbred corn has led to a 'crossbred'
domestic economy - one foot in the village and one foot looking for
stable ground in the swirling mass of the national economy. This split
economy has also accentuated generational tensions. The literal mean-
ing of 'native' (bendi) is 'root-place', and so 'native corn' implies a
practice firmly rooted in the local soil using 'family fertiliser' (nongjia
fei) and greater amounts of family labour. Significantly, 1993 was a year
of great inflation and instability in government services. That year

farmers in Xiakou markedly increased their use of both organic fertiliser
and native corn. In what seems to be a related development, they
(especially older villagers) also put significant energies into revitalising
local temples, emphasising their own resources and independence from
the government. Furthermore, in townships across the province there
were a number of revolts against officials by groups of farmers.
Farmers and officials: categories, interests, and identities
An important aim of this paper is to attempt archaeology of the histor-

ical experiences which condition the farmers' and officials' differing
assessments of the process of 'modernisation'. The opposition between
peasants and officials as separate classes with differing interests was
institutionalised in the policies of the collective period.5 While the
post-reform period has made for startling changes in the political and
economic resources of these two groups, it has not resolved the funda-
mental rift. Farmers and officials perceive the issues differently and their
differences have important antecedents in their respective experiences
of the collective period.6
The approach taken by the township official toward modernising
technologies resonated with views expressed by many officials who
deal with agricultural issues, not to mention urban intellectuals of
many different professions. During my fieldwork, a network of bureaus
of animal husbandry hosted me in travels around Sichuan, and I fre-
quently heard the farmers disparaged as 'unscientific' because they
failed to grasp a new technique promoted by the extension agents.
Extensionists who have scientifically tested better methods are fre-
quently frustrated by farmers' recalcitrance in taking them up. While
the difference in opinion has roots in differing economic interest of the
two groups, officials rarely express it as that. Rather, like the official I
quote, they have tended to see the farmers' unwillingness to adopt new
methods as a function of poor education and an essentially backward
nature.
In Xiakou, the opposition between farmer and official is a topic of
conscious reflection with important parallels to the broader rural-urban
divide. The categorical opposition between official and ordinary citizen
was driven home to me during an informal conversation concerning a
contentious political issue in the village. As the conversation wound
down, they turned to me, and asked my opinion. When I gave an
acceptable answer, they followed up by asking, with a laugh, 'whether
Pamela Leonard 83
I was an official or a regular citizen' (literally, 'an officer or a soldier': 'ni

shi dang bing haishi dang guan?'). When I said I was not an official, they
said, 'good, because you know we ordinary citizens dislike officials more
than anything', (women dang bing ren zui bu xi huan dang guan). This
strong antipathy is, I would argue, a significant legacy of past policies
promoting centralisation - policies whose full implications are still
unfolding.
This anecdote not only suggests that the opposition is a significant
one, but also shows that who is counted as an official, and whether or
not they are actually disliked, can be a complicated question. Would the
'wrong' answer have made me more likely to be perceived as an official?
Probably so. I would assert that, for villagers, being an official is more
about exhibiting a constellation of stereotyped ideas—or 'official men-
tality' - rather than being a member of a clearly defined category of
people who work for the government. For example, within the village
there are many individuals who farm just like others in the village, but
who also carry out official responsibilities for the government: a village
head, an accountant, a women's representative, a party chief, a forestry
official, etc. These days villagers consider such positions poorly paid and
undesirable, since they do not carry much power, either. Before decol-
lectivisation, however, they were powerful and desirable positions, and
therefore those people who filled them were more likely to have been
perceived as manifesting an official attitude. Thus, it was once explained
to me that a particular individual was disliked by other villagers because
he had spent too much time working as an official during production
team times, 7 and so was different from others in the village. Other
villagers claimed he was still like an official even though he currently
held no official position.
Officials are different from farmers in that they depend on the state
for their livelihood, but 'official' is not primarily an economic category.
The attribute of defining one's interest with the state, over and above
the interests of the villagers, seems to lie at the heart of this notion of
'official mentality'. Today, practically speaking, this means that an offi-
cial mentality is not likely to be ascribed to anyone below the level of
full-time employee of the township government, since township cadres
are not local people, but are posted from other townships or counties to
administer government policies impartially. Significantly, not all offi-
cials manifest an official mentality. Villagers tend to like and respect
officials who get to know local people, are responsive to their concerns,
and pass judgements fairly - not just to the benefit of their clients and
patrons. The attributes associated with being a moral leader, being
democratic, and 'having culture' are the antithesis of an official mental-

ity.
With the reforms of the 1990s, the state has had to re-evaluate the
'iron-rice bowl' policies that once guaranteed lifetime income and bene-
fits for workers and officials. These days, the money that cadres earn is as
much a function of their entrepreneurial activities as from the direct
support of the state. Rather than making state workers more like farmers
- dependent on their own labour for the money they earn - the changed
policy has actually accentuated the differing social status and interests
of state employees as against farmers. The entrepreneurial activities of
government cadres are sponsored through their privileged access to
credit and other resources that are often seen as coming at the expense
of farmers. Thus funds and even lands which used to belong to 'the
people' become the discretionary investment capital of private collect-
ivities of cadres. Worse still, cadres have increased their wealth through
ad hoc fees and new taxes levied on the rural population. Due to their
past connections to the iron rice bowl, and current privileged access to
the larger profits possible in the new free-wheeling economy, cadres, like
much of the urban population more generally, continue to be perceived
as a separate class from farmers.
It is this sense of being a privileged class that places full-time officials
closer to the urban masses as a category apart for the peasant. For
villagers, being a person from the city means, most significantly, having
a particular kind of livelihood, a secure salary that comes rain or shine,
rather than being from a particular kind of place. In the socialist period,
the majority of urban folk were the direct beneficiaries of the iron rice
bowl policies, and villagers are well aware that they were given second-
ary social status to the urban worker in Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideol-
ogy. They were nong-erge, 'peasant second brother' to the 'elder-brother'
worker. Far from redressing this unequal relationship, the post-socialist
context has made it even more pronounced. The economic boom of the
past decade has visibly improved the urban standard of living, while few
in the village have gotten rich.8
While many rural folk now go to urban centres to work, they remain a
category apart. Their access to work in the cities is limited and usually
exists as part of a pattern of labour where they do hard physical work
under contract for local bosses from the villages, for which they are paid
piecework. They do not, for the most part, make the transformation
they would desire into either salaried positions or less physically inten-
sive work. Indeed, the only group of people villagers see as having a
worse position in society than themselves are those manual labourers in
Pamela Leonard 85
the cities who have neither guaranteed work nor access to land. 9 Villa-
gers, including those who go off to work, are grateful for the personal
freedom (ziyou) they associate with their connection to the land and an
independent means of subsistence. I have known villagers to refuse
contract work on the basis that the poor pay and rough conditions are
not worth their while when they can survive on their own produce.
Whether engaged in contract labour or not, villagers are very aware that
they still exist as part of a category and class of citizen in China labelled
peasant (nongmin).
Because officials are connected to the urban centres both through the
pattern of patronage on which they rely and in the standard of living
they have been able to realise, they persist as a category apart from rural
folk. The appearance of these cadres in the countryside reinforces the
sense of a growing rural-urban split predicated on differing standards of
living and different class interests. While there is, in reality, considerable
variety in the attitudes and actions of individual officials, this chapter
focused on the negative stereotype of the urban-oriented official. Never-
theless, it is important to emphasise that there are many good officials
in China and their dedication is helpful to the farmers and also appreci-
ated by them.
Understanding the official viewpoint

To understand the social and economic interests that are at play in the
township official's stance on old corn, we can begin from the fact that
hybrid corn produces more corn per mu planted than old variety corn. To
an urban resident dependent on surplus production from the farmers, the
question of quantity in production is paramount. In fact, the system of
production from the official perspective, now, just as in the collective
period, is all about meeting and surpassing quotas. Villages are ascribed
quotas for total production by the state and the official's capacity to help
farmers to produce above quota is a basis for promotion within official
ranks. So intense is the value placed on raising production, officials often
paid little attention to differing costs of production. Livestock extension-
ists across Sichuan preferred purebred Holsteins over native crossbreeds,
hybrid pigs over local pigs, and crossbred Holstein-yaks over yellow
cattle-yaks because, in each case, absolute production was higher. At the
same time, the issue of the higher costs of production, which the
favoured breeds required, was barely considered. For farmers on a fixed
budget with limited resources, however, the costs of production are
highly relevant. Even where cadre's adopt an entrepreneurial approach,
because their business interests are focused more often on processing

than producing agricultural products, the costs of production (and repro-
duction) remain on the farmer's shoulder's.
The value placed on higher absolute production is not simply because
officials have access to a more flexible budget (on state farms10) or do
not directly bear the costs of production at all (as employees of the
state), but is also related to an ideological understanding of 'national
construction' (guojia jianshe). In China, the goal of economic develop-
ment has strong nationalistic overtones. Mao's blueprint for China's
development enacted a policy of 'walking on two legs', simultaneously
developing the agricultural and industrial sectors. A related policy,
called 'taking grain as the key link' resulted in a nationwide drive to
expand the area devoted to grain crops, and in Xiakou and nearby
villages farmers can point to unlikely plots where during the collective
period they were made to plant corn, wheat and rice, despite poor soils
and unsuitable conditions. One old woman laughed as she reminisced
that some of this marginal land in her village did not grow enough corn
to 'feed the birds'. The goal of industrialising society as a means to
greater national wealth, as well as a basis for national pride, is a goal
shared by farmers and officials, but with differing historical experiences
and differing stakes in the commitment.
The most extreme example of this vision of national construction put
into practice was the Great Leap Forward, Mao's great experiment, a
massive mobilisation of Chinese society in an unsuccessful effort to
transform it. The aim was to radically increase production, especially
steel production, to establish China as an economically developed
nation virtually overnight. The prioritisation of industrial-oriented de-
velopment, achieved through the consolidation of state power, formed
the vision of the Great Leap Forward. Labour was fully collectivised,
food consumption communalised, and property nationalised in an
effort to industrialise the countryside. Beginning in 1958, massive re-
sources were sacrificed to achieve the overall goal of industrialisation. In
Xiakou, as in many places, farmers were pulled from the fields on the
eve of the grain harvest that year to work in coal mines. When the mines
ran out of food to feed them, they were allowed to return home, but
their work as farmers continued to go badly as they were made to carry
out absurd agricultural practices mandated from Beijing. The highly
centralised command and control system of this period caused a famine
in which an estimated 30 million people died in China.
While farmers and officials both suffered as a result of the famine,
their experiences, nevertheless, were very different. For officials, survival
Pamela Leonard 87
was predicated on representing a politically correct commitment to the

illusion of increasing production. For farmers, survival was predicated
on being disobedient, on 'stealing' food. Nowadays, officials are still
more likely to use the euphemism 'natural disaster' to describe what
happened. Farmers are more likely to tell you it was chaotic and self-
serving policies of officials in the name of increasing production that
caused the catastrophe. Being an official was an effective means to
secure resources to survive the famine; half the farmers in Xiakou died
during the famine.
The era of the Great Leap Forward is often remembered and referred to
by one of its constituent phenomena, the 'bragging wind' (fu kua feng),
that is the tendency for officials to exaggerate production in order to
gain political benefit in a system that worked on fulfilling production
targets. In the end, grain was taken away from villages based on inflated
estimates, and labour was organised into work projects on the basis of
the projected abundance. This exploitation of labour and expropriation
of harvest was enforced by a reign of political terror. As described by one
villager:
During the day you worked for 'production' which was not to feed
yourself. At night you were closed into an empty house. You might
sneak out but you had nothing but your hands. The best you could
do was use your hands to steal. There was no difference between that
life and being in jail; the whole thing was like a prison. The store-
houses had grain, and in the fields there were some vegetables, but
only officials were able to access them. It was very bitter. If you were a
poor peasant you were a little better off. If you were a bad element
[had a bad class background] you had it very hard.
That this villager said the word 'production' (shengchan) meant 'not to
feed yourself demonstrates that a powerful legitimating ideology of
centralisation - that of increasing production - was cast into a cynical
light by this seminal experience. While bureaucrats will still refer to the
famine as a 'natural disaster', or argue over whether it was the result of
excessive rightism or leftism, villagers tend to pin the blame squarely on
excessive powers given over to uncaring officials who themselves had
enough to eat.
The experience of the Great Leap Forward laid bare the sense in which
centralisation under collectivisation was, from an economic standpoint,
antagonistic to the interests of farmers. The impact of Maoist policies on
the rural population stands as one of the great ironies of modern Chinese
history: On the one hand the development of Chinese Communism in

the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s brought with it the rise of 'the peasant' as an
embodiment of class virtue, and subsequent policies gave new powers
and privileges to representatives of the poor and middle peasantry. On
the other hand, bureaucratic centralism that was the hallmark of the new
political system intensified the exploitation of the rural populace for the
benefit of an urban-based plan of political and economic development.
Historians of the period have pointed out that the destruction of the old
rural elites and the bureaucratisation of power in the countryside effect-
ively supplanted alternative impulses toward locally based rural develop-
ment with ones aimed at allowing the central government to take over
rural revenues for the purposes of national development (Douw 1991). As
Pickowitz has written, 'In short, co-operation was not a means of achiev-
ing peasant prosperity; it was viewed by the party as a means of building
state power, financing urban industrialism and subsidising a high stand-
ard of living for the city dwellers' (1994: 138).
Despite the trauma of the Great Leap Forward, farmers still share with
officials hopes that science can bridge the gap between poverty and
plenty. The country doctor who spoke out on behalf of farmers, also
shared with me his views on development and science paradoxically
stating that, 'Mao had the right idea with the Great Leap Forward. We
peasants want to become workers, and using machinery and science to
help us make this transformation is still our ideal.' Farmers, no less than
officials, believe in the promise of science and technology to better the
conditions of their existence. A central symbol of the Great Leap For-
ward was the satellite. Inspired by the successful launch of Sputnik,
slogans from the period, now faded but still visible on village houses,
exhort the people to 'raise production like a satellite'. In its popular
usage, the word 'science' (kexue) is commonly used as a synonym for
'effective' and is used approvingly to mean some technique or device
that possess universal value, not a particular methodology of competing
theories. If the steep and rocky land around Xiakou is not appropriate
for tractor cultivation, farmers see it as symbolic of the hopeless back-
wardness of their poor mountain area, but in no way see it as comprom-
ising the value of the tractor. A kind of essentialist approach or
'scientism', this view of science is problematic in that it discourages
critical assessment of new technologies and works to mask value judge-
ments and other social components implicit in certain technologies.
Furthermore, with science seen as an end in itself, the farmer with his
ancient tools becomes an icon for China's failure to achieve its para-
mount goal of modernisation.
Pamela Leonard 89
In assessing why farmers have been slow to take up scientific methods,

both farmers and officials show a willingness to blame the 'quality of
the peasants' as an item making them unsuitable vessels for techno-
logical methods. Farmers are at once blamed for being backward
and conservative, and they disparage their own lack of education.
There is often a difference in emphasis, however, in how this ideal has
played out among the urban classes as opposed to farmers. Whereas the
country doctor blamed the failure of his nation to develop partly on
insufficient funds for education, he also said it was the result of an
overburdened peasantry and a related tendency toward corruption.
While there are many officials who are sensitive to the over-burdening
of the farmers, they are more likely to see the peasants' failure to
adopt new techniques as a function of an essentially conservative
nature than to a relativistic structure of differing interests, that is, they
blame the problem on a particular 'peasant consciousness' (nongmin
yishi).11
Of course, I bring my own values and assumptions to this narrative.
The tendency toward essentialism in the arguments of Chinese intellec-
tuals is at odds with a western anthropological approach where the idea
of competing individual and group interests, and a relativistic appreci-
ation for alternative wordviews, define much of the discourse. Thus, in
my fieldwork I was inclined to look for compelling social and economic
reasons why farmers might prefer the old corn, while the township
official felt a need to take a firm stand against old corn as a function of
his struggle to make China modern. Many of the farmers' narratives
proceeded from a rich appreciation of the local landscape, a worldview
that appealed to my own environmentalist ethics. While farmers aspire
to have their economy develop, their experiences have taught them that
development schemes frequently alienate them from the local resources
they value, a lesson with which I identify.
Nevertheless, the distinct ways in which I identify with farmers and
officials does not negate the very real gap that exists between the view-
points of these two groups, a kind of conceptual rift which has had
tangible consequences for everyday Chinese life. I have used corn to
highlight the different approaches, based on different historical experi-
ences and values, taken by farmers and state agents. The official's atti-
tude to corn is informed by ideological commitments to production and
science, and by a need to legitimate his/her own place in society. As
Cohen observes, 'the anti-traditional, iconoclastic political culture of
the ruling elite is as naked and direct as an army barracks' (Cohen 1991:
130). It is the official's tendency toward an ideological abstraction
expressing urban interests that makes him unequivocally favour the

flavourless hybrid corn.
In contrast, the farmer supplants the official's abstraction with his
own pragmatic particularism. When the locals say approvingly of native
corn that it 'has flavour', (you weidao) they are making more than a
casual observation about taste, and more than a metaphor about their
way of life. In the village, to say that something 'has flavour' is to
express deep appreciation for its substance, its unique quality. The end
of a particularly good joke is greeted with the chorus, 'now that has
flavour!' The significance of the metaphor is not lost on farmers, but
they also mean more than the metaphor when they reflect on corn
because the meaning is also literal; they are speaking of the very grain
on which their lives depend. Such an approach on the part of the
farmers does not lend itself to any easy abstractions; it contains all the
ambivalence and complexity of lived experience. Old corn has the virtue
of flavour and of independence from an unstable economy, but it also is
a 'lazy crop' associated with poverty. It is through their seamless inter-
action with the landscape that farmers express their particular interests,
their local values, and their unique identity against outside efforts to
dilute and abstract them.
Conclusion
Chinese agriculture in the post-socialist period is at a crossroads and a

new wave of changes is now poised to affect the countryside. Rising
living standards in China are demanding greater productivity from
agriculture at the very moment that environmental and economic
factors are undermining existing forms of agricultural production. In
the mid-1990s, opportunities for wage labour for the young people of
Xiakou village were relatively abundant and the young men and many
of the young women were largely absent from the village. For many of
these young people, agriculture is stigmatised - it represents the inverse
of the wealth, the power of youth, and the technological progress which
are the beacons of the new modern economy with which they identify.
While economic downturns have resulted in a decline of wage oppor-
tunities, these young people have little desire to return to agriculture.
The economic changes brought by reform have forced the reformu-
lation of identities. The 'post-socialist' context in China has been a
process of extending what the Chinese government has termed the
'socialist market economy' which is most fundamentally a process of
privatisation but carried out on a foundation of unequal access to
Pamela Leonard 91
resources. This context is deepening the contradictions between city

and countryside. Officials no longer have the powers of command and
control that once defined their roles as agricultural planners. With an
oversized bureaucracy, loosened controls, and a shrinking common pot,
officials have become resourceful at developing alternative means to
enjoy the new economic freedoms. Often this happens at the expense
of the farmers who have been victim to increasing taxes, speculatory
land appropriations, increasing costs of agricultural production, unreli-
able quality in agricultural inputs, periodic inflation in the cost of basic
commodities which they purchase, recalled credit, low wages, and the
imposition of ad hoc fees. While in some rural areas farmers have
'changed their skins' as opportunities for wage labour expanded, in
the mountainous region where I worked the effects were far from uni-
form. Many young people had done well from the economic boom of
the past half-decade, while the majority of people seemed to have
gained little and it is harder now, than in the past, to be a farmer. In
1993, just as cellular phones, VCRs and imported luxury cars were
appearing in the towns and cities, rural people went on the move in
large numbers looking for new ways to make ends meet. From that time,
'lightening the burden of the peasant' has become an oft-repeated re-
frain of intellectuals concerned over the emerging contradictions be-
tween rural and urban groupings. During this period, these 'two worlds'
of city and countryside have increasingly resulted in open forms of
conflict and discrimination. Compounded by painful historical memor-
ies on both sides, the economic contradictions have been all the more
galling to rural folk.
The issues entailed in the introduction of modernising agricultural
technologies are both emblematic and concrete examples of this fissure.
This is not an abstract conflict of competing identities, but a practical
conflict of interests, where identity is an integral part of what defines
interest. Old corn is better suited to a family with a labour shortage or a
cash shortage, or it can even represent a wilful withdrawal from the
modern cash economy. If some farmers are resistant to the new modes of
production being introduced, this is not because they have a naturally
conservative nature as a result of being tied to the land. Worse than just
being left behind by the new economic developments in China, villa-
gers feel that in the new climate of fast-paced development, urban
people benefit at their expense. 'Production' is an activity and a value
that does not always benefit the farmer.
The process of reformulating identities, turning on historical memory,
has created some important continuities in the new constructions.
Experiences during the Great Leap Forward and the ensuing famine
taught t h e m to reject the centrist myth; they learned that the strong
centralisation of power in the hands of officials was not to their benefit.
The history of the Production Team and the reforms that followed is the
history of farmers putting this lesson to practice. They steadfastly
rejected communal production by voting with their feet. While the
post-reform climate has allowed t h e m greater freedom to develop new
ways of earning a living, it has yet to free t h e m from the legacy of the
historical opposition of peasant and intellectual, or from mandated
control of local resources from above. It may be that m a n y rural people
are critical of the modern values that put profit above h u m a n relations,
and production over distribution, but the variety of viewpoints on the
constellation of changes now sweeping China defy any simplistic reduc-
tion; the aspirations and desires of rural Chinese can neither be reduced
to preserving a 'moral peasant' village as an access point to food security,
nor as a rational maximisation of personal profit at any price, but rather
represent complex and individualised reflections on the promise of
modernity (both as an identity and as an economy) and their own
anticipated place in it.
Notes
1. James Scott, in the Moral Economy of the Peasant (1979), argued that farmers
could not be analysed as simple profit maximisers; he demonstrated instances
where concern for food security caused peasants to forgo profits. Nevertheless
his focus remained on demonstrating peasant economic rationality.
2. One mu equals 0.15 acres or 0.06 hectares
3. It was at this time that agriculture was decollectivised and each family was
given cropland on contract - a certain amount of grain would be given to the
state in exchange for the land, but all produce beyond this amount belonged
to the farmer.
4. I have recently learned that farmers in Xiakou can now purchase a tall variety
of hybrid corn, a good indication that extension workers in China are paying
attention to the needs of farmers. I look forward to learning more about the
implications of this development.
5. See Zweig (1997: 185-99), Cohen (1993) and Potter and Potter (1990:
296-312.)
6. This point echoes Verdery's (1996) argument that post-socialist conflicts (such
as ethnic tensions) are not just throwbacks to a pre-socialist period, or even
new developments, but were nurtured by the socialist system.
7. As a cafeteria administrator during the famine years - a fact whose added
significance should become clear below.
Pamela Leonard 93
8. Better televisions and VCRs are more common, but only two families of
thirty-some in the village have been able to build new-style houses, while
housing in the urban centres has almost universally improved.
9. A recent policy initiative will lay off up to half of the employees of govern-
ment-owned industries, but not even the laid-off workers are perceived as
being reduced to the status of the peasant. They will not compete for the
same jobs, since, as the villagers point out, they are not used to doing work/
physical labour (laodong); here it is implied they are not used to doing real
work at all.
10. These are typically government subsidised experimental research stations.
11. See Flower, Ch. 2, this volume.
Select Bibliography
Cohen, Myron L. (1991), 'Being Chinese: the peripherilization of traditional
identity', Daedalus, 120: 2 (Spring) 113-34.
Chinese "Peasant"', Daedalus, 122: 2 (Spring) 151-70.
Douw, Leo (1991), 'The representation of China's rural backwardness 1932-1937',
Ph.D. thesis (University of Leiden).
Pickowitz, Paul G. (1994), 'Memories of revolution and collectivization in China:
the unauthorized reminiscences of a rural intellectual' in R. S. Watson (ed.),
Memory, History, and Opposition Under State Socialism, (Sante Fe: School of Ameri-
can Research Press).
Potter, Sulamith H. and Potter, Jack M. (1990), China's Peasants: The Anthropology
of a Revolution, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Scott, James C. (1979), The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence
in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press).
Verdery, Katherine (1996), What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton:
Princeton University Press).
Zweig, David (1997), Freeing China's Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era
(Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe).
4
Just a Peasant: Economy and Legacy
in Northern Vietnam
Regina M. Abrami
'But, I am the People', rural itinerant trader upon hearing that

'the People' (Nhan Dan) were confiscating his goods for violat-
ing traffic laws.
(Hanoi, Vietnam, 1997)
The various entities that the world has known as 'communisms'
are as much ideas as they are social systems.
(A. Fforde and S. DeVylder 1996)1
Introduction
Ideology, understood as a normative glue binding together formal or-

ganisations, social norms and networks, and providing a rationale to
any given social order, is built on an idea that conviction is the basis for
action. 2 The paradox of socialism suggests, however, that this assump-
tion may be misleading and at times false. Indeed, one of the more
interesting legacies of 'actually existing socialism' are the invisible
walls between ideology and conviction, and beliefs and action that
persist in many post-socialist societies (Bahro 1978). They pose prob-
lems for establishing causality in any traditional fashion, and require
us instead to think of ideology as a social practice and political tool
rather than as a mindset (Kuran 1997). In this chapter, I examine how
socialist ideologies of economy in this non-traditional sense shaped the
politics of market development in Vietnam. I focus in particular on
socialist ideologies of production and virtuous labour and their role as
a resource to challenge the authority of the Vietnamese state, to legit-
imate the private economy, and to act as a particular form of market
culture.
94
Regina M. Abrami 95
As in other socialist states, ideas of economy defined the language of

politics in Vietnam. Economic theory pervaded everyday life and defined
state conceptions of and distributive benefits to socialist citizenship. But,
the link between identity and economic activity promised in Marxist
theory and institutionalised in state socialism, never delivered the trans-
formation it promised in Vietnam. Farmers, often with the support of
local cadres, reorganised agricultural production in illegal ways, and
pursued commercial interests that extended beyond the borders of legit-
imate exchange (Kerkvliet 1995, Fforde 1989, Fforde and Paine 1987).
Today, rural citizens continue to trade as 'peasants' when conceivably the
institutional environment allows that they might be 'traders'.
To account for this phenomenon, this chapter shows how socialist
ideology is serving as a popular mechanism for change. I show that
Vietnamese rural citizens, drawing on state ideas of rural productivity
and good citizenship, are making a case against the state's version of mar-
ket civilisation. They are doing so through cleverly crafted morality plays
that invoke ideals of socialist labour. It is to these ideals, and the values
they place on the 'smallness' of private trade, collective unity and the
patriotism of productivity, that I now turn. As I aim to show, socialist
ideals have not passed away with the introduction of markets in Vietnam.
Rather, they have come alive in ways that make rural citizens architects of
a kind of market culture and transition that leaves the Vietnamese state
not only with a problem of market regulation, but also of ethics as the
state tries to come to terms with the parameters of moral economic action.
Ideas of socialist e c o n o m y and the origins of the market in

Vietnam
Constructing a socialist economy might be read in simplest terms as chan-

nelling labour productivity and commodity distribution toward collective
ends. What it requires more than the reorganisation of production and
commodity circulation is the mobilisation of labour towards a particular
idea of economy. This idea of economy is one where the moral dimensions
of socialist citizenship, expressed in terms of the object of labour and the
logic of redistribution, are popularly accepted in terms of their patriotic
rather than parochial, collective rather than individual, ends.
In the case of Vietnam, the state failed to harness labour in ways it
imagined possible. In the commercial sector, both state and cooperative
sector workers were officially positioned 'to serve production' by pro-
viding supply inputs through state purchasing channels, extending the
distributive network to include populations in remote locations, and
meeting basic consumption needs of households. These commercial

workers, if effective, might have ended household and village autarky
in Vietnam, bringing producers near and far within the fold of state
networks of commodity distribution and circulation. Instead, the devel-
opment of Vietnamese socialist commerce betrays a failed transition.
Independent traders continued to play a vital role in the economy
decades prior to economic reforms.
In the early years of socialist state-building, there were 226 200 petty
traders in northern Vietnam (Le 1981: 65). Unlike the 'capitalists' found
in the upper reaches of the commercial chain, petty traders were auto-
matically classified as 'patriotic labourers'. In 1960, two years after
launching the campaign to transform the petty commercial sector,
only 22 per cent of all petty traders remained 'unorganised' (khong co
to chuc), that is, not in cooperatives (Le 1981: 71). Similar to agricultural
cooperatives, however, many of the commercial cooperatives were 'low-
level' meaning that traders jointly purchased goods yet continued indi-
vidually to ply their trade. Unpublished documents further record diffi-
culties both within and outside of state commercial channels. For
example, within the population of petty traders, the poorer segment,
having joined commercial cooperatives, are reported as both 'non-pro-
ductive' and demanding of state resources to meet basic needs. Better-off
petty traders, having experienced a decline in income after joining
cooperatives, were also dissatisfied and increasingly shifting their efforts
outside the cooperative.3
The strategy of shifting independent petty traders into cooperatives
and 'moving [others] into production' further unravelled during the Viet-
nam-American War (Vietnam War) as growing numbers of workers,
cadres and soldiers occupied a place in the unofficial economy. Over time,
the failures of socialist development were linked to the persistence of un-
organised petty trade. Pham Hung, then Deputy Prime Minister, wrote,
'One of the basic conditions to managing the market well is the close,
frequent and continual transformation of these petty traders' (Pham
Hung 1963: 26). Local rural officials were criticised for allowing 'peasants
to run off to trade' (Pham Hung 1963: 26). State enterprises were also
criticised for allowing workers to participate in the 'outside' economy.
As the composition of petty traders expanded to include all segments
of society, the state's resolution went beyond the usual call for mobility
controls. It did so by reasserting the relationship between political class
and economic activity. For example, an internal resolution of the Hanoi
People's Committee, aiming to reduce the number of actors in the
unofficial economy, advises local officials to:
Regina M. Abrami 97
mobilise the young and healthy to go onto construction projects,

others shift to street service groups, [with] a smaller number acting as
agents for state commerce, [and] for those with the necessary condi-
tions the entire family should be mobilised to go to construct new
economic zones. Those who should be mobilised to shift into pro-
duction are those now trading illegal goods and under the age of
35 people who have left the countryside in order to trade should
be sent back, people who have left their original workplaces should
be mobilised to return, people with higher than average incomes who
are now trading need to be mobilised to go into some form of labour
service or household work (noi tro gia dinh); the families of workers
and cadre facing difficulties may trade legal goods or engage in other
labour services [but] retired cadres, workers, and soldiers if facing
difficulties should be discouraged from trading. For young people
and students engaged in trade, all branches and levels of the Youth
Association and the Women's Union should join with schools to
educate them to stop trading.
(Ban Chap Hanh 1972: 9-10)
Note how this strategy sustained an idea of poverty as precursor to

petty trade at the same time it denies any legitimacy to commercial
activities of particular classes. As the long quotation suggests, private
commerce as anything other than a means to subsistence was an eco-
nomic crime.
Beginning in 1958, each national campaign to control commodity
distribution and circulation was matched with directives to strengthen
mobility restrictions through the household registration system. In a
speech given during the conference on 'Strengthening Market and Price
Management and Resisting Speculation', Pham Hung made this connec-
tion between controls over population mobility and commodity circu-
lation explicit. He said,
economic criminals have houses, they live daily in rural hamlets, on

streets, and in urban wards and rural villages. If we can manage the
household registration system, control and manage each household,
each individual, then we absolutely can find and eliminate [these]
enemies and criminals.
(Pham Hung 1986: 11)
To control labour's mobility was, in theory, directing its productivity

toward collective ends and aiding the state's goal of becoming the
'master of market, prices, [and] currency' (Pham Hung 1986: 18). In

practice, however, controlling the means of production by restricting
mobility and assigning people to occupations did not guarantee that
workers would serve the collectivity. As one 70-year old former rural
trader described her own 'move into production',
I never farmed in my life and didn't have a clue what to do. I only
remember my horror the first time a leech attached itself to my leg. I
was sick for weeks and could not work. Of course, they could say
nothing. I was sick.4
Mobility controls and the state rationing system failed to resolve

tensions between collective-based production and the social norms
shaping the village communities. State goals that struck against these
norms failed in Vietnam. For example, one village-level party secretary,
recalling campaigns against illegal trade, responded, 'Was I supposed to
arrest my wife?'5 Another former official commented, 'How could I
control labour when I had no work to give them?' 6
Given this support by local cadres, rural traders were not limited to
selling goods produced on private plots. In some cases, they acted as
agents for state workers. One rural trader illegally plying sundries in
Hanoi during the late 1960s recounted his own introduction into state
commercial channels as decidedly passive. Showing that state workers
similarly strayed from an orthodox interpretation of what constituted
collective production, he said,
How did I start selling pots? I was just selling when the worker came
up to me and asked if I wanted some [pots]. He didn't have them with
him at the time, but I said, 'Sure'. The next day he returned with two.
Later, he'd ask, 'How many do you want?' I was always careful never
to ask for more than I knew I could sell in a day. 'Maybe five', I said.
He returned the next day with three. It was like that. Sometimes, he
came with the right amount and other times less. I never asked why
or where he got these things from.7
As illustrated, the unrealised goal of socialist collective ends forged

linkages between the private and state sectors, and the city and the
countryside, in ways not easily eradicated.
Moreover, by regarding economic activities other than those aimed
toward collective ends as unpatriotic and non-progressive, state social-
ism ascribed moral properties to the act of production. As a result, the
Regina M. Abrami 99
challenges of socialist development in Vietnam became inseparable

from official and unofficial debates over what constituted a productive
end. Making an alliteration of the word 'socialism', the joke in Vietnam
became, 'What does socialism mean? - To stand in line all day.'8 Under
these conditions, 'subversive' economic behaviour, if defined as a
drive to maintain labour productivity, is an appeal for state legitim-
ation on the very basis of socialist ideals. For many Vietnamese, self-
employment, including informal trade, was also taken as rightful
employment in the years prior to economic reform. It was an expres-
sion of the failed communal gains of state cooperative and enterprise-
based production. Today, self-employment often goes by the name
'sideline activity' as state efforts to criminalise livelihood strategies
over which it maintains poor control are once again popularly chal-
lenged.
By stigmatising commerce outside of permitted channels as unpro-
ductive and patriotic, tolerated only as the work of survival and not
gain, state socialist ideas of economy set a course for the language and
culture of Vietnamese market socialism and post-socialist political econ-
omy. In the remainder of this chapter, I explore how socialist ideas of
economy are now invoked to diminish tensions between selfish gain and
collective good. As I aim to show, today many rural citizens describe their
private economic activities, including commerce, as pure subsistence
irrespective of where and how it takes place, for how many hours a day
or for what kind of monetary yield. As one trader cleverly commented,
'We're peasants. How could we ever do business?' ('Chungem la nong dan,
lam sao lam kinh doanh duoc'). They also describe their work as traders,
no matter the volume traded or distance covered, as belonging to
the 'marketplace' (di cho), rather than to the 'market' (thi truong).
Words, such as peasant, petty trade, marketplace and sideline activity,
are meant to imply stability more than change. But, under the mantle of
small trade, collective goods and productivity, important changes are
underway.
The reform era: production serving commerce
Just being a peasant: socialist ideas of labour and market

development
Since the introduction of a broad series of policies related to the
Vietnamese Communist Party's 'Renovation' (Doi Moi) programme, the
number of rural citizens who make their livelihood in Hanoi has risen
dramatically. Instead of markets by name, Hanoi is now populated with

markets by nature - markets dating back to the French colonial period,
illegal 'frog' markets (cho coc) that jump to the rhythm of traffic police,
sanctioned night markets that seep into daylight and 'temporary' street
markets, all of which have returned Hanoi to the flavour of its ancient
name, Ke Cho, 'the place where markets are'. The traders themselves
range from those who are quite prosperous, typically engaged in whole-
sale trade, to those who barely keep above the margins with a basket of
goods they replenish daily. Some now legally reside in the city as tem-
porary residents, while others commute daily between village and city,
yet no matter where they fall on the commercial chain, rural traders
share a common claim to be 'just peasants'.
Recognition that ideas of socialist economy have not fully disap-
peared with the introduction of market reform is the starting point for
understanding this phenomenon. The slogan 'rich people, strong
nation' (dan giau, nuoc manh), serving as the official banner of economic
reform, itself reveals the continued stress of economy in terms of the
collective object of labour. Linked to goals of productivity, collective
ends and patriotism, the object and status of labour remains a matter of
political sensitivity in Vietnam. Such sensitivity is not solely limited to
practical concern about the status of labour as a commodity. It also
extends to the ends to which labour operates. This is aptly captured in
earlier portrayals of itinerants in official and journalistic reports where
they were described as 'free labour' (lao dong tu do), 'unorganised labour'
(lao dong khong co to chuc) or 'spontaneous labour' (lao dong tu phat).
As if heading on sojourn without purpose, the ideological ends of
itinerants and their potential impact on production, social order, envir-
onment and social evils have been a topic of no small concern (Li 1996).
Only recently has work by Vietnamese scholars called for a more 'scien-
tific' approach to the study of population mobility.10 Such a change
mirrors precisely the trend of Chinese intellectuals and the Chinese
state to come to terms with its own 'floating population' (liudong
renkou). In both cases, the intellectuals and state representatives seek
to portray an image of social order that counters perceptions of growing
chaos. They do so by demonstrating the positive gains of population
mobility for rural development. Thus, in measurement and weight,
survey and interview, they tell a tale of not only of productivity, but
also of stability and progress.
In the next section, I examine how rural citizens convey this image to
their interlocutors. As I aim to show, they counter the idea of disorderly
'surplus' labour by emphasising village traditions and the stability of the
Regina M. Abrami 101
peasantry as a social class. Rural citizens also stress the patriotism of

their commercial activities by emphasising its collective rewards. This
reinvention of private business as adhering to socialist norms acts not
only as an effective barrier against increasing state institutional efforts
to regulate the real workings of the micro-economy, but also serves as a
subtle criticism of the challenges facing household-level producers.
Traditional occupations: out of agriculture and in the household

As in many other post-socialist states, the return of decision-making
power to the household level brought with it remarkable gains. In a
matter of years, Vietnam went from being a major importer and aid
recipient of food staples to the world's third largest exporter of rice. But,
despite these gains, Vietnam still faces a severe problem of under-
employment and low industrialisation. By the end of the 1980s, only
10 per cent of Vietnam's labour force was employed in industry, and of
this percentage two-thirds worked in small-scale industry (Fforde and
deVylder 1996: 91).
As a partial solution to these problems, the Vietnamese government
encouraged rural labour to diversify its income base, but not to migrate
to other areas. Under a slogan identical to one used in China, farmers
were to 'leave the land, but not the village' (Ly Tho Bat Ly Huong).
Further development and expansion of traditional handicraft industries
and the formation of farmer-initiated cooperatives were identified as
key mechanisms to turn the slogan into reality. Ideally, these alterna-
tives would absorb surplus labour and act as a catalyst for industrialisa-
tion and economic development. In practice, official suggestions on
organisational paths to modernity have taken a different route than
perhaps intended by its advocates. Many rural households have left
the land and in some cases their village, but in ways that strengthen
the idea of the household as the main form of rural economic develop-
ment and economic organisation.
One area where this phenomenon is quite pronounced is in popular
portrayals of traditional village occupations and their role within the
household economy. Today, a wide range of entrepreneurial activity falls
under the heading 'tradition' while often bearing little resemblance to
the past. In place of the industrial divisions of labour that led Gourou
(1955) in the 1930s to describe these occupations as 'family industries',
we now find commercial networks. Nevertheless, themes of village-
based production continue to be invoked by traders who portray com-
mercial activities as a sideline activity of the household rather than as an
enterprise.11
Ninh Hiep village, a wealthy village located 18 kilometres from Hanoi,

is one such example. Historically, it had a specialisation in medicinal
and textile production and processing. More recent generations have
specialised in trading these commodities. They have well-developed
market linkages with China, Laos, Cambodia and Hong Kong, in add-
ition to playing an important role as suppliers to wholesale markets in
Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh cities. Their international market participation
is aided by fellow villagers who provide currency exchange and transfer
services. Yet, villagers often insist that they are 'just peasants' engaged in
'small trade'. One wholesale trader, for example, from this village claims
that the trucks, each loaded with five tons of cinnamon, arriving weekly
to his doorstep did not an enterprise make. 'An enterprise', he said, 'has
capital and makes big profits, [but] I buy and sell on credit.'12 In Ninh
Hiep and other villages, the claim of not being in business (khong lam
kinh doanh) is often cited precisely because an individual is pursuing a
village's traditional occupation (theo lang nghe). Implied is a distinction
in kind, not just degree, with business being the occupation of profit,
and traditional occupation the work of idle agrarian labour.
As a category of non-agricultural work, 'traditional occupations' allow
rural citizens to account for their commercial activities in ways that
conform to the state's ideas of economy and economic development.
Trade as a 'traditional occupation' thus becomes the 'extra work' (lam
them) of the agrarian household, a sideline whose ends remain tied to
ideas of productivity rather than gain. In other locales, people cite the
loss of a traditional occupation to account for their work in the com-
mercial sector. Such a situation is true in cases where specialised co-
operatives, once layering over traditional village occupations in the
planned economy period, collapsed after market reforms.
In other cases, however, the historical trek from past to present grows
dim upon closer scrutiny. A group of traders describing their entry into
the children's clothing market in Hanoi, for example, refer to 'a trad-
itional specialisation in weaving'. But, their role as suppliers of Chinese-
made children's clothing and now school supplies to Hanoi and Ho Chi
Minh City dates more to butane lighters than to weaving. In the earliest
days of the post-socialist underground economy, these traders special-
ised in the smuggling and trading of Chinese-made lighters they
brought into Vietnam concealed on their bodies.
A final way in which traditional occupations are invoked to account
for commercial activity is simply to claim to have no traditional occu-
pation at all. Its absence justifies departure to other areas, with the
search for a productive existence always proposed in terms of seeking
a sideline activity rather than final departure from agricultural work. In

Thanh Cong village, Hung Yen province for example, more than half the
village population has left to work as peddlers in Hanoi and elsewhere.
Their self-portrayals typically are voiced as follows:
This is an agricultural village. Our main work is still agriculture.

Going to market (di cho) is just a sideline to make some extra
money to buy vegetables and condiments.
(Nguyen 1998: 39)
The degree to which their commercial activities are subsidiary to

agriculture is questionable. A popular saying in Vietnamese is perhaps
more accurate. Mentioned in portrayals of work within the industrial,
civil and agrarian sectors, it goes as follows, 'what's secondary is primary
and what's primary is secondary' ('phu la chinh va chinh la phu'), mean-
ing that a sideline (and often unofficial) occupation is more significant
economically than one's main occupation. In many ways, this remains
true in Vietnam.
Indeed, the real sources of social differentiation in rural Vietnam have
become statistically lost to a category that fetishises the idea of rural
citizens as agrarian labourers by virtue of their maintaining use rights in
land. It is often the case that the majority of households in all but the
poorest of villages are recorded as 'Joint Agricultural/Non-Agricultural'.
Yet, these 'non-agricultural' activities may range from animal hus-
bandry to key roles within wholesale distribution channels. Other
household categories, including 'Agricultural', 'Small Industry' and
'Trade Services', comprise a minority in most records of village house-
hold composition. In the case of Ninh Hiep, where few villagers con-
tinue to work in agriculture and obtain the bulk of their income from
commercial activities, only 5 per cent of households fall within the
'Trade Services' category while over 70 per cent of households are
recorded as 'Joint Agricultural/Non-Agricultural' (To 1997: 24). Con-
cealed is the amount of time devoted and income derived from these
respective activities.
Many rural households specialising in trade no longer work their land.
Instead, relying on kin or more commonly hired labour from surround-
ing villages, agricultural obligations are met indirectly. This is as true of
wealthy traders found in villages such as Ninh Hiep as it is for the rural
poor who make their livelihood in Hanoi. In the case of Thanh Cong
village, income earned from peddling accounts for as much as 80 per
cent of household income (Nguyen 1998: 41). A 1996 report of migrants
living in Hanoi's Hai Ba Trung district also confirms the importance of

non-farm opportunities. It shows no decline in number of migrants
during the harvest season and only a slight increase in the total number
of migrants during the agricultural slack season. The only significant
decline in the non-permanent population is during the New Year's
Holiday (Quan Hai Ba Trung District, Supplement, 1996: 1).
Reform policies granted farmers land use rights, but without any
guarantees of access to capital, tuition for school children or healthcare.
The claim to be 'just a peasant' allows traders to voice critical assess-
ments of the household model. At the most marginal end of the com-
modity chain, itinerant peddlers in Hanoi can be heard sarcastically
identifying themselves as the 'Reduce Poverty, Eliminate Hunger' cam-
paign. Others are quick to remind all who will listen that they had little
choice but to come to the city in search of a livelihood. As they fre-
quently say, 'there is too little land and too many people'. These criti-
cisms point to the failure of state institutional supports and the inability
to maintain basic subsistence through agriculture alone.
As illustrated above, rural households have reinvented statist discourse
on the trajectory of rural development as both cause and consequence of
their economic present. For poorer households, failed productivity in the
terms specified by the state justifies both their departure from agriculture
and their work as traders. For wealthier households, current economic
activities are located along a developmental continuum of traditional
occupations in ways that allow them to discount enterprise development
and stress instead the workings of the household economy. Trade thus
becomes the agriculturist's occupation by default, not choice. It is,
whether rooted in tradition or in its absence, portrayed as the work of
history and a labourer's struggle to sustain himself within it.
Free time as market time: civilised and uncivilised market

developments
When rural society highlights the fact that agriculture alone is inad-
equate to absorb productive capacities or to provide sustenance, they are
engaging in a form of politics that operates not at the site of production,
but at its ends. Here, the struggle is not over the terms of production, but
the right to be productive. Micro-entrepreneur ship and mobility are
expressions of this right. They tie rural citizens to an unspoken debate
over a 'Market' variously imagined as a means of subsistence and as
modernity. Petty traders justify their participation in this market, not
as a demonstration of their 'civilised' nature, but rather as a solution to
their poverty.
Nevetheless, it is imporant to keep in mind that rural citizens describe

their departure to urban Vietnam as a 'movement' (phong trao) of a
sociopolitical, not just economic or demographic, kind. They are not
misguided in their portrayal. Population mobility has reconfigured the
relationship between rural citizens and the state by bringing them in
direct conflict with the state's vision of the 'Market' - a vision that
rejects itinerant labour as a disorderly disruption to 'civilised' exchange.
Historically, the eradication of peddling in urban areas is tied to shop-
keepers' appeals to local officials to end 'backward forms' of commerce
that threaten storefront businesses with unbeatable and unfair competi-
tion. Their appeals usually fail, however, if local state actors stand to
gain from mobile and unregistered trade or urban society is sympathetic
to the plight of Itinerants (McGee 1973, DeSoto 1989, Bluestone 1991,
Clark 1994, Cross 1998).
Hanoi has both of these features, suggesting that mobile trade is likely
to remain a fixture of the urban landscape for some time. Only a small
number of Hanoi's permanent population can claim more than a few
generations in the city. Many of them still have houses and maintain
close contact with relatives in the countryside.
The numerous campaigns to rein in unofficial trade and 'unplanned'
migration in the subsidy period also makes explicit how porous mobility
controls were even at the height of state control over society and econ-
omy. But, by way of feigned illness and visits to real and fictive kin,
many rural traders continued to ply their wares throughout the socialist
period. The markets they created forged generational bridges between
rural and urban citizens, life and livelihood that persist among the
younger generations today.
In 1989, a Hanoi Police Department survey reported that there were
239 000 peddlers on the streets of Hanoi (Ngo 1998: 33). These traders
sold goods and services such as foodstuffs, pots and pans, plastic goods,
clothing and related sundries, newspapers and books, household plants,
pottery ware and other items. While it is not possible to state confi-
dently that all of these peddlers are from the countryside, it is neverthe-
less certain that those engaged in its most arduous form, itinerant
peddling, are. Appearing nearly everywhere, these peddlers diminish
any sense of their permanence in the city through self-portrayals that
emphasise ongoing links to the countryside. They are 'seasonal' (thoi
vu), often making reference to the agricultural slack season (ngay ba
thang tarn) that ostensibly brought them to Hanoi. Local authorities
maintain the myth by restricting registration of 'seasonal labourers'
(lao dong thoi vu) to 3-month intervals after which they must re-register
their 'seasonal' status. A survey of 'spontaneous' migrants in Hanoi by

the Ministry of Labour, of course, found that 'seasonal labourers' are not
seasonal at all. In response, the authors suggested that the category
'seasonal' be replaced with the term 'temporary' to refer to individuals
who reside short-term away from their places of permanent registration.
(Doan, Henaff and Trinh 1997: 7). This new category, although an
improvement, does not capture the role of rural citizens in urban market
development and operation. To an extent, it serves instead to reify an
administrative ideal of the rural citizen not remaining in urban areas for
very long before the demands of the agricultural calendar pull him back
to his village.
Today, free time is market time for large segments of the Red River
Delta. In claiming allegiance to the rhythms of peasant history and
time, rural citizens make their 'movement' a sociologically subtle one.
It is, however, by no means a 'temporary' move. Like those who stress
the benign nature of commerce by tracing it back to village traditions,
itinerant peddlers' ongoing claims to agricultural work also allow them
to place commerce within the realm of household sideline activities. My
own survey of 450 peddlers found, however, that peddlers rarely return
to assist with harvesting. They return to visit family members. This is
particularly the case with younger migrants who typically leave their
children with relatives in the countryside.
The growing number of rural citizens who now make their livelihood
in Hanoi has had a profound impact on the urban landscape. The
earliest wave of migrants, lacking the capital requirements to rent a
stall in existing markets, and in some cases forbidden from doing so as
they lacked an urban household registration, simply set up shop wher-
ever demand dictated. By the late 1980s, the number of temporary and
illegal markets outnumbered the permanent ones. Alongside makeshift
installations, 'frog' markets (cho coc) hopped about the city in tune with
the work schedule of urbanites. Every day between 12-2 p.m. and 4-7
p.m. avenues became marketplaces with only the patient daring to pass
through by vehicle.
By the early 1990s, these illegal markets emerged as a key policy
concern of local authorities (Phan 1997, Hong 1993). Their initial strat-
egy was to make some of these markets officially 'temporary' (cho tarn),
meaning that local authorities acknowledged their positive role in meet-
ing local consumption demand. Official 'temporary' status allowed local
officials budgetary access to address sanitation, water and management
problems. Many other markets already labelled 'temporary' were
deemed 'permanent'. This shift in categorisation meant that a full-time
management board was installed under the administrative control of the

district level People's Committee, a Committee comprised of full-time
Party administrators and support staff responsible for managing local
government affairs. Despite these efforts, the number of temporary and
illegal markets continue to surpass those under the comprehensive
management of local authorities.
Interestingly, early efforts to control itinerant peddlers and illegal
markets rarely portrayed the problem as a matter of lost tax revenue or
expired business registrations. Of greater concern was the loss of social
order (trat tu xa hoi). Reform not only cultivated markets, but also racket-
eering. The most famous case, 'White Khanh', revealed extensive links
between Khanh, as chairman of the Long Bien Market Porter Cooperative,
and local authorities. Khanh, with well over 200 porters in his charge, had
built his fortune extorting money from market vendors and truck drivers
dependent on the cooperative's services. In addition, he aided local police
in harassing suspected petty thieves who worked the wholesale markets,
and issuing 'fines' to trucks parked illegally outside the market area. In
truth, White Khanh accepted bribes from truck drivers anxious to unload
the tons of fruit they brought daily to the wholesale markets. Drivers are
responsible for spoilage costs. Khanh's network extended into Hanoi's
other large market, Dong Xuan, clashing against that of his female com-
petitor, 'Phuc Bo'. Her network covered the smaller markets and shopping
districts in Hanoi's old quarter.13 For Phuc Bo, the fire that destroyed Dong
Xuan market was a bonus. It not only closed off White Khanh's control of
the market, but also sent displaced vendors in her direction. Most of them
sought space in the temporary market Phung Hung that was under her
team of porters exclusive charge.
In the mid-1990s, all began to change. The campaign to create 'civilised
markets' (van minh thi truong) and a 'civilised city' (van minh do thi) started
in earnest on two fronts. First, as part of a national campaign against
corruption, local authorities began to crackdown on racketeering net-
works. 'Phuc Bo' was arrested and 'White Khanh' subsequently executed
on murder charges. Economic transparency became the new watchword.
The private sector was told to 'register and re-register economic activity'.
Second, Government Decree 36 (CP/36), introduced in May 1995, insti-
tuted a series of regulations aimed to do away with peddling and unsanc-
tioned marketplaces. Specifically, Article 62, Section 1, stated that
streets and pavements are to be used only for traffic. The People's
Committees of the provinces and cities directly under the Central
Government shall stipulate in detail the use of the inner part of
pavements on a number of special roads and streets for the sale of

commodities.
Section 3 of the same Article states that 'any encroachment of road beds,
the road sides and pavements for marketing, show and sale of commod-
ities ... is banned'. For itinerant peddlers, Decree 36 was something akin
to a declaration of war. Pushcarts were confiscated and the daily ritual of
duck and dodge between local traffic police and rural peddlers intensi-
fied significantly.
Itinerant trade has not ended in Hanoi. Decree 36, nevertheless, made
a caricature of market regulatory oversight by securing it through a
traffic law. As an odd testimony of open markets and fallen barriers to
trade, peddlers now must remain on the move as a rest break is a
violation of law. The Decree also encouraged the further commodifica-
tion of law by raising the price of market participation for peddlers
subject to rent-seeking local state actors.14 When Decree 36 first
appeared, some rural Party cadres encouraged local villagers not to
take their carts and elaborately tooled bicycles to the city. Other cadres
expressed their disagreement with the law, but claimed to be powerless
to respond. Yet, in other cases, rural cadres fought back against the new
law. On behalf of local villagers, they demanded the return of carts and
pedicabs confiscated by the Hanoi police, claiming that they were local
state property.15
Problems that lie elsewhere once again press upon the shoulder
poles of rural traders. Today, editorials and pictorial satires frequently
appear in the police-run newspaper Capitol Security (An Ninh Thu Do),
demanding a resolution to the blight of itinerant traders. A film, Liveli-
hood (Kiem Song), chronicling in fiction the misfortunes of rural citizens
in Hanoi, was aired three times in 1996 and again in 1997 and 1998.
In the film, a sympathetic police captain tells a male migrant worker
to stay out of Hanoi where 'complicated situations' (tinh hinh phuc
tap) are common, including this migrant's false arrest. But, truth is
even stranger than fiction. An unpublished report by the Hanoi City
Bureau of Commerce argues that 'temporary markets are not compatible
with the needs of building a civilised city' and that all should be
eliminated by 2010 (Phan 1997: 12). Much like reports on renegade
state commercial workers during the planned economy period, this
report is noticeably silent in its portrayal of those empowered with
managing markets. It suggests only that more skill and training is neces-
sary.
Morality plays the market

The virtues of commerce
Unlike China, there is nothing 'glorious' in and of itself about wealth in
Vietnam. No Vietnamese leader has come forward declaring, as Deng
Xiaoping once did, that 'to get rich is glorious'. Likewise, no Vietnamese
leader easily accepts social differentiation as the necessary cost of eco-
nomic development. To the contrary, the Vietnamese slogan 'Rich
People, Strong Nation' suggests that legitimate economic development
generates social unity, not social division. Private traders cannot violate
this norm and expect to survive. So how do they preserve the moral ends
of 'going to market' (di cho)? They do so by emphasising the 'smallness'
of their businesses in terms of their scale, gains and time investment.
What remains 'big' are the collective ends toward which 'small trade'
and other private economic activity ostensibly aims. In what follows, I
show how rural citizens concretely make their case.
First, rural traders stress the 'smallness' of their commercial activities
in terms of labour time. It is 'seasonal work' (lam thoi vu). Dictated by
nature, rural traders deny the charge of bringing crime and social blight
to Hanoi by emphasising their temporary presence. Linked to the agri-
cultural calendar, commerce cannot replace the work of agrarian labour.
It is instead, as many Vietnamese say, 'extra work' (lam them), a sideline.
The idea of time as money also seems not to apply. 'Small trade', once
described as an off-season activity, becomes an occupation of time - free
time to be precise. More importantly, by portraying 'small trade' as tem-
porary and seasonal work, rural citizens publicly reject commerce as a basis
of political identity and consciousness. 'Just peasants', as the traders say.
Rural traders also emphasise the 'smallness' of their work by arguing
that it only provides 'extra money' (kiem them), small change, the cur-
rency of marketplaces and not the Market. The ends of 'extra money'
typically refer back to developing the household economy. But, on
closer scrutiny we can see that what develops the household economy
also reflects the changing and variable composition of subsistence itself.
As one trader commented, 'Some people have a colour television and
video player so I should at least try to buy a fan' (quoted in Nguyen
1998: 51). In a sense, even the goal of material gain is ultimately not
economic at all, but shaped, as Marx tells us, by the social markings of
comparative 'development'.
The gains of small trade, irrespective of what traders argue, are not
always 'small'. Just as 'traditional' occupations can be invented, the idea
of 'small trade' is deployed to provide traders with sufficient distance

from state regulators to make real accumulation possible. It might be
imagined, for example, that fruit peddlers in Hanoi are simply marketing
their harvest. This is the exception more than the rule. Women peddlers
from Di Trach Commune, Ha Tay Province, commute daily between
village and city to sell seasonal fruits grown in surrounding districts
and provinces. Their supply is guaranteed through informal contracts
they negotiate with growers at least a season prior to harvest. The
majority of fruit found on the streets of Hanoi, however, makes its first
entry into the city by way of the Long Bien wholesale market. While
nearly 400 tons of fruit moves in and out of this market daily, vendors
persist in describing themselves as 'small traders'. The plastic house
wares trade follows a similar pattern. In this case, the commodities are
purchased on credit from private producers in Cholon district, Ho Chi
Minh City. Rural wholesalers based in two Ha Tay communes (xa)
distribute these goods to peddlers who cycle daily to Hanoi. At the end
of the day, they return paying wholesalers for goods sold, while
returning at no cost damaged goods. Another segment of the Ha Tay
supply market originates in Ha Dong by way of a state-owned company
that lends peddlers these goods for trade on similar terms.
In its practice and significance, 'small trade' is so much more than a
component of peasant life. It signals to the state and other actors found
in the economy a non-threatening stance. As the Vietnamese phrase
goes, 'big [economic] activities amount to death' (lam Ion chet ngay).16
For the state, itinerant trade is social economy, a matter to be resolved
through employment creation, proofs of productivity and social order.
For other traders, small trade implies no competition. As rural medicinal
traders in Hanoi well know, there is much to gain in referring to your
unlicensed Hanoi shop as only a warehouse. For racketeers, small trade
means compliance as rural citizens discovered when White Khanh's
gang began fining them for disrupting traffic.
Still, rural traders have made a mockery of economic and state
categories of membership. Queried about self-identification, one well-
off rural trader commented, 'Mr Communism gave me a registration
that says I'm a peasant, so I'm a peasant' ('Ong Cong San dua ra ho khau
noi la nongdan the thi toi la nong dan').17 Set in earlier terms of economic
activity and distributive benefits, the 'peasantry' as a category now
conceals more than it reveals about the workings of the Market in
Vietnam. Still, to the extent that traders can sustain their case that
'small trade' and 'business' are different in kind, they continue to
carve a place for themselves along the crevices of a system that makes
administrative moves to govern the market through law often ineffective

once it hits the street.
Collective ends: service as attitude and sector

The official call during the early years of reform to shift to a 'multiple-
sector economy' in Vietnam has amusingly resulted in the emergence of
'service' as a catchall category of economic diversification. Today, along-
side 'service cooperatives' (hop tac xa dich vu) built from the shells of the
former communes can be found a host of 'service companies' (cong ty
dich vu) and 'service labourers' (lam dich vu). Rural traders have not failed
to miss the cue.
Building on the socialist era notion of serving the people through
one's labour, rural traders invoke the term 'service' to signal both eco-
nomic end and occupation. They do so to distinguish their economic
activity from the normatively less secure realm of private business and
individual interest. For example, a rural currency trader portrayed her
work in the underground currency market as belonging to the service
sector (nganh dich vu) as it 'assisted' (phuc vu) fellow villagers who buy
and sell internationally. 'Service', she argued, 'is not business' (dich vu
khong phai la kinh doanh). Rural entrepreneurs, in particular, emphasise
that the collective ends of their labour extend beyond members of a
household, by both 'creating employment' (tao viec lam) and helping
the people of the village (giup ba con xa). As with itinerant traders, the
virtuous element of private enterprise rests with its social benefits, and
not its private profits.
The labour market similarly operates through a language of moral
ends. In Vietnam, labour may be 'borrowed' (cho muon). It 'assists'
(giup do/phuc vu). It is never bought and at worst it is 'rented' (thue). To
be rented, however, carries with it negative connotations whereas pro-
viding services (lam phuc vu) recovers human nature with remuneration.
This language of labouring acts to negate differences in power relations.
Both buyers and sellers of labour tend to describe the market in identical
terms, that is, as service to the other.
Such sentiment not only allows for the borrowing of labour, but also
time. As Hart (1992) rightly notes, credit is a contract in time and in
Vietnam borrowed time plays a key role in market development. Little
has been paid for in the markets and shops of Hanoi. It has been
borrowed from the countryside. Almost daily, rural traders watch this
contract by circulating through the marketplaces and old quarter of
Hanoi to monitor the sales of stall vendors and shop owners. For
example, rural medicinal traders typically complete their exchanges by
noon daily, but remain in the city until late afternoon when shop
owners are willing to discuss payment. The language that marks these
commercial relations is not hostility, but sympathy (thong cam). To the
extent that a rural trader can produce sympathy, the vendor may pay for
goods sold. But, sympathy can and is mutually invoked, variously
stalling and ending time.
Such sympathy has become the currency of commerce in Vietnam. It
is invoked not only to seek benefit and tolerance from other members of
society, but also from the state. In their portrayal of commerce as small
trade and service to others, rural citizens are making an appeal to be seen
as 'patriotic labour'. This sentiment is aptly captured in miniature by the
itinerant poison sellers of Hanoi who promise their commodity's power
to kill 'Russian mice, French mice and American mice' ('chuot Nga, chuot
Phap va chuot My').18
The legacy of work or the work of legacies: the peasantry as

architects of old ideas
The study of rural traders in Vietnam makes explicit that the path from
planned to market economy cannot be understood apart from an exam-
ination of how ideas of economy shape the course of institutional
development and change. In contrast to an image of 'Leninist legacies'
as a constraint to institutional change, this chapter shows how norms of
socialist economy act as a resource through which social groups make
moral claims upon the state and each other. In the socialist period, the
formal constraints to market exchange were challenged by the values
underpinning the formal institutions of state economic and social con-
trol. The 'legacy', if it might be termed as such, is an ongoing effort by
rural citizens to express the collective ends toward which their enter-
prising activities aim.
Of particular interest is that the normative glue of socialist state
building has emerged as a popular norm shaping market development
and market culture. This phenomenon suggests that the source of insti-
tutional coherence derives not so much from ideology, but from the
ability of social actors to read and reproduce the signals of formal insti-
tutional efforts. It is, as the Vietnamese say, to 'do vat va' (to reduce
hassles), that is, to limit the hardships likely in overt challenge to
perceived injustices. Such a strategy, if Vietnam's economic success is
any measure, also suggests that the performance of economy begets a
performing economy. As the prior pages explored, people 'act' on shared
meanings to lower the costs of doing business. This is not however a
testimony of their belief in state ideology. We also cannot prove that
rural traders 'believe' they are peasants anymore t h a n that they believe
their labour aims toward the collective good. It is only possible to
recognise that the p h e n o m e n o n of rural commercial actors claiming to
'just be peasants' and 'small traders' is less the product of a market
economy and more its creator. These terms reflect ongoing political
conflict over the moral legitimacy of economic ends, and in a language
that can only be understood as the legacy of socialist Vietnam's toler-
ance of peasants and peddlers as poor, but ultimately loyal citizens.
The socialist model of development predicted the end of the peasantry.
It did so by conflating political and economic identities, and assuming
that individuals would act on these 'class' interests. Liberal theory simi-
larly imagined the economy as a closed system within which laws of
history and sources of identity could be explained in terms of changing
incentives. Neither economic theory can account for such post-socialist
economic oxymoron as the 'peasant entrepreneur' without doing vio-
lence to the history that gave rise to such a character. In this chapter, I
have shown that the cultural context within which economic activity
occurs is at least as important as economic structure and individual
interests in accounting for the course of historical change.
Notes
1. I would like to express my gratitude and thanks to Pamela Leonard. Her many
helpful suggestions and comments went well beyond the scope of her editorial
duties. My research in Vietnam was supported by grants from the Fulbright-
Hays Dissertation Committee and the Institute for the Study of World Politics.
2. The definition of ideology that I am using is common to New Institutional
Economic approaches. See North 1990: 22-3 and especially North 1981:
45-58.
3. This section draws on materials from National Archive #3, especially files from
the Ministry of Domestic Commerce.
4. Interview in Hung Yen Province, May 1997.
5. Interview Gia Lam District, Hanoi, April 1997.
6. Interview in Bac Ninh Province, July 1997.
7. Interview in Hung Yen Province, June 1997.
8. In Vietnamese, 'Xahoi Chu Nghia co nghia gi? Xep Hang Ca Ngay!'
9. There are no accurate figures of the total number of rural citizens residing
'temporarily' in Hanoi. Estimates range from 30000 to 60000 individuals. Of
this number, it is not possible to tell what percentage engage in trade. Further,
these figures do not include individuals who circulate daily between the city
and the countryside or individuals who have not registered with local author-
ities.
10. These scholars and researchers are typically affiliated with the Institute of
Sociology, National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities, as well as the
Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Welfare. For example, see the work of
Dang Nguyen Anh and Doan Mau Diep.
11. Of course some villages are comprised of households that engage in both
production and sales.
12. Interview, Ninh Hiep village, Gia Lam district, June 1994.
13. These racketeering cases were chronicled in detail in the following news-
papers, An Ninh Thu Do (Capitol Security), Ha Noi Moi [New Hanoi) and Kinh Te
Thoi Bao (Economic Times). In addition, underground circulars made their way
throughout the city during both trials.
14. It is too soon to tell whether the recently passed Enterprise Law, combined
with ongoing administrative reforms, will temper rent-seeking.
15. This is partially true insofar that some pedicabs, pushcarts and bicycles were
obtained through bank loans and credit cooperatives.
16. In an economic context, this phrase usually refers to pursuing an activity
beyond one's means, level of experience or knowledge. It also refers to the
danger of making others jealous or encouraging rent-seeking by appearing
well off financially.
17. Interview, Ninh Hiep village, Gia Lam District April 1997.
18. Coming largely from Thanh Cong village, Chau Giang district, Hung Yen
province, these traders rely on a tape-recorded sales pitch that blares from a
speaker attached to their bicycles.
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5
Rural Identities in Transition:
Partible Persons and Partial Peasants
in Post-Soviet Russia
Louise Perrotta
In this chapter, I want to examine the relationship between changes in

the political economy of agriculture, and the diverse ways in which
these impinge upon the construction of rural identities. I argue that as
the contradictory complexity of contemporary rural political economy
is associated with a bewildering array of novel opportunities and con-
straints, it is impossible to distinguish any uni-dimensional or univer-
salistic definition of the 'post-socialist peasant'. Although changes in
rural political economy have opened the way for alternative enactment
of production, consumption and exchange, actual practices often reflect
a commitment to the old as to the new; this undulation is partly the
result of a backward-looking conservatism, partly a rational manipula-
tion of identity in pursuit of self-interest, and partly the result of the
reflected identities which are the product of familiar daily interactions.
As the de jure changes emanating 'from above' are only partly realised in
the economic practices of transition, the de facto shifts in rural identities
and practices evince a complex and contradictory nature.
Contrary to many assumptions about universal derogation of the
peasantry, this paper is concerned with the link between current agri-
cultural reform policies in Russia and both practical and mythical
notions of what it means to be a peasant. In one sense, current agricul-
tural reform policies reflect an attempt to recreate a stereotypical peas-
antry: efficient, utility-maximising agricultural producers, who husband
resources, and make rational decisions in response to needs and interests
(be these for subsistence or for profit). The stereotypical peasant is
opposed to his counterpart, the stereotypical collective farm worker,
who is idle, steals and gets drunk. Central to this attempted reconstruc-
tion of the peasantry is the establishment of private ownership of land
and non-land means of production. However, we shall see that the
117
prospects of achieving this goal (of creating a class of peasant producers)

are undermined both by the historical conditions inherited from the
Soviet era and by the economic realities of transition. Although a sig-
nificant number of 'private peasant farms' have been established, the
vast majority of agricultural workers continue to work within large
collective enterprises. Although their status may have formally changed
from membership of the rural proletarian to share-holding owners of
land and non-land assets, this is only variably realised in actual practice.
The supposed benefits of private ownership have only materialised
when a number of other factors are also present. In this first section, I
want to give a very brief overview of agricultural and land reform
policies in Russia since 1990. The overall direction of reform policy has
been towards private ownership of the means of production, principally
land. As noted above, the initial impetus for land reform was linked to
the recreation of an efficient peasantry. More specifically, the privatisa-
tion of agriculture in the Russian Federation was initiated in response to
the observation of three critical factors:
1. The higher productivity and efficiency observed on privately owned

and managed farms in other parts of the world (specifically, but not
exclusively, in the 'west').
2. The higher productivity observed on the private plots (lichnoe pod-
sobnoe khozyaistvo) of state and collective farm members.
3. The relative failure of Soviet era reforms to improve significantly
productivity or efficiency on large, state-owned collective agricul-
tural enterprises.
Observing the relation between a peasant-like attachment to the land

through private ownership/control and improved performance, the first
steps of agricultural reformers were towards the creation of a land-
owning class of agricultural producers.
Private ownership of land was reintroduced in Russia with the adop-
tion of the law 'On Land Reform' in October 1990 (amended in Decem-
ber 1990). This was closely followed by the adoption of the law 'On
Peasant Farms' adopted in November 1990 (also amended in December
1990).
Private Peasant Farms: the reconstitution of the peasantry?

A number of laws and decrees (see Annex at the end of this chapter) were
adopted in order to encourage the emergence of peasant farming, either
Louise Perrotta 119
on land acquired from raion redistribution funds, or on land withdrawn

from privatised former state and collective farms. Aspiring peasant
farmers were offered preferential interest rates, to enable them to ac-
quire necessary machinery, equipment, and inputs. A nation-wide or-
ganisation was set up to assist the establishment of Peasant Farms1 and
their future support.
While this policy initially met with considerable enthusiasm, this has
now stalled. Although each member of a former collective farm enjoys
the right to withdraw their land and property share in order to set up a
'private Peasant Farm', fewer people are choosing to do so. In a survey
conducted in Voronezh and Belgorod Oblasts in 1994, fewer that one
per cent of respondents expressed the desire to withdraw their land and
property shares to set up a private Peasant Farm, either alone or with
family and/or others. There are a number of reasons.
The withdrawal of preferential credits has combined with a worsening
situation in agriculture as a whole to create the consensus that private
farming is highly risky, or, indeed, impossible in the current climate.
In general, farm members seem to prefer to point out examples of
local failure in private farming, or to declare that local private
farmers continue to depend on the larger collectives for access to
inputs, machinery, equipment, specialised skills (for example, veterin-
ary knowledge) and occasionally labour. The disparity of prices2 com-
bines with high and capriciously applied rates of taxation to make
private farming neither more nor less profitable than large-scale indus-
trialised agriculture. Some argue that the lack of 'economies of scale'
combines with the absence of suitably sized and priced machinery and
equipment, to make private farming more vulnerable during the transi-
tion period.
In order to explain the fall in numbers of new Peasant Farms, it is
often said that 'those who could, did'. The implication is that remaining
rural populations lack the drive or ability for self-management (or lack
the appropriate identification with the category 'peasant').
Alternatively, it is suggested that as times have changed, Peasant
Farming no longer enjoys the potential for profitable productive activity
that it seems to have had in the early 1990s. The disparity of prices, high
rates of interest and taxation make Peasant Farming a high-risk under-
taking in current circumstances. From this we can read either that
remaining collective farm members are incapable of fulfilling the role
of the peasant, preferring collective dependence to individual self-
reliance, or, that they are making rational decisions in the face of
economic uncertainty.
How then should we interpret the relation between the hoped for
'post-socialist peasant' and the real-world peasant farmer? Indigenous
perceptions of private peasant farmers range from the stereotypical
image of the hard-working cautious peasant farmers, to crafty entrepre-
neurs, to the useless and idle dependent on the generosity of neighbour-
ing collectives. Although there are many examples of successful private
farming which conform to the stereotype of a small, family run, owner-
occupied undertaking, the majority of these are those which were set up
early on, and benefited from preferential credits and subsequent infla-
tion. Many of the Peasant Farms that have emerged in Russia are not
owned and managed by ex-employees of collective farms (or 'peasants'),
but by ex-farm directors, or previous employees of the Department of
Agriculture, who seized the opportunity to acquire land and soft credits.
Some Peasant Farms are owned by persons with no previous experience
of agriculture, but who exploited the opportunity to access preferential
credits, which they then invested in non-agricultural activities (specific-
ally highly profitable trading activities).
It has also become increasingly clear that the wholesale transform-
ation of large former state and collective farms into huge numbers of
small private Peasant Farms represents serious technical difficulties.
Demarcation of millions of small land-holdings (average land shares
are about five hectares per shareholder), is hugely time consuming and
expensive, requiring extensive surveying and establishment of demar-
cated boundaries. Secondly, the equitable distribution of physical land
plots encounters insuperable difficulties. Where this has been at-
tempted, the distribution of land plots is accomplished either 'by nego-
tiation', by 'lottery', or, more rarely by some form of competition (for
example, auction). Where distribution of physical land plots is 'negoti-
ated', there are clear inequalities in participants' abilities to pursue their
interests. On any farm there is good land and poor land, of varying
convenient location and it is simply impossible for each to acquire a
fair share of land value. The Russian system of land valuation and share
distribution attempts to create land shares of equal value, by 'equating'
larger plots of poor land to smaller plots of highly fertile land. The
Russian system, however, fails to take the important factor of 'location'
into account. As it is impossible for everyone to receive a plot of land
which is accessible, the equitable distribution of actual land parcels is, in
fact, impossible. Although distribution by lottery is fairer in principle, it
nevertheless results in unfair distribution of land-holdings. Similarly,
auctions are only feasible where land shares are combined and competi-
tors bid with their combined land shares for the most desirable plots. (In
Louise Perrotta 121
the case of an auction land share certificates are used in lieu of cash and
land parcels are 'auctioned' to those who can offer the largest quantity
of land shares for a given land parcel.) If the aim is to create private
Peasant Farms on the basis of individual- to family-sized land share-
holdings, auctions become unworkable, as the distinctions between
competitors are insufficient. Each family will have one to perhaps four
land shares maximum - and no one family would be able to offer larger
quantities of shares for the better land.
Further it is continuously argued that although individual- to family-
sized plots are sometimes viable economic entities, this is not and
cannot always be the case. Land-holdings within easy reach of residence,
services, transport and stores are a physically limited good. Too many
individual/family land shareholders will end up with five to fifteen
hectares, located 15 km from home, services, roads and so on. If some
land-holdings are suitable for market gardening or other small-scale
agricultural activities, broad acre farming requires large land-holdings
to be profitable. It has been suggested that this problem can be over-
come by the recombination of land holdings into Associations of Peas-
ant Farms. Again although there are excellent examples of successful
Associations, there are equally significant examples of 'purely formal'
Associations. In one example, the former collective farm continued to
operate as a hierarchically managed, inefficient, and undemocratic
entity, in spite of the individualisation of land ownership. Although
farm members knew that they 'owned' five hectares, and could point
out their land holdings on a map, they overwhelmingly expressed a lack
of interest in private ownership: 'what can I do with five hectares
located beyond the next village?' Further they continued to work 'for
the director', who continued to make all management decisions and to
exclude his theoretically equal co-owners from the management pro-
cess.
Thus the logistical difficulties of widespread demarcation of physical
land plots has combined with the impossibility of creating millions of
economically viable private Peasant Farms to undermine the attempt to
transform the rural proletariat into a class of land-owning peasants in
wholesale fashion.
Although policies aimed at increasing private Peasant Farming have
generally failed to create a large class of small, efficient, land-owning
peasant producers, there has been a simultaneous attempt to capture the
benefits of individualised private ownership, whilst retaining collective
production structures. The distribution of ownership of land and non-
land assets of the former state and collective farms to their members has
been specifically aimed at replicating the sense of responsibility, self-

reliance and initiative which is thought to attend 'ownership'.
This feeling of ownership (chustvo khozyaina) is explicitly associated
with typical peasant relations to land and assets. As noted above, privat-
isation was aimed at replicating this feeling of ownership, in the hope
that privatised collective production would acquire the productivity of
production on private household plots.
The collective peasant?

Most agricultural land and assets in Russia are now 'privately owned':
many (if not all) farm members can state the size of their land and
property shares. A very few claim that although they would like to set
up a Peasant Farm, they are sure of being prevented from doing so, or
that they would receive the worst land, far away. Most state that they
have willingly agreed to contribute their shares to collective occupation
and production, and cite the impossibility of private farming in current
circumstances, as their reason for doing so. Others simply state quite
sensibly that it is (logistically) 'not possible' to break up huge land-
holdings, that agricultural production would go into critical decline,
and that the loss of economies of scale would be a wholly irrational
undertaking. A few claim an atavistic commitment to collectivism ('we
have always been a collective people', and cite the pre-revolutionary
peasant mir or obshchina as testimony). Whether for reasons practical or
ideological, the fact remains that privately owned land is largely occu-
pied by collectives, which range in size from 300 to 5000 individual
shareholders.
The demise of collective farms and the adoption of n e w

organisational-legal formats
A number of laws, presidential decrees and government resolutions have

been adopted in order to encourage the privatisation and restructuring
of large state and collective farms. (The most important of these are
given in the Annex.) The vast majority of former state and collective
farms have now adopted one of a number of new organisational legal
forms. Only 'specialised' state farms, including special seed or livestock
breeding units, experimental or training farms, tea producers and vine-
yards, were exempt from privatisation (in accordance with Resolution
No. 708 of 4 September 1992). These new organisational legal forms
include Joint Stock Companies (Auktsionersky Obshchestvo (AO)) of
Louise Perrotta 123
either 'open' or closed' type (Otkritovo Tipa (AOOT), Zakritovo Tipa

(AOZT)); simple, mixed or limited liability Partnerships (Tovarichestvo
(TO), Tovarichestvo Smeshnovo Tipa (TCT), Tovarichestvo Ogranichnovo
Otvetstvennost (TOO)); Private Peasant Farms (Krestianskoe/Fermerskoe
Khozyaistvo (KKh)); and Associations of Private Farms (Assotsyatsie Kres-
tyanskoe Khozyaistvo (AKKh)). Although there are technical differences
between these different organisational legal formats, few can adequately
explain the difference (except in the case of the private Peasant Farm or
Association of Peasant Farms). As they have little local relevance, we will
not address these distinctions here.
These policy innovations have however created new relations be-
tween people and things, by privatising 'ownership' of land and non-
land assets.
In accordance with locally varying 'norms', some former collective
farms were required to donate agricultural land to raion redistribution
funds. This land was earmarked for distribution to aspiring private
Peasant Farmers. Shares in the remaining land has been equally distrib-
uted to the members of former collective farms, including all current
workers and all pensioners who had retired from the collective farm and
who were still resident on collective farm territory. Initial confusion as
to whether social sphere workers (teachers, health workers, shop
workers, kindergarten workers) were entitled to land shares was eventu-
ally resolved. In order to encourage the development of private Peasant
Farms, land from the raion redistribution funds was available to non-
collective farm members, on the basis of personal application. All those
with entitlement to a land share on former collective farms enjoy
the right to withdraw their land share for the purpose of setting up a
private Peasant Farm at any time. It is important to note, however, that
individual land shares are only demarcated when the land shareholder
wishes to withdraw his/her land share for the purposes of private
farming. In all other cases the land is held in common and each individ-
ual owns an undivided share of the land. In other words, only those who
wish to set up a fully independent operation know where their land
lies.
Although it is widely acknowledged that wholesale demarcation is not
practicable, there is a critical difference in the relation between an
'owner' and a demarcated land plot and an 'owner' of an undivided
share which lies somewhere within the boundaries of the collective
enterprise. If the distribution of land ownership was intended to repli-
cate the benefits of private ownership, it is questionable whether the
somewhat legalistic and formal private ownership of an undivided share
can achieve the same ends. As we shall see below, this formal privatisa-
tion only seems to be able to deliver the hoped for results when other
factors are also present.
Non-land assets
Similarly, ownership of non-land assets (buildings, machinery, equip-
ment, stores, livestock) has been devolved to farm members. However,
individual non-land shares (commonly known as property shares) are
not equal. The farm's assets are evaluated at 'book value', and unequal
shares are distributed, based on the different labour input of individual
farm members. These differences are usually the product of a coefficient
which takes into account salary and years of service. (Thus a worker with
twenty years service receives a larger property share than a recent re-
cruit; a farm director receives more than a dairymaid even when both
have been farm members for an equal length of time). Property shares
are confusingly expressed in 'roubles', which reflect not the current cash
value of their property share but the relative proportion of the farm's
assets at book value at the time of share distribution. Thus the rouble
value of property shares are correct relative to each other, but do not
reflect current cash values as they only periodically take into account
inflation or post-share distribution amortisation of the value of non-
land assets.
Again, the privatisation of ownership of non-land assets was explicitly
aimed at replicating the careful husbandry of scarce resources in private
ownership. It was widely acknowledged that as long as the machinery
and equipment belonged to everybody and to nobody, no one had an
interest in their maintenance; this lack of interest was linked to the
rapid deterioration of non-land assets on state and collective farms. As
noted above for land, it is questionable whether the recent privatisation
of non-land assets has increased interest in their care and maintenance.
In a sense, the post-reform privatisation of non-land assets represents a
less significant change from Soviet-era practices than the privatisation
of land. If land was formerly the property of the 'whole people' repre-
sented by the state, non-land assets were for all practical purposes the
property of the collective farm. What has changed is the calculation of
what proportion of the farm's assets is 'owned' by each individual
member. However, as this does not represent the ownership of this
tractor or that lorry, it remains a fairly abstract relation, in and of itself.
As we shall see below, other factors need to be present if the hoped for
improvements are to be realised.
Louise Perrotta 125
Thus there has been a significant de jure devolution of ownership of

agricultural land and assets. Although there was an initial distinction
made between collective farms (kolkhoz) and state farms (sovkhoz), it is
widely acknowledged that this distinction had become virtually mean-
ingless by the 1980s. Land ownership had ceased to have any practical
significance, and both state and collective farms were wholly subject to
the fulfilment of plans. There was little distinction between the treat-
ment or status of workers on state and collective farms. As a result of the
post-1990 reforms, many state farms were transformed into collective
farms which were subsequently privatised. Thus the status of all agricul-
tural workers (and pensioners) has been transformed from that of
workers/employees to that of land and property owning shareholders.
Although this transformation has significant implications for the con-
struction of rural identities and for our discussion of the category of
'peasant', it has not produced millions of small, 'family owned and
managed', 'peasant' farms. Despite the fact that the vast majority of
former collective farms have changed their status to that of joint stock
companies, cooperatives or partnerships, most have retained their ori-
ginal size and membership.
Yet amongst these 'structurally similar' collectives, we find a wide
variation in terms of the relations between people and land, people
and labour, people and decision-making. These range along a spectrum
from 'nothing has changed except the name', to 'now, we have to make
decisions about how to divide farm income between wages, dividends
and investment'. There are a number of factors which impinge on these
distinctions.
Surprisingly, one of the most critical factors seems to be whether
actual, official share certificates have been issued or not. In the case of
both land and property shares, there have been significant delays in the
actual distribution of legal share certificates: this is often said to be due
to 'shortages of paper', or of the necessary funds for printing large
numbers of certificates. These 'shortages' often reflect ongoing power
struggles between local authorities and federal level policy makers: the
former try and pass the cost of privatisation on to federal level author-
ities and/or use the excuse of shortages to delay confirmation of
changed ownership. Although this might seem a trivial point, the ab-
sence of formally certified documentation contributes to the sense of
unreality that sometimes characterises farm populations' attitudes to
their changed status. The actual issue of share certificates invariably
generates interest and activity. There seems to be a critical difference
between having your name on a list of shareholders with the size of your
(alleged) land and property share, and having an official document in

your hand. This distinction is linked to the necessity of making a deci-
sion as to the future use of this share: to whom should I lease my land
share? With whom shall I invest my property share? However, even
where the issue of certificates is not accompanied by the need for an
immediate decision as to its use, the sense of security invested in official
documentation seems to encourage the development of a feeling that T
can make an alternative decision about this land/property should I wish
to do so in the future.'
The other critical factor which distinguishes one collectively occupied
farm from another is the nature of the relationships between farm
managers and farm populations, or more specifically the personality of
the farm director. These lie along a spectrum from uncommunicative
autocrat to democratic manager, responding to the interests of share-
holders. If he (and it usually if not always is a he) wishes to ignore the
changed status of the members and/or to trivialise the meaning of land
and property share ownership, farm populations usually fail to evince
any sign of changed attitudes or behaviour. On the other hand, if the
farm director is enthusiastic and communicative, farm members are
more likely to explain that 'the land is now ours, the profits are now
ours, so it is worth working harder'. Here there is a clear association on
the part of farm directors, between 'land-owning' and trying to increase
'labour discipline'.
Agricultural wages are excessively low throughout Russia. On farms
where decisions are made autocratically by farm directors, members
simply complain, and state that they are being treated even worse
than 'before'. This creates a profound sense of betrayal, as the acquisi-
tion of legal ownership of land and non-land assets is intimately associ-
ated with falling incomes and increasing economic insecurity. However
on farms where the farm budget has been exposed to public debate, farm
members are more likely to explain that they have agreed to forego
wages or dividends in favour of investment in, for example, a processing
facility, which will decrease their reliance on non-paying large agro-
processors.
The third factor which impinges on the realisation of the benefits of
privatisation is whether or not land and property shareowners receive a
'return' on their assets. Where rent is paid by the collective enterprise for
use of owners' land shares, this increases the 'feeling of ownership', as
the ownership of land shares suddenly acquires economic, as opposed to
purely abstract, value. Where there is competition for the use of land
shares, this feeling is further increased. Similarly, where dividends are
Louise Perrotta 127
paid in proportion to the size of property shares, ownership acquires a

more meaningful reality.
In a sense, the distinctions relate directly to the shades of reality that
attend dejure ownership of land and property. Although ownership need
not necessarily be individually actualised (by, for example, private
farming), it must be individually acknowledged, either by holding offi-
cial certification of ownership, by autonomous participation in deci-
sion-making, or by receipt of a reasonable return. Very often the three
go hand in hand as the more progressive farm director is more likely to
acquire and distribute share certificates than the autocrat; rents and
dividends are more likely to be paid to land and property share owners,
where their rights are publicly acknowledged. Most importantly, formal,
legal ownership only really acquires practical significance when owner-
ship is accompanied by genuine participation in the process of decision-
making.
How does this influence the notion of the peasant? Does private
ownership of land and property shares resemble private ownership of
physical plots of land and tractors enough to sustain a resemblance
between the collective farm worker/shareholder and the archetypical
peasant? Is the voting, working, rentier, land shareholder more 'peasant-
like' than her complaining and compliant counterpart? It seems to me
that the answer is that 'it depends'. If all agricultural workers were
members of an undifferentiated rural proletariat during the Soviet era,
the reforms have created a space within which distinctions have
emerged. At one end of the spectrum, we find the stereotypical Peasant
Farm, owned, occupied and managed by an individual (or household),
who produces, exchanges or consumes according to his/her own ration-
ale. At the other end we find formal shareholders, whose ownership of
land and assets is a hopeless abstraction, linked to increasing poverty
and loss of even a modicum of power or control over their livelihoods.
In between, we find the full range of subtle distinctions, from reluctant
rentier capitalists, to enthusiastic co-operators. It seems to me that al-
though it is a matter of semantics where we draw the parallels with the
category of the peasant, the concept fails to reflect either the distinc-
tions or the changing uncertainties of post-Soviet agriculture.
If the intellectual exercise seems to be mired in semantic relativism,
there is a more practical aspect to the argument. Agricultural reform
policies were designed to stimulate a more efficient, productive and
profitable agricultural sector, with privatisation as the mainstay. Given
Soviet-era emphasis on the priority of production, it is hardly surprising
that sectoral reform was largely concentrated on reform of productive
units (that is, privatisation of the state and collective farms). Whether as
owner-occupant peasants or as shareholders with an interest in rents
and dividends, reform policies hoped to alter the behaviour of produ-
cers, increasing 'labour discipline' with a new series of incentives. As
noted above, this has been partially successful, provided that formal
privatisation is accompanied by practical innovations (participation in
decision-making, receipt of returns etc.). However, even where 'labour
discipline' has improved, and where land and assets are husbanded
more carefully, the overall results of sectoral reform have been devastat-
ingly disappointing. Overall production and productivity per hectare
are decreasing; agricultural wages have fallen far behind those of other
sectors; many farms are technically bankrupt. As structural privatisation
has produced not improvement but a deterioration in the agricultural
economy, we need to question both the assumptions that underlie the
policy and to look further afield for possible explanations. Although
some commentators suggest that privatisation has failed because it has
not gone far enough (for example, insistence on individualisation of
demarcated land holdings), agricultural managers and workers lay the
blame at the door of a number of off-farm factors.
Off-farm factors
The demise of central planning and of central definition of inter-

enterprise relations is at least as important as the on-farm changes
noted above. Where before the source and cost of inputs was the result
of administrative planning decisions taken at the centre, these inter-
enterprise relations are now the responsibility of individual farm man-
agers. They must find and pay for necessary inputs, and negotiate prices
and credit arrangements. Similarly, whereas before farm produce was
distributed according to plan, farms of all sizes and shapes now have to
undertake their own 'marketing'.
The logic which underwrites this policy change is clear: the efficien-
cies of the market depend on competition between independent eco-
nomic actors, whose actions determine supply, demand and the
emergence of real costs and prices. Although releasing agricultural pro-
ducers from submission to administrative planners does indeed consti-
tute their transformation into independent economic actors, they are
often forced to engage in exchange relationships with enterprises more
powerful than themselves. Many (now privatised) input suppliers enjoy
virtual monopoly status and many local agro-processors enjoy monop-
sony3 status as a result of earlier polices designed to increase economies
Louise Perrotta 129
of scale. Input suppliers can demand high prices in the absence of

competing suppliers; in the absence of affordable working capital,
input suppliers can impose tough terms and conditions for supplying
inputs when they are needed (often at least six months before harvest).
Similarly in the absence of a developed market, monopsony agro-pro-
cessors, distributors and storage facilities enjoy the power to virtually set
prices, and often delay payments for goods received for many months at
a time. Thus the ability of farm managers to realise the benefits of release
from central planning is undermined by the lack of competition both
upstream and downstream. This structural imbalance between produ-
cers, inputs suppliers and agro-processors has been responsible for the
current 'disparity of prices' which penalises agricultural producers. The
price squeeze ensures that few farms are able to replace aging machinery
and equipment; most are cutting back on their use of agri-chemicals
(pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers). As a result both overall produc-
tion and productivity per hectare have in many instances fallen below
Soviet era levels.
The situation is exacerbated by a complex system of heavy taxation,
which further reduces farms' profits and encourages both 'creative ac-
counting' and the development of barter exchanges.
As a result of these developments, wages have been drastically reduced
on most farms and many managers are unable to pay even minimal
wages on time. There are often no profits on which to pay dividends to
shareholders. Rent payments are waived as the survival of the farm as a
whole becomes more important than acknowledging private ownership.
Consequently for most farm members, be they workers, pensioners,
specialists or managers, privatisation is intimately associated with in-
creasing economic insecurity, and a profound feeling of betrayal. Need-
less to say, this does little to promote 'improved labour discipline',
stimulated by returns to either labour or capital investment.
Paradoxically, the deteriorating situation in agriculture as a whole is
relevant to our discussion of the post-socialist peasant. Throughout
Russia, decreasing and irregular wage payments have been accompanied
by a widespread increase in both the number and importance of the
individual subsidiary holding or small-scale peasant subsistence farming.
Individual subsidiary holdings: a universal peasantry?

We have so far failed to establish a meaningful co-relation between the
forms of agricultural activity and peasant identity, except for a fairly
small number of 'genuine' Peasant Farms. However throughout Russia
(indeed throughout the FSU), almost every rural household and increas-
ing numbers of urban households enjoy private ownership of a small
plot of land (average size 0.06 ha.). Here pensioners and workers, share-
holders and proletarians, doctors, industrial managers, and collective
farm workers engage in stereotypical peasant production: small-scale,
owner-occupied, using family labour, mostly for household consump-
tion with some surplus sold or exchanged. The phenomenon has been
facilitated by wide-scale distribution of land to households, and is uni-
versally welcomed. The enthusiasm for subsidiary household produc-
tion is linked to three factors:
1. High inflation for all goods, including foodstuffs.

2. The traditional and continuing uncertainty of supply of locally pro-
duced foodstuffs.
3. The notion that home produced food is better, cleaner or more
natural.
It is impossible to underestimate the importance of this growing phe-

nomenon. On collective farms, some workers claim to now spend up to
90 per cent of their time on their individual subsidiary holdings. All
claim that this is necessary to survival as their cash incomes are insuffi-
cient for their consumption needs. Similarly, urban workers who rely on
wages from state or 'recently privatised enterprises' also claim to rely on
their individual subsidiary holdings for access to sufficient and afford-
able foodstuffs. At weekends suburban trains are crowded with people
armed with gardening tools, seedlings, and rucksacks, all heading off to
their 'dacha'.
It is important to note that this is by no means the exclusive resort of
rural farm workers. The only exceptions that spring to mind are the 'new
Russians', the generation of BMW driving 'businessmen'.
If it is clear that there are strong economic reasons for the develop-
ment of this kind of subsistence farming, this fails to do justice to the
passion that attends working the household plot. Although household
production is clearly linked to simple concerns for food security, its
meaning has more profound symbolic connotations. The frequently
heard phrase 'we are all peasants now' (myi vse krestyaninyi seichas), is
invariably delivered with a wry smile, denoting both a slightly embar-
rassed acknowledgement of the contradiction between being a profes-
sional and a tiller of the soil, and a certain pride in engaging in a
productive relation with the soil of the Motherland. If Soviet Russia
was overtly a society of technophiles, it masked a deep and profound
Louise Perrotta 131
commitment to a link between Russianness and an idealised peasantry.

Much loved 'real' Russian folk music emanates from the steppe, from
the vagaries of weather and harvest. Indeed a musicologist once ex-
plained to me that the peculiarly deep tones of female voices singing
Russian folk songs is linked to feet firmly planted in the soil, to a womb
rooted in the earth, and to the need to be heard if lost in the forest. This
attachment to an idealised peasantry lends a spiritualised dimension to
subsistence farming, and contributes to a de facto increase in partial
peasant identity.
Representatives of USAID, for example, have suggested that the in-
crease in subsistence farming on individual subsidiary holdings might
be interpreted as an embryonic form of Peasant Farming. Certainly there
are considerable structural similarities. However this suggestion needs to
be treated with caution. Most importantly, rural populations emphasise
that although they can manage their individual subsidiary holdings
using household, manual labour, they don't have access to the machin-
ery and equipment necessary for farming on five or more hectares. Fur-
ther, they exhibit considerable and reasonable resistance to suggestions
that they access bank credit for acquiring machinery and equipment, as
'interest rates are too high'. The transformation of the household plot
into a legally registered Peasant Farm also entails the establishment of
(dangerous) relations with the authorities, especially with the tax in-
spectorate, known to be capable of capricious and vindictive application
of the confused tax legislation. Inputs for individual subsidiary farming
can be acquired through employment in the larger collective enterprise
either legally, as 'payment in kind', or informally, through theft. Al-
though the latter is quietly tolerated as quantities are relatively small
and the households are 'farm members', theft between neighbouring
independent enterprises is clearly more problematic. Unless the situation
changes substantially, it seems unlikely that we shall see a transformation
of 'informal' individual subsidiary farming into official Peasant Farming
in the near future. Again, the question of 'what counts as peasant
farming?' is a matter of definition and semantics.
Conversely, the worsening situation in agriculture as a whole has
encouraged substantial 'diversification' of economic activity among
agricultural workers. As reliance on agricultural production increases
in uncertainty, farm managers sometimes 'invest' cash from the harvest
in more profitable trading activities - trading often in non-agricultural
goods - in order to increase farm income to a sustainable level. Similarly,
farm workers, especially those with access to transport, often 'moon-
light', using farm lorries for private deliveries. Even the small income
derived from the sale of surplus from individual subsidiary holdings is

frequently reinvested in more profitable trading deals. If 'we're all peas-
ants now' is often repeated with a measure of delicate pride, 'we're all
traders now' is equally frequently delivered, but with embarrassed resig-
nation. Here it is important to note, that this kind of 'trading' is anti-
thetical to the (spiritualised and Russian) concept of the peasant. While
the sale of primary produce in the market can be construed as a peasant
activity par excellence, the reinvestment of income in trade in imported
cigarettes is conceptualised as a distinctly 'un-peasant' activity. 'Trading'
may have lost some of the absolute condemnation it engendered in the
early days of market liberalisation, but it nevertheless retains a some-
what negative connotation, tainted by the impurity of the 'unearned'
income of the non-productive speculator.
Conclusion
Partible persons: alienated rural proletariat, agricultural

shareholders, peasant subsistence farmers or rural entrepreneurs/
traders?
It seems to me that the notion of partible identities is useful for our
discussion of the 'post-socialist peasant'. Structurally, the status of almost
all agricultural workers has changed from that of dependent worker/
employee to that of land and property owning shareholder. In practice,
changes in identity are more varied, subtle and unstable. Most agricul-
tural workers remain members of an alienated rural proletariat much of
the time. Some acknowledge a change in their status as the legal owners
of the land and property of the collective enterprise where they work. Of
these latter, only a proportion actually understand the rights and respon-
sibilities invested in their newly acquired ownership. Fewer still have
been able to exercise the power invested in ownership, depending largely
on access to information and/or on the good will of the farm manager.
Almost all experience the change as one of decreasing economic security,
and view the reform process with embodied cynicism.
When working on their individual subsidiary plots, many Russians
look, feel, and act like 'peasants'; yet when they return to the office, or
even to work on the fields of the collective farm, this identity disappears
for the former as it diminishes for the latter. Selling home made smetana
(sour cream) in the market may be construed as a 'proper peasant
activity', but buying cigarettes for resale before the return home is
consistent with a distinctly non-peasant engagement in speculative
Louise Perrotta 133
trade. The encouragement of private Peasant Farming may have been

based on assumptions about the fundamental rationality of owner-
occupying peasant production, but has proved impossible to implement
in wholesale fashion - not necessarily because the assumption was
wrong, but because it has proved logistically impossible to transform
large state and collective farms into millions of small, demarcated private
Peasant Farms. Considerable resistance to Peasant Farming is often based
on rational assessments by rural populations as to the economic viability
of small scale farming in current circumstances: many members of
the rural population are incapable of managing a small business, and
even those with the potential recognise that off-farm factors (high and
capricious taxation, lack of appropriate credit facilities, disparity of
prices) undermine the ability of all agricultural producers to operate
profitably.
The creation of a class of rational, efficient, peasant-like producers
through privatisation is clearly incapable of delivering the hoped for
improvements in productivity and efficiency in and of itself. Ownership
of the means of production can only acquire meaning if it is understood.
Ownership of the means of production can only acquire value if effi-
cient management of those means can deliver a measure of economic
security. In order to generate demand for private ownership, policy-
makers need to pay urgent attention to off-farm factors, both upstream
and downstream of the production process.
Annex
Land reform in the Russian Federation: principal laws, decrees and

resolutions
1. The Constitution of the Russian Federation. 12 December 1993. Recognises
private, state, municipal and other forms of land ownership.
Laws
1. On Land Reform, 23 October 1990, amended 27 December 1990.
2. On Peasant Farms, 22 November 1990, amended 27 December 1990.
3. On Ownership in the RFSR, 24 December 1990, supplemented and amended
24 June 1992, 14 May 1993 and 24 December 1993.
4. The RFSR Land Code, 25 April 1990.
5. On Payment for Land, 11 October 1991.
6. On the Rights of Citizens to Acquire as Private Property and to Sell Land
Parcels to Conduct Subsidiary Farming and Dacha Operations, Horticulture
and Private Housing Construction, 23 December 1992.
Presidential decrees
1. No. 323, On Urgent Measures for Implementation of Land Reform, 27 Decem-
ber 1991.
2. No. 218, On Regulations for Determining Norms of Free Transfer of Land to
Private Property, 2 March 1992.
3. No. 480, On Additional Measures for Allotting Land Parcels to Citizens, 23
April 1993.
4. No. 1139, On Certain Measures to Support Private Peasant Farms and Agricul-
tural Cooperatives, 27 April 1993.
5. No. 1767, On Regulation of Land Relations and Development of Agrarian
Reform in Russia, 27 October 1993.
6. No. 2287, On Introduction of Land Legislation of the Russian Federation in
Accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, 24 December
1993.
Government resolutions
1. No. 9, On Supporting the Development of Peasant Farms, 4 January 1991.
2. No. 86, On Procedure for Reorganisation of Collective and State Farms, 29
December 1991.
3. No. 708, On Procedures for the Privatisation and Reorganisation of Enterprises
of the Agro-industrial Complex, 4 September 1992.
4. No. 503, On Affirming the Procedures for Approval of Land Purchases and
Sales of Small Land Parcels, 30 May 1993.
5. No. 324, On the Experience of Agrarian Transformation in Nizhni Novgorod
Oblast, 15 April 1994.
Other documents
1. Recommendations for the Reorganisation of Collective and State Farms, 14
January 1992.
Notes
1. The capitalisation of 'Peasant Farming' is deliberate as a Peasant Farm is a
specific juridical entity with specific rights and so on. This makes it different,
in important ways, from a generic peasant farm.
2. The 'disparity of prices' refers to the different rates of inflation, increasing the
cost of agricultural inputs (especially fuel) far more rapidly than the prices of
primary agricultural produce.
3. Monopsony is where an organisation/enterprise is the sole buyer for a given
product or service (as opposed to a monopoly where an organisation is sole
producer of the product or service). This lack of competition between purcha-
sers adversely affects producers since the former control prices, terms, condi-
tions of payment and so on (in a similar way to a monopoly which can set its
own prices, terms and conditions in the absence of competing producers).
Louise Perrotta 135
Select Bibliography
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Central and Eastern Europe and the Former USSR, (Washington DC: World Bank).
Chmatko, N. (1994), 'Les Agriculteurs Russes Face aux Changements Economi-
ques', Information sur les Sciences Sociales, 33: 2, 371-95.
Csaki, C. (1993), 'Transformation in agriculture in Central-Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union: major policy issues and perspectives' in A. J. Rayner and
D. Colman (eds), Current Issues in Agricultural Economics (Basingstoke: Macmillan
- now Palgrave.)
Holt, S. (1995), Gender and Property Rights: Women and Agrarian Reform in Russia
and Moldova (Washington DC: World Bank).
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6
Subsistence Farming and the
Peasantry as an Idea in
Contemporary Russia
Caroline Humphrey
What if we start by leaving aside objective definitions of the peasantry

and ask instead which people call themselves peasants in Russia today?
It is important to realise that 'peasant' has become a fully operational
category in post-socialist Russia. The agricultural reforms of the early
1990s aimed to replace the collective and state farms with financially
independent small farms. A certain number of these were created all
over the country and they were called 'peasant economies' (krest'yans-
kiye khozyaistvo). Collective and state farms did not totally disappear;
but most were dissolved and reconstituted, and these 'privatised' organ-
isations were also termed associations of peasant economies of one type
or another. Russia therefore should be full of people who identify them-
selves as peasants. Yet this is not so. The explanation cannot be simple,
for older concepts of the peasantry (krestyanstvo) smoulder behind the
new label. This chapter explores why self-identification with the peas-
antry is so fragile and changeable in contemporary Russia, and it shows
how official use of the word 'peasant' masks fundamental contradic-
tions in the agricultural reforms.
The idea behind the reforms was that, freed from the administrative
control and the systematic abrogation of property rights of the collect-
ives, individual agricultural producers would find it in their own ra-
tional self-interest to set up efficient, independent, market-oriented,
household farms. Policies to effect this transformation have been dra-
matically unsuccessful and the collectives remain functionally more or
less unchanged in most areas, whether renamed or not (Humphrey
1998). Nevertheless, if we look at what is actually happening in villages
and towns, there are two processes which suggest that something which
136

might in theory be seen as the 'peasantisation' of everyday life is pro-

ceeding apace. In both rural and urban contexts there is increased reli-
ance on subsistence-oriented agriculture with household or family labour.
The first process occurs in collectively organised farms. Here we have
strong evidence that the jointly organised institutions are weakening
dramatically, while the individually held plots of the members are
gaining in economic importance. Almost everywhere, the latter now
provide a far greater proportion of family income than the wages earned
in the collective (Humphrey 1998: Ch. 9; Panarin 1999a). I call this
process smallholding activation. In provincial towns and cities there is
a second process at work which is economically somewhat similar. In
the worsening economic crisis of the 1990s there has been a mass
recourse to urban subsistence farming. Vegetable plots, sometimes
more than one per household, are allocated by city councils on desig-
nated lands on the edge or outside the town. People build themselves
second tiny houses on these sites, colloquially known as dachas. I call
this process dacha activation.
The activation of both rural smallholdings and urban dachas have led
to more time being spent by ordinary people, whatever their profession,
on peasant-like concerns: digging, weeding, milking, etc., preoccupa-
tion with matters such as better seeds or storage of root crops, or calcu-
lations of how much will last over the winter; indeed there has appeared
a mass literature on homely techniques of do-it-yourself farming. But
neither process is unequivocally identified with 'peasantisation' by the
people involved. I shall argue that this is because both smallholdings in
collectives and dachas are caught up in their own, separate templates
and ideologies, neither of which coincide with the historically resonant
notion of the peasant economy (krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo).
The same is true of the one type of farm which in the early 1990s was
seen expressly as the start of the resurrection of the old pre-revolutionary
Russian independent peasantry. This is the independent small com-
mercial farm, the so-called 'peasant-farmer economy' (krest'yanskoye-
fermerskoye khozyaistvo). At the start of the reforms, rural people were
encouraged by the government to take their shares from the collective
and set up on separately allocated land, either as a small partnership
(tovarishestvo) or as an individual family farm. However, the government
has never created the basic market conditions by which such farms
could function, notably the right to buy and sell land. This is again a matter
of ideology, as will be described briefly later. The contradiction is implicit
in the name: if the word fermer suggests a western-type of commercial
farmer, the word krest'yanskoye denotes a more subsistence-oriented,
inturned, and ultimately state-dominated existence. As we shall see,

the tiny number of independent farmers who have survived the
1990s are now more likely to see themselves as businessmen than peas-
ants.
What I am arguing is that 'the peasantry' is present in Russia as a
highly meaningful social category and yet almost no one sees their own
life as corresponding to it in reality. Most people do not identify them-
selves straightforwardly as peasants because what they do, and their
place in the scheme of things, does not coincide with their idea of
what a peasant existence is.1 To understand this, we must examine not
only the actors' various rationales for agricultural activity but also their
wider conceptual mapping of property, society and politics.
What is complex about the Russian situation is that at some deep level
of identity many people will say that they are peasants, or that 'ances-
trally' they are peasants, even if now they are not (living as) peasants at
all (Koznova 1997: 379). A reader might react, well, so what? Who cares
what they call themselves? I suggest, however, that identity does matter,
because it affects motivations and strategies in the real world. Chapter
1 in this volume has already stated that top-down models of the peas-
antry developed by urban and educated elites have had important reper-
cussions for the lives of rural populations; peasants have been variously
idealised as revolutionary heroes and vilified as petty capitalists, or seen
as a conservative drag on economic progress. This is indeed the case for
Russia, especially in the Soviet period. But today, with the weakness of
the Russian state and the indecisiveness of central agricultural policies,
the operational categories of local administrators and the current ideas
actually held by the farming people themselves are far more important.
From a methodological point of view, it is useful for us to abstract a
concept of 'the peasant life' from these local representations, because
this enables us to understand better farming people's strategies which
are developed both in relation to this idea and, as it were, by turning
their back on it. The 'peasant life' is an idea that is honed in relation to
other possible lives. The theoretical models of the peasantry and the
rejection of socialism promoted by Russian intellectuals are more or less
irrelevant, since the villagers' own experience is what counts for them. 2
It is through family memories and, crucially, through the education and
practical experience of the Soviet system that the idea of a new peas-
antry is evaluated (a similar point is made by Zbierski-Salameh (1999)
with regard to Polish small farmers). So, if this book in general is taking
an identity-centred approach to the question of the peasantry, the
particular issue addressed here is why, despite the increase in depend-
ence on subsistence agriculture, and despite the fact that they have a
firm and not necessarily negative idea of what the peasant life is, most
people are in various ways reluctant to identify themselves with it. Is
this because they cannot be peasants, or because their values and hopes
are now such that do not want to be peasants - or both?
I first discuss the case of rural agriculture and then that of urban
farming. In the final section I make some speculations about the wider
political implications of the stances that people in fact are taking.
Villagers' ideas of the 'peasantry'

Contemporary ideas of the peasantry are many layered and include
conceptions of several stages of Soviet rural life over and above what is
seen as the timeless archetype of the 'Russian peasant'. What is this
archetype as present-day rural people formulate it? From oral materials
collected by Koznova in Central Russia in 1993-6,3 it seems that the idea
rests on the independent family farm within a village community
(obshchina) of similar farms. Peasant farms are mixed, not specialised,
with livestock, fruit and vegetables as well as arable fields. The values
associated with peasant life flow from key words: the care for and
restoration of the earth, respect for manual labour, the will (volya) of
the owner, orientation towards provision for the family and its future,
a feeling of community (obshchnosf), the practice of mutual help, and
belief in Orthodox Christianity - all of this bound by tradition, conserva-
tism and group social experience (Koznova 1997: 360).
The pre-revolutionary peasant is associated with tenacious conscious-
ness of ownership (sobstvennosf), that is, the sense of personal possession,
mastery and responsibility, especially of land. Note that this idea of
possessive ownership is distinct from, even opposed to 'private property'
in the western legal sense (property that may be negotiated, alienated
and used to make a profit4).
Possessive ownership was never market-oriented, yet it was antithet-
ical to Soviet ideology. Generations of villagers were taught that posses-
sion-consciousness was the narrow-minded characteristic of outmoded
societies. It should be eradicated by Soviet mass activism on behalf of
the collectivity, that is, by the old Russian communalism or commu-
nitarianism (sobornosf) which was always attributed to the peasants and
was now manifest in the modernised, industrialised Soviet guise of
collectivism.5 A sketch, recently written by the ethnographer Meshcher-
yakov revealing the sensibility of 'a man of the past', shows us the
satirical scorn of Soviet attitudes to peasant-like property-consciousness:
How robust are our people. However much the authorities tried to
eradicate the feeling of ownership, nothing came of it. Here's one
aunty buying milk from another. The deal is done right in the bus.
Both the one and the other have three-litre jars. But one's is full and
the other's is empty. Protecting their sacred personal property, they
don't exchange jars, but in the midst of the journey start pouring the
milk. Of course, it spills. They both got angry and started to scold the
driver - why did he, heck, swing so hard round the corners?
(Meshcheryakov 1999: 81)
Leninist ideology saw the peasantry as a dying class, destined either to

become a rural proletariat or a petty capitalist farming class (Zemstov
1991), and Koznova writes (1997: 360-1) that this may explain why
Soviet policy-makers never perceived, and therefore never developed,
the positive, adaptive qualities of Russian farmers. The paradox, she
continues, is that the Soviet cultural model of the peasant, while directed
purposely to subordinate the peasantry, actually 'fed' on some of its
values. The values of individual labour, the autonomous household
economy, and independence in general, were repressed, but the peasant
qualities of egalitarianism (uravniteVnosV) and corporatism were exces-
sively promoted. The Soviet cultural model is relevant to current atti-
tudes because it was energetically and thoroughly followed up in
practice: state and collective farms only served to eradicate the already
weak market orientation and 'private property' institutions of Russian
villagers. As 'Soviet' soon came to be a synonym for the socialised and the
collectivised, the idea of the 'Soviet peasant' found itself in opposition to
the independent peasant. In effect, as Koznova perceptively remarks, the
'Soviet peasant' was a contradiction in terms, since it presupposed the
overcoming of the core of what was peasant-like in the peasantry: au-
tonomous, property-conscious economising (1997: 361).
Rural farming and the idea of the Peasant Farm

The 'Soviet peasant' nevertheless became an official social category,6
evolving through the 1930s-40s, the 1950s-60s, and flowering in the
Brezhnev period of the 1970s-80s. In reality, the way of life of Soviet
farming populations was based on a tense relation between wage work
for the collective and labour on the personal plot (which was assumed to
be in competition with the official job). By the 1970s the system cul-
minated in extreme hierarchisation and labour specialisation. Collective
production reached a ceiling, despite numerous reforms aimed to give
incentives to the workers. Meanwhile, production on the plots slowed

somewhat, and it became apparent that farm workers were preferring to
buy food rather than labour on their smallholdings to produce it them-
selves.7 As people came more and more to be waged workers with plots
on the side, and were taught to see themselves as tractor-drivers, calf-
herders, irrigation specialists, or mechanics, the word 'peasant' (krest'ya-
nin) was pushed aside in favour of blander, less historically redolent
terms, such as 'rural labourer' (sel'skii truzhenik). Indeed, Zemtsov writes
of late Soviet times:
In short, every effort is made to avoid using the word 'peasant', even
when the word fits. The only reason for this circumlocution is that
the authorities associate the word with the image of the unruly,
ungovernable muzhik (bumpkin) class that has more than once re-
belled against the regime.
(1991: 229)
In post-Soviet times, we have to deal with an extraordinarily complex

interweaving of factors. On the one hand, the official Soviet denigration
of the peasant was replaced by the official reformist policy of reviving
the peasantry. On the other, the collectives did not disappear, so the
objective conditions for people to consider themselves rural waged
workers remained for the majority of people. Yet, neither of these situ-
ations is a simple as they appear.
For one thing, the political freedoms gained in the early 1990s meant
that people were at last free not to agree with the new government
approval of the peasantry. Koznova's materials indicate that people
mostly saw the reforms as the affair of the bosses. 'Just let the pay be
good - the rest is up to the farm director,' was one reaction; 'They tell us
where to work; that's where we go,' was another. 'Reorganisation was
necessary, wasn't it? We are neither for nor against it. We know there are
new trends and we should carry them out,' 8 was a typical response to
the reforms. This 'psychology of the hired labourer' (Koznova 1997: 363)
did not encourage people to separate off from the collective. The pro-
portion of people supporting the idea of the 'new peasantry' dropped
sharply during the 1990s (Humphrey 1998: Ch. 9). By the mid to
late 1990s, as both Koznova and Gorshkova et al. (1998: 22-5) have
clearly shown, the Brezhnev period, the acme of subsidised collectivism
in agriculture, was widely seen as a golden era, a time of stability,
economic abundance, national pride, social justice and belief in the
future.9
Of course, this rosy vision of the past takes form in contrast to under-
standings of the present day (and vice versa). In brief what has happened
is that collective production has plummeted during the 1990s, and
production on the plots has not risen sufficiently to compensate. The
liberalisation of prices for agricultural products caused a drastic fall in
incomes, and the poverty and uncertainty this produced are now com-
pared bitterly with the Brezhnev period. Indeed, that era was indeed
'better' for rural populations. Two questions arise: why would villagers
identify with a future construct of 'the peasantry' that has none of the
security (even if illusory) they associate with life ten years ago? 'Life has
never been worse than in the present; life today is sickening (toshno)/
agreed many of Koznova's respondents (1997: 368). And: even if such a
peasant life were attractive to some, are there realistic possibilities for
villagers to achieve it?
Today, the faltering collectives and the plots are disastrously entan-
gled. Householders are unable to manage their plots without help from
the collective (ploughing, fertiliser, cattle feeds, hay-making, spare
parts, fuel, and so forth), yet the collectives cannot give all this out
and also pay wages. Without wages, people are reluctant to work for
the collective and they steal from it too (Panarin 1999a), and so the
vicious circle goes on. This means that 'objectively' collective farmers
cannot be peasants, because they cannot manage an autonomous small-
holding, and 'subjectively' they cannot be peasants because an import-
ant part of their consciousness remains that they are specialised
professional parts in a social whole. Someone who has been trained as,
and sees himself as, a tractorist may be reluctant to take on the general
farming work of the 'peasant' enterprise (pig-keeping, lambing, and all
the rest of it). Furthermore, the very term 'collective farmers' gives the
wrong impression, because it suggests that all the people living in
villages are engaged in hands-on farming. This is far from true. The
lists of village-dwellers include numerous accountants, machine repair-
ers, builders, drivers, engineers, secretaries, bakers, furnace workers, etc.,
and this is not to mention the teachers, doctors, librarians, Trade Union
officials and so forth who live in villages but are now paid by the state
rather than by the farm (Humphrey 1998: Ch. 9). 10
Still, as I have said, all villagers are now relying on their plots for
subsistence.11 Let us look at this 'smallholder activation' in more detail.
In the 1990s, the plots have been freed from tax in most places, have
been made available for purchase, that is, they can now be the property
(sobstvennosf) of the farmer rather than the collective,12 and earlier
restrictions on the number of livestock held have been removed. How-
ever, it is not just economically, but also ideationally, that the plots do
not correspond to the peasant farm. For a start, they are still called
'personal subsidiary holdings' (lichnoye podsobnoye khozyaistvo, LPKh),
expressing the idea of their secondary character. In Buryatiya, they are
too small to support the entirety of a household's food needs at locally
defined reasonable standards through the year (Panarin 1999b). For this
reason, and because there is little work in the collectives, young people
are leaving the land to take temporary work elsewhere (mines, building-
sites, and so on.). Therefore, the 'household' that cares for the plots is in
many cases not a full household and may consist only of old people.
With the drastic fall in availability of petrol and electricity, work on the
plots is even more manual than in late Soviet times. Finally, as Panarin's
team discovered in Tunka, Buryatia (1999b) strategies for farming the
plots still rely on collective farm inputs rather than the classic 'peasant'
support of kin and neighbours. It is not that neighbours and kin do not
help one another - they exchange labour and ready-made goods. But
they lack the technology to keep the smallholdings going in the current
mode of production. Even if all the useful land of the collective were to
be divided up and given out to the households - which would give each
household enough land for respectable subsistence - in reality the
system could not survive, because the type of cattle preponderant in
Tunka requires artificial fodder (now produced by the collective with
heavy machinery) and without it, their productivity would decline;
it would then be necessary to increase the number of cattle, and
the land would then be insufficient (Panarin 1999b, Humphrey 1998:
Ch. 9). Villagers know all this well: consciousness of the virtual impossi-
bility of turning the smallholding into a peasant farm reinforces the
existing specialised-worker identity and the myriad of daily decisions
that maintain the miserable interdependency between the collective
and the plots.
There is yet another problem with realising the peasant life, the idea
of sobstvennost' (ownership) itself. Administrators are now encouraging
farm directors to encourage property-consciousness among their
workers. But there is complete confusion about what this means: the
promotion of commercial farming along neo-liberal lines, or some 'peas-
ant' hybrid in which control of land and profits still ultimately remains
in state hands? Full rights to buy and sell land is rejected by the great
majority of people, on the grounds that this will give rise to rapacious
landlordism. According to Koznova's materials, rural people associate
the idea of sobstvennost' only with material income, the products from
the smallholdings, or income from collective seen as dividends for their
shares. Most of them do not link ownership with the peasant connota-
tions of responsibility, risk, strategising and selling. And if they do make
such associations, they may reject them: T think that I could probably
be a salesman no worse than anyone else,' said one animal technician
aged 33 in a collective farm of Vologod district, 'but I was brought up
from my childhood to work the soil' (Koznova 1997: 365). It is assumed
that the 'working the soil' and 'salesmanship' are incompatible.
The ambiguity over ownership refers not just to the plots but also to
the property of the collective. Here we could refer to Stark's notion
(1996) of 'recombinant property' and Verdery's idea (1999) of 'fuzzy
property', both referring to the situation where the same item is subject
to complex overlapping rights. In Russia, members of collectives in
theory 'own' those collectives through their shares. Yet, they do not
control them (the farm directors, state Land Commissions,13 and the
Ministry of Agriculture do). Hence it is not surprising that workers
mostly do not want to get involved in the details of wider economic
decision-making, leaving this to the managers. They are confused by the
new system of values: 'Under socialism everything was counted as the
people's (narodnym), but now all of it is being sold to the people for
money,' said another of Koznova's respondents (1997: 375). By the late
1990s this situation is even more confusing, since no one has money to
buy anything from the collectives and all external loans have dried up.
Even so, the whole idea of 'selling off the collective property (seen in
'privatisation', the issue of shares, the 'selling' of shares for land and
machinery in the early 1990s to selected fermers, etc.) has undermined
the emotive link between workers and the collective. Almost everyone
put their shares back into the collective, but for many workers an indis-
solvable tie was nevertheless lost: the collective is now seen as alien
(chuzhoi), no longer 'ours' (nash) (Koznova 1997: 375).14 Consequently,
it is among the managers, who do have to take decisions on behalf of the
collectives, and the few energetic milkers or machine-operators who still
identify with it, that one might find a sense of 'real ownership' (Koznova
1997: 365).
Ultimately, the issue of sobstvennost (ownership) goes back to the
question of control. An adviser on agriculture to the Buryat government
told me:
We have no tradition of private property. People don't even feel it. If a

fermer (private farmer) has taken separate land people will drive their
cattle on to it or cut his hay. He may grumble, but nothing will be
done. There is no mechanism to compensate him or punish the
others. In fact, there is no one to complain to. Officials will say, 'It's a
pity,' but that's all.
In our society, everything depends on your post (dolzhnosf) and
your power-authority (vlastnoe polnomochiye). You feel yourself an
owner because of your powerful position, not because of your legal
rights. That's why the people who became fermers did so because of
their close ties with structures of power, and only those who cultivate
those links can succeed.15
These observations apply in the collective sphere as strongly as outside

it. The 'owner' (sobstvennik) is the one whose position gives the max-
imum number of rights and who also has the personal, practical power
to make others bend to his or her will.16 Ownership in this sense is
divorced not only from the legal situation (which may be deeply un-
clear) but also from the idea of peasant possession, which rests on the
moral right given by labour.
Yet the archetype of the peasant surfaces constantly in post-Soviet
responses. The peasant life is one of patient suffering, bare survival
and low status. 'Peasants are working cattle,' said one of Koznova's
respondents (1997: 371). Yet people also say, 'If there had been no
peasants, there would be no Russia'; 'the peasant feeds the people, he
cannot go on strike'; 'the peasantry is the foundation of society; that is
why there are these social misfortunes, because peasants are in a calami-
tous situation'; and, 'all that is good in people, their love for their
children, for the earth, for the Homeland - all that comes from our
peasant past' (Koznova 1997: 371-2). There are some people for
whom this positive vision is a spur to action. In fact, there are two
categories of potential peasants requiring further discussion, the people
excluded from collectives, and those who have either left voluntarily to
become fermers or who came from the cities to take up independent
farming.
The excluded are those whom the managers reckon cannot contribute
fully to the farm; they may be ill, disabled, alcoholic, or simply undis-
ciplined and negligent.17 Many of them remain living on the collective,
for especially in the rural depths they have nowhere else to go, and
Koznova is using a term current among managers when she refers to
them as 'ballast' (1997: 365). Now in a situation of economic prosperity,
especially if loans were available, it would be possible for these people to
make claim to land through the Land Commission and set up as inde-
pendent 'peasants'. However, such a situation is extremely rare in
Russia. For the most part, the excluded exist on temporary work, state
benefits, the plots immediately beside their houses, and thieving (Koz-
nova 1997: 365).
The 'peasant-farmers' set up at the beginning of the reforms are the
most plausible candidates for a new peasantry. Koznova (1997: 379) gives
the examples of K., whose grandfather had been a peasant in Siberia, and
decided to become an independent farmer (fermer), seeing this as a revival
of an ancient, forgotten way of life; and, C, who had spent his life
working in a factory, whose decision to become a farmer was influenced
by the fact that his ancestors were state peasants. Note, however, that
ancestral inspiration is not enough. Anyone setting up as a fermer would
have to have official contacts. Most commonly these were people who
were already managers of collectives and who obtained approval to hive
off the profitable parts for themselves (Humphrey 1998: Ch. 9). The
reality is that independent private farms required large capital loans
and equipment to get established, and hence were restricted to those
with powerful connections. Furthermore, it turned out that successful
operation of lone farms was almost impossible on the basis of a single
family - the great majority of such farms failed altogether, or turned into
trading companies. Now, only a tiny number of private fermer operations
survive. They usually employ workers and they are mostly located in
situations where there is ready access to city markets (Panarin 1999a);
in other words, they succeed as commercial, not 'peasant', farms.
Group operation tends to fall foul of the peasant ideal of equality.
Even if a communal group of shareholders (tovarishchestvo) sets up a
private farm, the logic of decision-making and control of shares by those
who contribute more (or less) labour leads to fears that the main share-
holder will become an 'individual master' (yedinolichnyi khozyain) while
the lesser shareholders soon become his hired labourers.18 The account-
ant of such a farm, aged 44, dreaded returning to the collective, but was
even more scared by the private farm. 'That [the collective] was such a
nerve-wracking thing, such a responsibility! They called you up, you
were rooted to the ground... No, I don't want to go back to that. But
living with a master? We are painfully unaccustomed to taking orders.
The ones in the collective, they were not masters, that was socialism!
The Party and the Trade Union would protect you' (Koznova 1997: 378).
From the outside, fermers may be counted peasants if they themselves
work the land with their own hands. Interestingly, it is held that they
should produce not just for themselves but also for the state. Koznova's
respondents said (1997: 379): 'Most fermers are not peasants, they are
self-seekers (rvachi) and give nothing to the state'; 'the fermer is after big
sobstvennost'; the peasant laboured and delivered (sdal) to the state, but
the fermer will be a landlord (pomeshchik) tomorrow; everything is just

for himself; 'the peasant loves his work, the fermer his income'.
Despite all this, some independent farmers do see themselves as peas-
ants. A former driver, now a fermer, made a paradigmatic statement to
Koznova (it seems almost too good to be true):
A human being by his nature should be gifted with something that

connects him to the land. That is what is most acceptable to me. I
plan everything myself: my work, my day, and I don't have to report
to anyone. I like the work. In the collective farm there are many
extra people, and they don't sympathise with it with their souls (ne
boleyut dushoi), they don't feel it is their own. My work is for myself,
for my sons, and so that things should be better and simpler for the
state.
(Koznova 1997: 380)
Most fermers, however, see themselves as having an entirely different

social status from the peasant. The peasant for them is someone who
lives by old folk customs, seen condescendingly as backward and stupid,
while the farmer is a phenomenon of the new times. In such a view, the
challenge of running a farm is not working the earth, but how to
organise and make money, how to realise their intellectual, managerial
potential (Koznova 1997: 378).
Examining the current notion of the 'peasant' in relation to the
situation, practice, and ideational frames of various categories of
rural dwellers has enabled us to understand why it is that so few
people identify themselves as peasants. Looking at urban farming
raises slightly different issues, since for townsfolk the question of self-
identification with the peasantry hardly arises. Yet the central problem-
atic of the forgoing section remains: how are we to characterise the huge
recent increase in the importance of subsistence farming? Here again,
we can use the idea of the peasant farm as a foil.
Farming in the city
Of course, it is not only in post-socialist countries that city farming is an

important source of income for urban dwellers (IDRC Report). Yet Vish-
nevskii's work (1998) shows that the socialist city was in many ways
quite unlike those in the capitalist world that accumulated ad hoc from
commercial, governmental and cultural activities.
The socialist city was in many ways deeply 'village-like' (derevenskii).

For a start, it was swamped demographically with former peasants from
the early 1930s onwards.
Sacrificed to the Moloch of industrialisation, deprived of rights, tor-

tured by hunger and the bloodletting and destruction of the war, the
village looked to the city to be saved, but continued [in the city] to
serve the same Moloch, bearing on its shoulders the main weight of
the 'building of socialism' and its defence. Those who saved them-
selves by surviving in the cities were for some time in a huge numer-
ical predominance over the core city inhabitants. The natural
consequence was that gradually influence and power over the city
centres came into their hands.
(Vishnevskii 1998: 98)
In cities like Magnitogorsk, thrown together in a few years to produce vast

amounts of steel, most rural incomers lived at first in earth huts (zem-
lyanki) and by 1938 the city was host to more than ten thousand cows,
goats and pigs (Kotkin 1995: 137). Vishnevskii sees the urban former
peasants as disoriented, 'declassed' people, having left the village behind
but failing to acquire urban habits or values (1998: 99-100). 19 By the
Khrushchev generation not only the party elite but the entire ruling
class at all levels and in all regions was unprecedentedly rural in social
origin. The fast-growing cities were hybrid concatenations of functional
and power relations. Planning, for example of where to site a factory,
obeyed no economic, still less market, rationality, but was a matter of the
officials' whims. Decisions were taken at the very heights of power re-
flecting ambiguous attitudes to urban industry. One of these was the 1956
edict not to site further manufacturing in major cities, and in minor cities
to place it on the far outskirts. Urbanisation became a standardised side-
product of industrialisation, a matter of mere utilitarian functions ('the
"labour resources" must be housed somewhere') and no effort was de-
voted to thinking about the specifically urban development of the city
itself (Vishnevskii 1998: 103). This judgement may be excessively harsh,
but it is certainly the case that Soviet cities consisted largely of functional
settlements attached to factories and institutions (for which Vishnevskii
uses the old term sloboda, settlement or colony) and that these could be
extraordinarily distant from one another 'leaving between dwelling
houses and social buildings wide spaces which the population can nei-
ther fill not bring to life'.20 City centres were deliberately left to slowly
decay in contrast to workers' colonies on the outskirts.21
Apartment block construction could not keep pace with the massive
inflow of people. Surrounding each city were streets of 'temporary'
barracks, and more germane to our theme, large areas of log cottages
which were identical to those the former farming folk had left behind in
the villages. In Russia as a whole in the 1940s and 1950s these urban
cottages were around 38 per cent of all city dwellings; by the 1970-90s
they were still 8-10 per cent (Vishnevskii 1998: 104).
It has to be said, however, that the peasant-type cottage was never a
popular dwelling in the city. This was not just because it lacked sanita-
tion and central heating and was almost invariably distant from the
place of work. Nor was it because Soviet regulations by the 1950s or so
forbade the keeping of cattle, etc. within city boundaries. The whole aim
of moving to the city was to better one's social status, to shift if not
oneself than at least one's children upwards to the position of educated,
civilised people. To recall Sheila Fitzpatrick's idea of the 'stories' Soviet
people told themselves to make sense of their lives, the 'Out of Back-
wardness' story constructed the 'primitive' peasantry as perhaps the
most basic legacy of the past to be overcome. Quite simply, peasants
were backward compared to town-dwellers (1999: 9-10). Individual
people could take part in the Soviet achievement merely by moving to
an urban job and living in an apartment.
As I have argued in the previous section, nothing has happened in the
1990s to dislodge this story. Nevertheless, especially in the Russian
provinces, people are increasingly relying on urban farming and we
must ask how they conceive of the process. The notion of the dacha
captures the contradictions.
A dacha [writes Zemtsov] can be anything from a squalid one-room

hut, without water, electricity or heating, to a palatial mansion,
complete with servants, watchmen, and a private beach and wood.
(1991: 81)
The word dacha comes from the verb dat' (to give) and the term
expresses the idea of an out-of-town summer house with a garden
given as a reward to selected people by the authorities. Initially limited
to Party functionaries and other elites, by the 1960s dachas came to be
given out to whole classes of state employees (see Humphrey 1997).
Except for those given out to political leaders, dachas were not set
apart but were built in picturesque places in large compounds (though
without the shops or centres of a village). Conceptually, the dacha was
contrasted with the cramped, regulated life of the city. A way of life
previously limited to the aristocracy, with summers largely spent at the

dacha and the rest of the year in the apartment, spread to all the more
prosperous sections of society. The importance of summer to-ings and
fro-ings from the dacha for the political elite was underscored by the
construction of specially paved roads to whisk cavalcades from the city
centre to rural retreats (Colton 1995: 513). For everyone, the dacha was
somewhere to relax, to indulge in private pursuits, to make friends over
a bonfire in the evenings, to go mushrooming, to play with the children.
The authorities began to impose strict legislation (the size of the plot,
the location, style and number of rooms in the house) as the number of
dachas grew, but nothing could eradicate the sense of relative freedom
and intimate sociability associated with dacha life.
The role of dachas in providing fresh food, compensating for eternal
shortages in Soviet times, was recognised by the institution of 'garden
plots' (sadovyye uchastki). As the earlier disorganised urban farming was
phased out, garden plots came to take their place, though now among
the more prosperous townspeople. These allotments (also colloquially
called dachas) were given out by institutions to deserving workers on the
basis that the land must be worked. Here people grew all those things
they could never otherwise acquire: local flowers, raspberries, lettuces,
tomatoes, squashes and so forth. A small house might be built, but
nothing solid or warm enough to live in through the winter. All of this
was still associated with pleasure; gardening was something that gave
joy to life. It is only in the 1990s, that the picture is darkening. In
poverty-stricken areas of Russia the dacha is now associated with neces-
sity and grinding work. Nevertheless, people are trying hard to keep
hold of the dacha ideal.
With the end of Soviet allocation of dachas, they are now acquired
'through connections' and money. In Ulan-Ude, for example, plots
belong to associations attached to government ministries, such as the
'Selenga' society of the Ministry of Agriculture or the 'Kosmos' society of
the Ministry of Trade. These are two organisations where shady patronage
reigns (blatnyye organizatsiya), I was told, where besides paying an annual
fee22 one must have links with the managers in order to join. With
money, one can get a larger plot, even a scenic spot to build a two-storied,
year-round house. No longer do the great factories provide communal
transport, ploughing services or storage for their workers holding 'garden
plots'. Families must now arrange all this themselves. Cultivation is
intense, with irrigation, raised beds, greenhouses and storages sheds
pressed into the small plots. The proliferation of do-it-yourself publica-
tions indicates that townsfolk are not just reproducing the old gardens
but engaging in serious farming, requiring new knowledge and tech-

niques. Increasing amounts of time have to be spent ('To do it properly,
someone has to live there all summer,' I was told).
Some people say that the dacha has now to all intents and purposes
disappeared in a city like Ulan-Ude.23 Yet I found that more prosperous
people commonly mentally divide their various allotments into places
for leisure and places for work. Practically all city dwellers now have
subsistence plots, which are given out by the authorities to all bona fide
citizens or else are simply appropriated on any free land. 24 Thus many
people now have two types of land: the dacha with its little house, where
vegetables, fruits and flowers are grown, and the nameless second plots,
where people raise life's necessities, mainly potatoes and cabbages. Poor
families make do with the second type alone. Roadsides outside the city
of Ulan-Ude are lined with potato plots, each marked with distinctive
pegs at the corners.
The dacha ideal is under severe pressure. In provincial cities, the
'second home' has been reduced to a tiny hut, not really a dwelling at
all but a second work-place and tool-store at the garden plot. Comment-
ing on the run-down state of city apartments in the 1990s, Khandazha-
pova and Manzanova write (1998: 3), 'The presence of two primitive
habitations instead of one fully adequate dwelling does not raise, but on
the contrary, lowers the quality of life. It leads to excessive waste of
space, but while the present structure continues, the construction of
such "second homes" will continue to increase at an ever faster rate.' As
the economic crisis deepens (increased urban unemployment, delayed
or non-existent wages, price rises for food), subsistence farming is ne-
cessary for all, but it is handled socially in different ways.
Buryats in Ulan-Ude rely on country relatives to produce most of their
meat, butter, cream, flour, etc., for which they pay by labour; they go
out to the villages in summer to help with the hay-making that sustains
the livestock during the winter. Nevertheless, they too have had to start
allotments in the city for potatoes, which are an increasing part of their
diet. Russians on the whole do not have relatives living in the country-
side, so they work even more intensively on the urban allotments,
hoping to produce enough to sell commercially and thus obtain enough
money to buy meat and so on. Most allotment compounds now have a
small kiosk by the gates to sell products to travellers25 and to provide
basic necessities to those who live at the dacha all summer long. A small
number of very prosperous people of either ethnic group keep a 'dacha'
further out in the country that is in effect a smallholding, including
livestock. This is worked by poor relatives, clients, or hired labour,
and the owner visits by car at weekends to enjoy the fruits and give
orders.
We see from this that intensive urban farming has begun to necessi-
tate someone living at the allotment from spring to autumn. Not only is
there far more work than there used to be in the days of the 'dacha for
leisure', but travelling to and from the city is expensive and burden-
some. Furthermore, theft of produce is now common so it is necessary to
guard the plots and the stores. Reports of knifings and shootings of
potato thieves are frequent, and they are even carried out by old
women left alone to guard the crop (Beeston 1999).
Thus, contrary to the situation in more prosperous countries (Cze-
gledy, Chapter 9 this volume), dacha is now a word that Russian families
often hear with dread. Who is to go and do the backbreaking work? Who
will stay for months in a tiny, comfortless hut? Who will go to the market
to sell the produce? Most often, in my observation, it is the elderly retired
people who bear these burdens. The situation does not, on the whole,
cement family relationships but gives rise to endless complaints, espe-
cially against young able-bodied people who refuse to help. If differenti-
ation is thus happening within the household - something that is
conceptually unacceptable with regard to the 'peasant household'
(though that communalism is known to have its costs too 26 ) - it is all
the more evident between urban households, and this contradicts the
contemporary vision of peasants, that they live in egalitarian commu-
nities. For a start, the very burden of the allotment may cause families to
split, as young people in employment hive off, leaving the old generation
to subsist on its own account. Money now decides which land, how much
land, and whether hired workers can be employed on the plots. In met-
ropolitan cities, the very poorest people of all, single, elderly, un-
employed women, cannot even keep the simplest potato plot, because
they cannot afford the bus fare to go and tend to it.
Yet, however formally similar it may be, no one is identifying this
situation with the 'differentiation of the peasantry' described by Lenin.
Quite simply, as I have mentioned, people do not identify urban farming
with peasant models at all. This is a matter of aims and values, not
practical effects. Thus city officials who give out land in Ulan-Ude have
reduced the size of plots from eight to six sotok27 during the 1990s,
because they do not see the allotments as turning into farms, and there-
fore they are not prepared to battle with collectives outside the city for
extra land for city dwellers. For the same reason, regulations forbidding
the keeping of cattle within city boundaries and dacha compounds are
still in force, and plot-holders would not even try to obtain the necessary
licenses for large-scale commercial production. Urban farming is seen as

even more subsidiary than the smallholdings of rural workers on the
collectives; it is understood to be an expedient, not a way of life. The
plot-holders themselves share these views. Those who can afford it try to
uphold the 'apartment cum dacha' ideal, driving the subsistence plot into
a nether region of the unpleasant realities of post-Soviet existence. The
glossy media responds to the attraction of this ideal. Nostalgic articles
appear about the warm, creative, passion-ridden life of the old Soviet
intelligentsia in the rambling dachas around Moscow, and it is described
how politicians and oligarchs are still building themselves mansions in
these now myth-laden places ('And here on the veranda Richter gave
piano recitals...'), (Zubtsova 1999: 38-47).
Conclusion
This chapter has tried the method of locating contemporary ideas of 'the
peasantry' in various rural and urban situations, with the aim of thereby
elucidating the nature of present-day farming practices. 'Practices' have
been seen here as both modes of action and of thinking. They provide
the key to the understanding of the ways people constitute themselves
as subjects capable of knowing. The chapter describes the maintenance
of substantive continuities in agricultural practices from Soviet times.
Notably, the personal plots in rural collectives are still considered to be
podsobnyye (subsidiary) and continue to be maintained in this fashion,
even though most of the family income comes from them; and in the
provincial cities, the 'dad?a-apartment' duo continues to be valued,
while the mundane allotments are despised, despite the fundamental
necessity of the latter to family budgets. In both of these situations, the
'peasant way of life' appears as something that either cannot, or should
not, be emulated. The private farmer (fermer) comes closest to the idea of
the peasant, and has been designated by this term by government
reformers. However, the chapter has shown that the commercialisation
of social relations inside the ferma contradicts basic values such as love
of labour and egalitarianism attributed to peasants by contemporary
Russians (who here again are much influenced by Soviet teachings).
Actual 'peasants' in the early twentieth century may have been far
from equal, but today great offence is taken at the idea of working for
a private individual and at economic inequality more generally. There-
fore, it is widely held, farmers who employ workers, or even just buy up
most of the shares, cannot be peasants. So, taking all this together,
and notwithstanding the huge increase in subsistence farming, the
practices of ordinary people in all their variety hardly ever support a self-
constitution or self-identification as peasant.
This situation contrasts interestingly with Poland. A consideration of
the difference will help us suggest some thoughts about the lack of
political activism among Russian agriculturalists despite their extraor-
dinarily adverse conditions. In Poland, small farmers are unhesitatingly
called peasants (chlopy) both by themselves and in the literature, a usage
which I follow here. 28 Polish peasants have a history of relative inde-
pendence from the socialist regime. They refused, on the whole, to be
collectivised. Thus, in the 1990s, they were considered the ideal ground
for development of independent, market-oriented, capitalist farms
(Zbierski-Salameh 1999). Now they were like Russian rural farmworkers
in one respect, they had greatly gained economically from the security
and subsidised prices of the late socialist period. And as in Russia,
though far less drastically, the Polish peasants were damaged by the
reforms: prices shifted markedly in their disfavour and they found it
difficult to obtain credits or licenses enabling them to expand produc-
tion. However, their reaction, at least according to Zbierski-Salameh
(1999), was different from what we have seen in Russia. The Polish
peasants strengthened practices of 'involution' (1999: 202), that is, reli-
ance on themselves to generate the resources for the renewal of produc-
tion cycles (unlike farmworkers of Russia who continue to rely on
collectives) and 'retreat from markets', which saw them diverting field-
crops away from commercial sales into fodder for their own livestock.
Farm sizes have fallen, as the larger, more specialised enterprises sold
land and dismissed hired workers to generate funds for the switch to
closed-cycle production. 29 In other words, the Polish peasants have
become if anything more 'peasant-like' during the 1990s.
What I would like to suggest here is that the increased autonomy of
Polish peasant farmers may be a factor in their political activism.
Zbierski-Salameh (1999: 205-10) describes how peasants blockaded
sugar-beet processing plants, went on strike against adverse milk prices,
and in 1990 dumped loads of potatoes at the Ministry of Agriculture in
Warsaw to protest against state reduction in purchases of potato flour
and starch. Of course, Polish farmers also had the political advantage
that Rural Solidarity and other organisations had been working since the
early 1980s in the countryside to challenge the socialist government. No
such organisations were present in Russia. But I would like to argue here
that the way the Russian farming people see themselves as parts of larger
wholes, as opposed to independent units, is part of the explanation for
their political passivity. For the relation between the smallholder and
the collective is not just an economic one, it is a relation of patronage.

Similarly with the relation between the allotment-holder and the asso-
ciation or mayoral office that grants land. The collectives and the asso-
ciations are themselves dependent on client-like relations with powerful
economic patrons. In rural Russia, economic pressure can be, and is,
exerted to political ends (for example, veiled threats to cut off the
electricity unless one votes a certain way). This network of dependen-
cies, which is maintained by the myriad of practices that have hindered
the emergence of independent farmers, cowers people into what is quite
rational political passivity in the circumstances. Paradoxically, in view
of Marx's dismissal of peasants as lacking political awareness like 'pota-
toes in a sack', in Russia it is refusal of the peasant life and political
passivity that seem to go together.
Notes
1. Rural farmworkers call themselves villagers (sel'skiye), or by the name of the
place they come from ('My Torskiye' - 'We are people of Tory', and so on.).
2. Such theories would be relevant for rural people only in the case where they
penetrate, through state policies, down to administrators who propound them
locally (see Humphrey 1998: Ch. 9).
3. Koznova collected oral materials through extended, non-structured interviews
with around three hundred rural respondents in the Orlov, Nizhegorod and
Vologod Oblasts during 1993-6. The respondents had a range of occupations,
from farm directors to manual workers, and were of various ages, though most
were over thirty. Koznova acknowledges that attitudes in different parts of
Russia may vary from her findings (1997: 362). Nothing in Koznova's mater-
ials contradicts my own field materials from the Buryat Republic in 1996 (see
Humphrey 1998), but I have chosen to use her examples rather than my own
because 'the peasantry' is classically a Russian cultural idea and to introduce
Buryat data would complicate the argument.
4. The word sobstevnnost is etymologically quite similar to 'ownership', since it
relates closely with sobstevnnyi (one's own, proper, true), even though it does
not link to ideas of 'private property' that seem so inseparable from ownership
to Euro-American minds. Sobstvennost is closer to 'personal' than to 'private'
property (see Humphrey 1998).
5. 'The new, communitarian (sobornyi) "ordinary person" differed markedly from
his peasant predecessor only in external, instrumental attributes. In the Soviet
version of the future, this was first of all an industrial worker, a mechanical
detail of the steely proletarian ranks, conscious of discipline, a homogeneous
mass marching in a single human rhythm and standing above personal attach-
ments. In essence, this was the collective (obshchinnyi) peasant, but reclothed in
urban dress and with a modern education' (Vishnevskii 1998: 111-12).
6. The 'peasantry' was a category not only for sociology but also in Soviet legal
and administrative practice. For example, the peasantry had a different status
in relation to taxation, army service, passports and social security from urban
workers or employees.
7. In 1987 the plots produced a quarter of all agricultural production in the
USSR, despite strict limits on their size and the number of livestock kept
privately. Between 1968 and 1988 production on the smallholding reduced
from 26 per cent to 24 per cent, with a particularly sharp drop in cattle and
poultry products. In 1986, the average collective farm family was purchasing
32 kg of meat, as opposed to 20 kg in 1981. Zemtsov attributes this situation
to the hard manual labour required on the plots, which were almost entirely
unmechanised (Zemtsov 1991: 327-8). One might also add that rural family
size was declining (Vishnevskii 1998: 138) and that young able people were
leaving the countryside. Between 1969 and 1988 the total agricultural work-
force declined from 52 to 49 million (Zemtsov 1991: 327).
8. Accountant, aged 43, in the TOO Moslovo, Orlov District, Orlov Region,
Koznova 1997: 363.
9. Panarin (1999b), on the basis of a detailed study of the village of Tory in
Tunka, Buryatia, writes that collective farmers' income did reach an optimum
in the Brezhnev-Gorbachev period. At the end of the 1980s, arable and
livestock production in the Lenin collective were both so improved that a
whole stratum of families (17.3 per cent of the total) could live almost
entirely off their wages; they did not need to keep private cattle and used
their plots only for extra vegetables. The situation was not sustainable,
however. Prosperity rested on a constant subsidised supply of fertilizers,
technology, lubricants, for example, and this whole mode of agriculture
conduced to degradation of the soil, water and wind erosion, and over-use
of pasture.
10. Even in the late 1980s, the agricultural workforce was only half the rural
population (Zemtsov 1991: 327) and the situation has undoubtedly
worsened since then as young people depart for the cities leaving an aged
population in the villages.
11. Village dwellers hold two kinds of plot. The first is the priusadebnyi uchastok, a
plot under a hectare in size immediately beside the house, used mostly for
potatoes, other vegetables, pigs and chickens, and for cattle sheds. The
second type of plot is located outside the village and consists in Buryatia of
a hay-field to provide winter fodder for cattle (in other areas of Russia this
plot might be used for other purposes). The first plots are almost never taken
away from the family living in the house even if they are formally the
property of the collective farm. The second type of plot is re-allocated fairly
frequently, and some collectives do not make them available to teachers, and
others, who live in the village but are not members of the farm.
12. They can be passed on in inheritance, as during Soviet times, but they still
cannot be sold on the open market (that is, to outsiders, Humphrey 1998: Ch. 9).
13. Land Commissions in each district have the task of deciding on allocation of
lands between collectives and other claimants, such as independent farmers
or production cooperatives.
14. The sense of alienation is not universal. Koznova also notes (1997: 378)
people who say they want to keep their shares in the collective in the hope
that the collective will become prosperous again and to preserve their sense
of common ownership (stremleniye sokhranit sobstvennost).
15. Galina Manzanova, personal communication, Ulan-Ude 1996.
16. An example is the director of a state-owned institution, a station for produ-
cing horticultural specimen plants near Ulan-Ude. Besides fields and labora-
tories, the station included housing for its workers and numerous other
buildings. The long-time director, who had numerous influential contacts
in the city, clearly felt herself to be the 'owner' in the sense outlined by
Manzanova. She gave or took away housing, and sold other buildings,
according to her own will (fieldnotes, Ulan-Ude 1996).
17. To give some idea of the numbers, in 1996 in the Karl Marx Collective Farm
in Selenga district, Buryatia, of a total of 490-500 households 320 were
members of the farm, around 70 were state employees, and the rest (around
100) were 'ballast'. Of course the proportions may be different elsewhere in
Russia, but other farms I visited in Buryatia had comparable numbers. Koz-
nova notes 'ballast' to be around 30 per cent of households in Central Russia
(1997: 378).
18. In the conditions of economic crisis, poorer shareholders may have to sell
their shares to the director for financial reasons, Koznova 1997: 378, Hum-
phrey 1998: Ch. 9.
19. In the steel-producing city Magnitogorsk in the 1930s, 'Many of the peasants
came to the site in traditional groups of migrant villagers known as artels
whose leaders were generally older peasants, men who commanded absolute
loyalty from other members and brooked no incursions into their authority/
Kotkin 1995: 88-9. The artels divided the wages amongst themselves and
maintained their own traditions. The Bolsheviks considered that they had to
'smash the artels' in order to assert their own authority (Kotkin 1995: 89).
20. Vishneveskii is here quoting Leroy-Beaulieu, who was describing Tsarist
cities, with the aim of showing that Russian cities have changed little in
this respect (1998: 104).
21. 'In many cases our workers' quarters look better than the centres of the
cities,' said Stalin with pride (quoted in Vishnevskii 1998: 104).
22. The fee is not large, since the associations are still subsidised by the govern-
ment (1996); it covers the cost of water for irrigation of the gardens.
23. Chief city architect, Ulan-Ude 1996.
24. From 1985 these plots were given out only to people with five year official
residence permits (propiski) for the city. With the crisis of the 1990s this
regulation has been relaxed, and now plots may be given out by the mayoral
office even to migrants without registration. All officially allotted land is
subject to taxation in Ulan-Ude. For this reason, many people simply appro-
priate unused land, slipping a bottle of vodka to anyone who looks as though
they might interfere.
25. In 1996, because of increasing poverty, such travellers are now few and many
of the kiosks were having to close down. The produce is sold instead at the
city market or on street-corners.
26. In the late nineteenth century, studies of Russian villagers revealed that
they thought a large patriarchal family was good for farming work, but that
for living it was anything but happy. 'Everything is unsteady, everyone
is straining at the leash, demanding their own because of the awkward
conditions; everything is suffocated by the despotism of the parents-in-law,

and the husband, the wife, the brothers are straining for freedom and hate
having to submit...', said one farmer (quoted in Vishnevskii 1998: 131).
27. Six sotok is six-tenths of a hectare.
28. 'Peasants' is not the only term small farmers use for themselves, but it is
unproblematic in many regions (Frances Pine, personal communication).
29. Closed-cycle production ('involution') implied scaling back numbers of
animals proportional to the land available (Zbierski-Salameh 1999:
204-5).
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7
The Village, the City and the
Outside World: Integration and
Exclusion in Two Regions of Rural
Poland
Frances Pine
'Country' and 'city' are very powerful words, and this is not
surprising when we remember how much they seem to stand in
for the experience of human communities... On the actual
settlements, which in real history have been astonishingly var-
ied, powerful feelings have gathered and have been generalised.
On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of
peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered
the idea of an achieved centre of learning, communication,
light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on
the city as a place of noise, worldliness, and ambition; on the
country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation.
(Williams 1973)
With these images Raymond Williams began his seminal study of The
Country and the City. He was writing about England, but many of his
more general points extend effortlessly to the rest of Europe, and prob-
ably to other regions as well. Williams shows us that the country and the
city are not merely places, or settlements for people, but are also sym-
bols and metaphors for a range of complex and often contradictory
ideas and beliefs about human nature at its most elevated and most
degenerated, and about social life which orders this nature, disciplines
it, pushes it to the heights of 'civilisation' or the depths of squalid
'backwardness'. In certain ways they are thus reminiscent of gender
imagery, with the masculine city juxtaposed to the feminine country,
or of idealised kinship and life cycles, with the childlike country poised
to develop into the adult sophistication of the city. In other contexts,
however, the country may itself stand for age-old, almost primordial
wisdom, for strength of character and body, while the city is the frivolous
160

Frances Pine 161
and amoral whore, the shell of a decadent modernity which has aban-
doned the moral and practical knowledge of the old.
In Poland, both city and country as ideas or ideal types have been
harnessed to the nationalist project in various ways at various times. In
literature we find the ambivalence to which Williams refers. The coun-
tryside is the true heart of the Polish nobility during the centuries of
invasions, wars and partitions, when the state was subsumed under
Russia, Prussia and Austria, but the nation was kept alive in culture
and imagination, and embodied in the land (Polski ziemie). But the
rural is also a bleak and cruel environment, where backward peasants,
barely emerged from barbarism, are depicted in the most squalid and
brutal terms. The city is the seat of high culture, of glittering palaces and
heady and refined intelligentsia, but it too has its underside, reflected in
the squalid tenements and the heartless factories of early industrialisa-
tion, where uneducated workers moved between apathy and passivity
and radical revolutionary politics (see Milosz 1969). All of the complex-
ity of Poland's history is drawn out in these imagined worlds.
The anthropological literature tends to oppose city and country in a
rather different way. Because the tendency, historically, has been to
focus on 'the other', whether from the perspective of culture or political
economy (see Chapter 1), the countryside is generally represented as the
place of the peasantry, while the city is the home of high culture, intelli-
gentsia and bureaucracy. Perhaps because anthropologists tend to study
'down', and at least until recently most came from middle-upper class
backgrounds, or perhaps because of the entrenched belief that only the
exotic are to be studied, and only the different are exotic, peasants in the
countryside have been subjected to far more scrutiny than either land-
owning gentry or working and middle classes in the cities. This of course
gives rise to a particular view of space and place within the literature,
which tends to ignore the fact that the countryside also holds its
wealthy elites, and the city its poor and marginal groups. What I want
to suggest here is that this representation of space, place and culture
creates a dichotomy similar to that of public and private in the anthro-
pology of gender, and one which is equally limited and problematic.
Like public and private/domestic, the country and the city are powerful
and ubiquitous concepts with which to think about social organisation,
power and personhood. At least in the context of Europe, they have far-
reaching historical roots, and seem to fit easily with any number of
spatial and ideological constructs. The public/domestic dichotomy how-
ever becomes deeply problematic when, as was the case in the feminist
theories of the 1970s, it is assumed that these domains are primarily or
exclusively gendered (see for example Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). If

we move away from this gendered exclusivity, and look rather at the
structures of dependence, reciprocity and power and inequality between
the genders in each domain, and at the flexibility and mutability of the
symbolic boundaries between domains, we arrive at a far more compli-
cated and sophisticated view (see Collier and Yanagisako 1987, Goddard
2000). Similarly, if we abandon the dichotomised nature of the oppos-
ition of country/peasant and city/elite/intelligentsia, and instead search
for the mutually constructed ideas of class and identity in each, and in
the exchanges and inter-relations between them, I would argue that we
are more likely to understand the relationship between space, place and
identity, and the structures of reciprocity and inequality which they
generate.
In Poland, as in the other places discussed in this volume, city and
country, peasants and non-peasants are, like public and domestic,
potent popular shorthand for deeply entrenched ideologies. Under com-
munism, the abolition of the gentry as a landholding class changed the
material nature of inequality in both the countryside and the town, but
was far less effective in shifting ideology. In the late 1970s, when I began
to do research in rural Poland, villagers often referred to themselves, and
were referred to by others and in public speeches and in the media, as
chlopy, peasants. The term carried with it both a sense of place, living na
wsi in the countryside, or literally in the village, and a class position
(often implicitly backward) of agricultural smallholder. By the end of
socialism, in the late 1980s to early 1990s, the term was less likely to be
volunteered as one of self-ascription by young villagers, although their
elders still use it, and it is still a common term with the urban popula-
tion and in the media.
In this chapter, I shall consider the interplay, imagined and practised,
between the city and the country in the two areas of Poland where I
have done research, both in the socialist and the post-socialist periods.
The first region, the Podhale, is located in the south-west of the country,
in the Tatra mountains. The Gorale (literally mountain people, high-
landers), the people who live in this mountainous region, were origin-
ally shepherds; today most are engaged in a range of activities, such as
tourism, wage labour, trade and economic migration, in conjunction
with subsistence or market orientated farming on dispersed small hold-
ings. The area of central Poland around the city of Lodz, which is the
second region I consider here, has since the nineteenth century been the
home of both larger, more productive farms than those of the Podhale,
and a range of light industries, the most important of which is textiles.
Frances Pine 163
Not only are the histories and economies of these two regions quite
different, but so also are the relations between the peasants and the city,
and the ways in which the city is understood or imagined. By looking at
stories of the past, as well as experiences and practices of the present, I
shall attempt to unravel some of the complexities of ideas about place,
country and city, and nation, which are so central to issues of identity
and difference in both rural and urban Poland, and ways in which these
have changed in the recent post-socialist period. I argue that during the
socialist period, the idea of the Polish nation, so dominant in grand
cultural narratives, was notably absent in mountain village stories;
where it was evoked it was most often as something interchangeable
with the city, political and economic power, and high culture. However,
I suggest that this is a regional rather than a rural-urban distinction. As I
go on to show in relation to the Lodz area, both nation and city are
inextricably interwoven with the stories, memories and self ascriptions
of the villagers of central Poland.
In 1977, when I first went to Poland, I stayed for a time in Krakow and
Warsaw before going to live in a small village in the foothills of the Tatra
Mountains.
In Krakow and Warsaw at that time, it was impossible to walk down
the city streets without continually encountering reminders of older
European history and culture, the Europe of Napoleon, of the Haps-
burgs, of an intellectual tradition which encompassed everything from
Copernicus to Malinowski. These layers of different times and histories
were disguised but by no means hidden by the force of the visual assault
of Soviet style slogans, architecture, monuments and built space. But the
bleakness of the contemporary space, the lack of light and colour, the
greyness of the winter streets, the shops with empty shelves and long
queues, all evoked for me, equally if not more powerfully, a Europe of
the more recent past, the place of stories I had heard in childhood
of cities during the war, the years of blackout and rationing. Memories of
war of a different kind were also reinforced at almost every street corner,
in every church, in every park, by plaques and monuments commemor-
ating the dead of World War II, proclaiming that here the Nazis shot five
members of a certain partisan troop, here a hero of the underground was
caught and killed, here a group of unknown citizens were summarily
executed. As I spent more time in the homes of friends, I realised that
the immediacy of the war was not only located in commemorative
monuments; it was also a living part of daily conversation, memories
kept alive by constant retelling. It was clear that at least in part my
friends were using the language of the German occupation and the war
to talk in veiled ways about their present situation. In Caroline Hum-

phrey's useful elaboration on Scott's term, these were less 'hidden' tran-
scripts than 'evocative' ones: stories which could be told by party
officials, dissidents, priests, and any one else, in public or in private,
and could be read, and indeed were intended to be read, on several
different levels simultaneously (Humphrey 1996). This meant that the
contemporary mapping of Poland onto the periphery of the Soviet
Empire, and into its historically awkward corridor position between
Russia and Germany, was continually opposed and contested by evoca-
tions and echoes of a heroic past, which placed Poland at the centre of
the metanarrative of European history and culture. Then I went to live
in a village in the Podhale,1 and these evocations of European culture
were rapidly obscured by something quite different, and harder to
define.
When I look back to that time, I am struck by a series of fleeting
images and fragmented events. How, walking through the village, I
would encounter an old woman, closed face framed by a tight, dark
shawl, leading her cow. I would smile, innocently, say 'Dzien Dobry',
looking, politely I thought, directly at her and her cow. My attempts to
present myself as polite, open and unguarded met with short shrift.
Inevitably, the old woman would glare, mutter, cross herself and,
averting her gaze, hurry away. Slightly bemused, after several such
episodes with several old women, I described these encounters to a
rural sociologist visiting from Warsaw . He laughed and said 'Look at
yourself: you are small and thin, very strange, with long hair, with no
child. Clearly a witch. They are worried about the evil eye. Avert your
gaze when you pass the old women on the path. Don't, whatever you
do, look at the cow.' I followed his advice, and things got better.
Other vignettes involve recollections of the war, but it was clear that
here in the mountains it was a different war from the one experienced
by city people. The same old women, once they had decided I was
human, and at least relatively harmless, talked to me about the occupa-
tion and the guerrilla war which had been fought in the mountains.
What is striking in their accounts is their state of constant, bewildered
terror. 'The Germans came during the day, and when we heard that they
we coming we hurried to the forest with the cow, and hid till it was safe.
Then we'd go home, and someone would come and say "the partisans
are coming", so we'd take the cow back to the forest, and hide again
through the night.' The most vivid account of this, which I have re-
counted elsewhere,2 ended poignantly 'We never knew what was
happening, and we were always afraid.' Old men also talked about war.
Frances Pine 165
For the oldest, the critical war was World War I, when this part of Poland
was under Austrian rule.3 They spoke of going off to fight for Austria, of
being given a uniform and learning to read and write, a bit at least. The
war, like the coming of the railway later, opened their eyes to the world.
They had little or no idea, however, in formal political terms, what it all
was about. They had little, or no, sense of themselves as Poles. That
came later, if at all.
Then other images, again of war. I was told the story of the fortune
teller who was shot, on a hill outside the village, by the Nazis. It seemed
to me quite clear, from old records and from the inscription on the
official monument to her death, that she was executed because her
sons had joined the partisans and she was probably helping them. But
villagers say that she was killed because her fame as a fortune teller was
great. The German commandant went to her to have his cards read, and
when she predicted that he would lose the war, he shot her. Another,
more complicated and oblique story, which may well be apocryphal,
involves a group of soldiers, probably German deserters, possibly Red
Army, White Russians, or even Polish Home Army, (none of the story
tellers agreed on or were particularly interested in the details) who came
to the village to strike a deal about horses. The deal was struck, and
during some kind of altercation, the soldiers were shot and buried in the
forest. The villagers involved kept the horses and the money. Other
stories follow quickly on from these, of the village leader dealing with
Germans in one room, partisans in the other, of the in-marrying witch
who did the same, of the stupidity and brutality of the Nazi command-
ant, of black market deals and of mysterious, inexplicable loss and
suffering. What is clear through all of the narratives, and what makes
them so different from the war stories of the cities, is the relative absence
of political grand narratives. They are all in different ways about insiders
and outsiders, us and them, ourselves and strangers, or as the villagers
would say my or nasz and obey/obey ludzie: 'We' or 'ours' and 'outsiders',
'opposite people'. Here Zygmunt Bauman's eloquent opposition fits
well:
There are friends and enemies. And there are strangers... friends are
reproduced by the pragmatics of co-operation, enemies by the
pragmatics of struggle. Friends are called into being by responsibility
and moral duty... Enemies on the other hand are called into being
by renunciation of moral responsibility and moral duty... Thus
the opposition between friends and enemies is one between doing
and suffering, between being a subject and being an object of
action. It is an opposition between reaching out and recoiling, be-

tween initiative and vigilance, ruling and being ruled, acting
and responding... Because of the opposition between them... both
sides of the opposition stand for relationships... oppositions
enable knowledge and action; undecidables paralyze. They brutally
expose the fragility of a most secure of separations. They bring
the outside into the inside, and poison the comfort of order with
suspicion of chaos. This is exactly what strangers do. (1990:
145-60)
In the city accounts of war, there are friends and enemies, in precisely
Bauman's sense: I shall come back to this later. In these fragments of
stories from the mountains, on the other hand, the dangerous stranger
is a constantly looming and encroaching presence. An enemy presence
is rarely clearly identified, nor is a situation read as a meeting with an
enemy, or placed within the context of a wider political, national or
international conflict. These outsider/strangers in effect cross a symbolic
or conceptual border which is only really perceived by the insiders. And
so the situations are understood from a totally local perspective, and
outside places and political events are remapped so that local place
becomes the centre of the story, and the stranger/outsiders take their
identity only from their lack of relation to that place and those people.
There is little or no sense of nation here, of nation in Europe, or of
Europe as an entity, spatial, historical or cultural.
The stories I have sketched so far speak of an isolated and closed
community, but this is only one dimension of a far more complex series
of ways in which villagers situate themselves in relation to, and craft
their relations with, other people and other places. In other contexts,
the presence of the city (be it Warsaw, Krakow, or a regional town such as
Nowy Targ and Zakopane), in Poland, and both Europe and North
America, is strong and clearly relational. Gorale have a long-term in-
volvement in long-distance trading to the major Polish cities, and in
wage migration to other parts of Europe and more importantly to Amer-
ica (primarily the city of Chicago), dating back at least to the mid-
nineteenth century (Pine 1996, 1997, 1999). Travelling traders and
returning migrants brought back money, cultural knowledge, and new
and different kinds of expertise from the outside world. As I have argued
elsewhere (Pine 1997, 1999), this engagement with the world when
going out to it, and the simultaneous guarding of local boundaries
from penetration by this world, is characteristic of this kind of marginal
economy.
Frances Pine 167
Villagers map their world by categorising and classifying space and

place in ways that are clearly relational. Within the village, they use
local knowledge of houses, fields and woods to place themselves and
their kin, and names which identify every pasture, every stream, every
cultivated field, and every house explicitly and only to other insiders.
Always asking each other, in greeting, where they are going, they order
their responses in terms of social and geographical distance: 'To grand-
mother's', 'to the Bigos' (a neighbouring house), 'Up to Kowale' (a
named region of the village) 'Over to Morawczina' (a neighbouring
village), 'to the jarmak' (the market in Nowy Targ) and finally, most
tantalising, 'to the world'. In more general and less immediate conver-
sations, they were speaking knowledgeably twenty years ago about other
regions of Poland and do even more so now. Some places they had
visited, some they had heard or read about, or had met people from:
'Their daughter is getting married, so they are going to Katowice to buy
sausage' - would be heard in the 1970s, when the shops in many towns
and cities were empty, but Katowice, the home of the militant miners,
was said always to have meat. 'She is going to Warsaw, to try to get an
American visa; they are going to Warsaw, to take him to the airport,'
(references to - at that time carefully disguised - labour migrations);
'Look at this photo - that was our factory outing to Gdansk; doesn't
Jasiek look miserable? He hates going away.' Here is a knowledge of
Poland as a country, with different cities and regions to be visited,
explored or avoided, made more widely accessible by the development
of roads, railways, national media, and a state labour system which
rewarded workers with periodic outings. And it was a two-way traffic.
This village, for instance, had an agreement with a mining community
in Silesia: the Silesians provided money to build a guest hostel in the
village, and in return, every year their children came to the village in the
summer, for the healthy climate and clean air. Other outsiders came in
as well, tourists, from Polish cities and occasionally from Hungary
or Czechoslovakia, and regular 'colonies' of city school children in
school or youth group parties. These outsiders were viewed neutrally;
to go back to Bauman's image, their very presence was predicated on
some initial relationship, some reciprocity, and they escaped the classi-
fication of dangerous strangers. All of these encounters expanded
the villagers' mental maps, and added to their sense of Poland as a
country beyond the Podhale. Finally, villagers mapped their place in
the outside world. This was done through two quite different means:
through official representations, primarily in the media, and through
personal or received knowledge gleaned sometimes from legitimate
work exchanges and more often from informal wage migrations to the
west.
In the late 1970s, when old women who encountered strangers
might see them as witches, their grandchildren were already situating
themselves easily in quite a different series of worlds simultaneously.
For instance, at a time when foreign currency was officially rigorously
controlled, even small children in the village were conversant with up
to the minute fluctuations in the black market exchange rates not
only of the dollar, but of the pound, the Deutschmark and sometimes
even the yen as well. By this time they were also identifying themselves
as Poles as well as Gorale. I would argue that this was largely a result
of the socialist project, attained in various ways: intentionally through
universal education, through work in the state sector and regular deal-
ing with the bureaucracy and general control of the state, through the
propaganda of the state media, which continually identified Poland
with the Warsaw Pact countries and juxtaposed it to the west; and
unintentionally through alternative economic practices, most notably
an informal market which took as its primary terms of reference, both
economic and cultural, western Europe and North America.
Under communism education to the age of 15 became compulsory,
and a particular national and world history was taught which, while
clearly presented in terms of class war, Soviet style, also promoted a
strong sense of Poland as a country with its own history, its own heroes
and villains, and its own place in the making of Europe. At home, village
children learned to speak in the local dialect and were told family and
regional stories and legends, often couched in terms of opposition to the
state (or in earlier times to the gentry). Once they started school, they
were taught the wider history, and taught in literary Polish. While the
oldest villagers were still more likely to identify themselves as Gorale
than as Poles, all school children could recite by heart a poem begin-
ning. 'Who am I? A small Pole. Where do I live? On Polish land.' On
finishing school, young men went away into military service, and then
usually into some sort of regular employment in the state sector; while
young women went straight from school into state sector work; usually
this work was located in Nowy Targ, the local market town. These
involvements with the state political structure and economy were gen-
erally represented as an unavoidable and encroaching evil but neverthe-
less they inscribed another layer on to villagers' awareness of themselves
as members of a nation-state comprising both towns and countryside,
and one placed politically in a wider world. With the notable exception
of state waged labour, these transformative processes were not new; as
Frances Pine 169
mentioned, they were important from at least the nineteenth century in

this region. What was new under socialism was their increased fre-
quency and intensity, which made them shared and commonplace
experiences not only among villagers but also, in the sense that Ander-
son (1991) speaks of an 'imagined community', among fellow citizens,
rural and urban, all over Poland. With the increased awareness of
nation, and of belonging to a nation, came a parallel sense of other
nations, other politics. However, this was constantly juxtaposed to, and
modified by, the lived experiences of the village, revolving around
subsistence farming, intra- and inter-household exchange and reci-
procity, village politics and ritual. In this sense, not only emotionally,
but socially and economically as well, the village remained the centre,
while the city, Poland, and by extension Europe and then the world
occupied a sometimes intrusive but always peripheral position sur-
rounding the borders of the local.
Finally, the villagers placed themselves in the Polish city, in Europe
and in North America through the informal or grey economy. The
Podhale until the 1950s was an area of extreme poverty; poor soil and
long winters, exacerbated by the effects of a century and more of part-
ible inheritance which had by the end of the nineteenth century
resulted in excessive dwarfing and fragmentation of farms, rendered
subsistence from agriculture alone almost impossible. As I have de-
scribed elsewhere (Pine 1996) temporary migration to other parts of
central Europe and most lucratively to North America, was a constant
in most village houses from the nineteenth century, continued illicitly
throughout the entire socialist period, and has remained a major pat-
tern, now legal again, since 1989. Returning migrants brought back with
them detailed knowledge of urban culture and the world outside, as well
as money and consumer goods which they fed into house and farm, in
effect subsidising local agriculture and house-based divisions of labour.
And yet until extremely recently, most villagers represented farming and
pastoralism as the most important labour and as their main source of
livelihood, and themselves as chlopy (peasants); and many still do so
today. In a manner made familiar to us by recent ethnographies of
global consumption (for example, Gell 1986; Howes 1996) cultural
artefacts and knowledge practices were commonly appropriated, and
converted into 'things Gorale' which 'we have always had/done' (Pine
1997). Those very acts of appropriation and conversion again brought
the outside world into the village, and changed what it meant to be Gorale.
What I am suggesting is that this region has historically been charac-
terised by a tension between interaction with and inevitable penetration
by the outside world, and deeply entrenched and almost reified local
practices which diminish, transform, or negate these interactions.
During the socialist period, both of these patterns intensified; as the
state became increasingly intrusive, villagers retreated further into their
local society and economy, while simultaneously denigrating practices
associated with the state, and pursuing those opposed to or outside its
reach.
Since 1989, the ways in which villagers imagine and map their world
have been reshaped and expanded again, in ways ever more rapid and
more intense. This is most apparent in connection to education and to
work. Prior to 1990 only a handful of villagers had gone to the city to
study, and of these most went for vocational training: to Lodz to learn
the textile trade, to Krakow to qualify in mechanics. It is now a common
although still not widespread practice for young women and men to go
to Warsaw or Krakow to university or college. Some return to the Pod-
hale to work as teachers or in other professions, while others remain in
the city to work, or move elsewhere. This increased mobility lessens the
conceptual distance between the village and the cities, and transforms
the city from an unknown, threatening place to one which is familiar
and manageable. Similarly, with the opening of international borders
and with increased communications and information technology, villa-
gers are becoming far more involved with other parts of Europe. Eco-
nomic migration is more extensive than before, and is spatially and
temporally more varied. During the socialist period, short-term migra-
tion, often officially arranged, was usually to Czechoslovakia and Hun-
gary. Trips to North America were allowed officially as holidays to visit
kin for a month or so but were informally extended to periods of
months and years; the holiday became two or often three moonlighting
jobs. Since the early 1990s, while migration to America remains the
most prestigious and sought after pattern, far more villagers have
become involved in migration chains to southern Europe - notably
Greece and Italy - where they work as domestic and day labourers, and
to western Europe - notably France and Germany - where they join
teams of seasonal agricultural workers from all corners of the former
socialist world. When they talk about this work, they attach little intrin-
sic value to it. On the contrary, as work they devalue it in much the same
way and with much the same language that they formerly described
their waged labour for the state. They are fully cognisant of the fact that
they are paid far lower wages than local workers and that they are often
treated extremely badly. However, when they return home, their status
increases in direct relation to the money and new cultural expertise they
Frances Pine 171
bring. If they then feed this money and cultural knowledge into a new
enterprise, they are seen to have been successful. So, for instance, a
middle-aged couple who work in Italy for a year or two, come back
and expand their house into an hotel complete with garden tables and
umbrellas, swimming pool, modified-ethnic restaurant and bar, and
email and fax facilities for national and international bookings, have
successfully crossed European cultural and economic, as well as polit-
ical, borders in two directions: they have gone to Europe, and then,
returning, brought a containable and manageable (and lucrative)
Europe back to the village.
Since the early 1990s, the main state employers in the region, small
factories, processing plants, and services, have been cut back or closed
altogether. This has not however resulted in economic decline as it has
in other areas of Poland. Rather, the Podhale seems to be booming, and
this appears to be directly linked to the decline of the state sector, and to
the opening of borders with western Europe. Old friends remain the
same, while old enemies have become employers or clients. Who are the
strangers now? They are, I would suggest, people who move into or
encroach upon local space without having any social relation or con-
nection, with no involvement in ties of responsibility and reciprocity.
And here again I think we see the rather tendentious link between
Gorale/the Podhale and the rest of Poland. It is never a given - it has
to be established. And it can be established negatively, as with the
communist state, or positively, as with tourists who come to the village
and behave properly. Poles who come from Warsaw or other cities, buy a
little strip of pasture and forest, and build a dzialka (a summer cottage)
and then drink and drive their cars very fast through the village are
labelled as obey and feature in contemporary stories of danger and en-
croachment in just the same way as do cowboy entrepreneurs from the
city or from abroad who are said to employ local people to do work, for
poor wages, which is harmful to both their own health and to the environ-
ment. These particular local stories are reminiscent of the war stories with
which I began; they emphasis the occasional trickster victory of a local
player, but more often confusion and powerlessness in the face of some-
thing outside, unknown and hence unpredictable.
I would argue that for Gorale villagers, local place is central to
belonging in both practical and symbolic terms. Space on the other
hand is a more elastic concept, expressed and understood in the light
of centuries of movement, as transhumant shepherds crossing and re-
crossing the Carpathians, later as distance traders and migrant labourers
travelling to other parts of eastern-central Europe, and as far afield as
America. In one sense, space beyond the Podhale is always 'outside'; in

another sense, this outside can be transformed, partly at least, into an
'inside' where, as in Chicago, people live with kin, form Gorale associ-
ations, and from where they send or take back their earnings and new
knowledge to the Podhale. So space is navigated, and to some extent
formed into individual maps, which link the mountains to the 'outside'
over time in various ways. This elasticity of space is, I think, similar to
that described by Myers for the Pintupi and by other anthropologists
writing about people to whom movement is a central part of life (Myers
1991, see also Casey 1996).
If we compare the Podhale to the area around Lodz,4 we see a very

different way of understanding space and place. Here the primary
sense of the relational is less with local landscape and people, and
more with an engagement with a clearly defined centre articulated
historically through labour. Rather than being an elastic concept,
space is described in terms of the relation between the city and villages,
historically placed through a chronology of industrial history, particular
historical events, and a more or less diachronic political narrative. In
this area of Poland, the economy has since the late nineteenth century
been dominated by textile manufacture. The following stories were told
to me in the early 1990s, when the area had been devastated by eco-
nomic restructuring resulting in the closure of many of the large factor-
ies and when unemployment was high and continuing to rise. Similar
memories to those from the Podhale, of loss, fear and displacement,
haunt these recollections, although I heard them more than a decade
later, and the war was hence even further in the past. Again, I think
these stories of war and occupation can be read as oblique references to
the uncertain present through the vehicle of past events. Like the stories
I was told in the mountains, these were not explicitly elicited but were
offered spontaneously in the context of general discussions about
the past, the current state of affairs in the region and in Poland, and
the ordinary occurrences of daily life. Maria, a village woman in her late
sixties, who had been taken in her teens by the Germans to work in a
textile factory in Lodz, gave a long and incredibly vivid account of being
out on the city streets after curfew:
We had to be in by a certain time, I think it was ten, perhaps earlier,

but I was only little, and I was taking a message to someone I worked
Frances Pine 173
with, and then it was late - too late; it was already dark, and I pulled
my shawl over my head and ran down the streets - Oh, I ran so fast,
but listening, always listening. I heard footsteps! My heart stopped. I
pulled into a doorway and stayed so still. I held my breath. German
soldiers marched by. They were talking loudly. I tried to be like the
wall. They passed, and I waited, and then I ran, oh, how I ran, home.
That's what it was like then.
The same woman later told the story of her family's deportation: her
mother was taken away, she thought to the Ukraine, and she did not
see her again until the end of the war. She and her father and sister were
taken to Germany, as forced labourers for agriculture. In her descriptions,
again what stands out is how she felt that she and her sister were so small,
and so helpless (I think they must have been in their mid-teens, although
none of the details are very clear in these accounts). Her memories of the
labour camp revolved around hunger and fatigue, and again fear. Ger-
many seemed a distant and unfamiliar place to her, although not an
unknown one, but she also talked about returning after the war, to the
village, and feeling herself to be a stranger there as well. Similar accounts
were given to me by her friend, a very independent and strong-minded
widow in her seventies. She stayed in the village throughout the war, a
young widow with a baby living on her parents' farm and going to work,
like her friend, in a textile factory. Her stories, like those of her friend,
often evoke a strong feeling of fear and helplessness. She spoke of her
anxiety about being so young and 'not knowing anything about the
world' while still feeling responsible not only for her small child but
also for her ageing and weak parents. Again, the German presence is
threatening for two reasons: they might hurt her and her family, even
for some unknowing and unintended transgression; equally, they might
take her away, to a labour camp in France or Germany, and then who
would look after the others? Her three elder brothers were all taken to
France as forced labourers, and she only made contact with them again
after the war, when two returned to the area. In another story she
recounted going to a German office to apply for some kind of permit or
authorisation. While there she witnessed the beating of a young man
who had been rounded up for some minor transgression. She described
his mother throwing herself on the body of her unconscious son and
screaming 'Mary mother of God help me. You know how it feels. You are
also a mother. You lost your only son too. Blessed Mary, save my son.' As
she recalled the episode, she linked it explicitly to her fears for her own
son, still small then, and to her horror about what she had heard of or
seen being done to the Jews in the Lodz ghetto - again her references were
all to mothers, and to the terrible suffering they endured at the loss of
their children through physical harm or deportation.
As in the Gorale stories, senses of local place, inscribed with symbols of
belonging, enduring social relations, ties of shared work and daily life, are
very strong. However, Podhale stories from this period tend to render
outsiders into strangers whose origins are not important; only their dan-
gerous or encroaching presence is registered. Similarly, story-tellers seem
to cultivate almost deliberately a sense of not understanding what was
happening in the rest of Poland, let alone the rest of Europe. In effect they
diminish or ignore the wider politics of war or occupation by reducing it to
a quite starkly local view. The Lodz region accounts, on the other hand,
clearly situate their tellers' experiences in the context of both an identified
and feared occupying presence, the source of danger to the local region,
and of deportation to other parts of Europe, or forcible disruption of the
local into a wider but threatening Europe. The city itself, its streets and
buildings, play a major part in the descriptive accounts. Both Lodz specif-
ically and Poland generally are clearly placed in a wider European context,
but a very specific one of unequal relations of power.
Like Katowice and Gdansk, and absolutely unlike the Podhale, Lodz
was known for its militant workforce during the communist period.
Partly at least this militancy was a reflection of the strength of the
relationship between the workers and the state rather than a rejection
of it, as was the more individualistic subversion carried out in the
Podhale. My own material is in keeping with various other oral accounts
and memories of the strikes and occupations: the largely female work-
force saw it as their duty to work for the nation, to feed the people, and
saw the duty of the state as lying in an obligation to protect and nurture
the mothers and children in return. When the state failed to honour its
part of the contract, as for instance when new shift hours made it
difficult for mothers of young children, or when food prices were in-
creased, the factory workers felt entitled to take action. In other ways,
however, women's memories particularly focused on their belief in
socialism, and on the associations they made between better health,
better working conditions, better childcare with the socialist state. The
stories told by village textile workers dwell not on local place and rela-
tions, as the Podhale ones do, but on relations between workers in the
factory, on travel between the village and the city, on the space and
machinery of the factory, and on the work itself. For instance, one
woman who worked an early shift talked about having to leave her
house in the village before dawn to catch the train. She described
Frances Pine 175
running as fast as she could until she reached the cemetery, and then
tiptoeing, as silently as possible, holding her breath, in case the dead
tried to stop her - then she would run again, as fast as she could, until
she reached what was clearly for her the comfort of the commuter work
train and then the lights and sociality of the factory. In a way unimagin-
able in Podhale stories, it is the city, and not the countryside, which is
the place of safety and sociality here.
When they talk about their work, the women emphasise the wide
markets they served, and how their factory (whichever one it was) pro-
vided the best shirts or coats in Poland or elsewhere. They often make
little distinction between the city and the country, moving easily be-
tween the village and Lodz and its dormer towns. With the post-socialist
restructuring, many of the women lost their jobs. Those who commuted
to work now stay in the village, while many of those who lived in the city
have been forced by economic necessity to return to their natal farms. In
the place of regular work, the city now provides for them an occasional
market for farm produce, or a place for temporary work in small private
enterprises. But the traffic is increasingly in the opposite direction, as city
women send their children to their parents' farm to ensure that they have
good food and healthy air, or return themselves for long periods to work
in the fields in exchange for food. What remains consistent is the ease of
movement, in both economic and emotional terms, between the two
spaces. The city is rarely if ever portrayed in this region as a dirty, danger-
ous or immoral place, as it often is in the Podhale.
In the central area we see a long and solid history of commitment to
and engagement with the wider economy, and with a fairly complex
and sophisticated notion of Europe and other European countries. Lodz
was the western-most border of part of the Russian Empire during the
Partition Period; during the inter-war years a number of German mag-
nates took over factories; there was a large and visible Jewish population
as well. Outsiders and insiders are rarely meaningful categories evoked
in this region and neither is difference or the unknown in itself much of
a threat. Rather the threat and the discontent come from subjugation to
specific historical and political forces, clearly recognised and identified
and relatively well understood. In this sense, space is a highly political
concept in local understanding and narrative.
I would argue that the stories of the war from each region continue to be
told both because in the sense I mentioned before they evoke senses of
place, proper sociability and relationality and because they address more
problematic issues of internal boundaries and borders, power and vul-
nerability, and the danger, chaos or moral void that emerges when there
is no basis for reciprocity nor even any intimations of equality. People
shape their social worlds as much through place and space as they do
through kinship; indeed, I would argue that space and place are integral
parts of the construction of kinship and relatedness. The images of city
and countryside are often useful in our understanding of metaprocesses,
and in particular in the suggestion of a relationship both arising
from and generating acknowledged distance and inequality. However,
the balances of power shift as economies change and as political borders
are remapped - we have seen this clearly in eastern central Europe and
the rest of the former socialist world over the past decade. Eric Hirsch,
discussing Raymond Williams' famous characterisation of the country
as a place for insiders to live in versus a place for outsiders to objectify,
suggests that 'With its implications that the first are rooted in nature
while the second have an understanding based exclusively on commer-
cial/possession values... it savours of romanticism. Like "place" and
"space", notions of "inside" and "outside" are not mutually exclusive
and depend upon cultural and historical context,' (1995: 13). Podhale
villagers would I think claim a position closer to that of Williams, and
their lived experiences are historically ones of movement between cul-
tural and political maps, and crossing borders. The ways in which they
go to the city, or abroad to other parts of Europe and America, and the
ways the city, Europe and America appear within their space, are increas-
ingly complex. Factory workers and farmers from central Poland, on the
other hand, would I think be perfectly at ease discussing the changing
nature of their historical relationship of integration with the city, as well
as their integration to or exclusion from wider European markets, the
impact of the European Union on their textile industry (negative) and
the impact of the CAP (the common agricultural policy being promoted
by the European Union). However, these relationships are not easy ones,
and at the moment I would suggest that it is in areas like central Poland,
fully incorporated into the socialist political economy and in that way
very much part of the centre under that system, that are becoming the
new peripheries of European urban culture.
I am very aware that much of what I describe is equally relevant
elsewhere, and that these patterns of rural and urban engagement, of
reaching out towards entrepreneurial activities and spatial and eco-
nomic mobility, or retracting under the burden of enormous loss and
change with deindustrialisation, have clear parallels in the UK, North
Frances Pine 177
America and beyond. Poland has no more or less complexity, but there
are particular ways that the past informs the present in any culture or
place. One of the strengths of anthropology is its focus on small pro-
cesses and local practices; but I think we are all aware that the local level
is always linked not only temporally to the past, but also politically and
economically to the state and the global. Equally, as these brief glimpses
demonstrate, the city and the countryside are always linked, always
constructed in relation to each other; but the nature of the relationship
shifts at historically critical moments.
The grandmothers and grandfathers who first taught me about Gorale
culture are mostly dead now. Their memories of World War I, of the
exodus of wage migrants to Chicago, of the years of hardship as impov-
erished smallholders and day labourers, of Nazi occupation and of the
first years of communist rule, survive as faint echoes hovering behind
stories that their children and grandchildren tell. In both the Podhale
and central Poland, new stories situate and portray the past differently,
and the contemporary actors, my age-mates, and their children have an
understanding of the village and the city, of Poland and Europe which is
different from that of their parents and grandparents but, I suspect, no
less complex.
Acknowledgements
The Podhale ethnography in this chapter is based on research funded by
the SSRC between 1977-79, and by the ESRC (Grant No. R0002314)
between 1988-90. The post socialist ethnography for both central
Poland and the Podhale is based on research funded by the ESRC be-
tween 1992-95 (Grant No. R000233019). I gratefully acknowledge this
support. I would like to thank Deema Kaneff and Keith Hart for conver-
sations and comments which helped me to think about the ideas in this
paper, and both Deema Kaneff and Pam Leonard for careful, skilled and
above all patient editing.
Notes
1. The Podhale (literally 'under the pastures') is the region of south-western
Poland stretching from the foothills to the south of Krakow to the high
peaks of the Tatra mountains. The people who live in the Podhale are the
Gorale, or mountain people, highlanders.
2. See also Pine 1999 for an account of this and other events in the village during
the war years.
3. The area which had been Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and
Austria-Hungary in the late eighteenth century, and was re-established as a
nation-state only after World War II, in 1918.
4. This research was conducted between 1991 and 1996. Lodz is the second
largest city in Poland, and has historically been the centre of the textile
trade. From the nineteenth century, when this area fell under Russian rule,
peasants came in to Lodz, and later to dormer towns such as Pabiance, Ale-
kandrow and Zdunsky Wola from the countryside to work in textile factories.
During my research I lived partly in Lodz itself, and partly in a small village in
the Sieradz wojawodstwa; throughout the period I conducted unstructured
interviews with unemployed female textile workers in Lodz, Aleksandow,
Lask, Zdunski Wola and Pabianece, as well as participating in and observing
daily life in the village.
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8
Work, Identity and Rural-Urban
Relations
Deema Kaneff
'Work' is a central feature of rural identity. In fact agricultural work - as

the source of local differentiation from city work - appears instrumental
in influencing local perceptions of the city. In this context the overarch-
ing role of the state - through its involvement in production, for
example - is a fundamental consideration. The state's increasing pene-
tration into peripheral areas during the course of the twentieth century
has coincided with greater control over local work and production. This,
in turn, has had implications for rural-urban distinctions and antagon-
isms.
These themes are examined using material collected in the village of
Talpa, northern-central Bulgaria.1 I begin by sketching the changing
fortunes of Talpa over time in terms of rural-urban relations. The pur-
pose of this is twofold: to reveal the way in which local perceptions
towards 'urban' inhabitants have developed over time and to establish a
connection between rural perceptions of urban and the village's
changing relationship with the state. Rural-urban relations and local
relations to the state must be considered as different processes, yet at
certain periods, rural inhabitants have viewed city folk and state officials
in a synonymous way. Indeed, the changing position of the village with
respect to the state centre has shaped the degree of antagonism between
rural inhabitants and their urban counterparts. At times when state
policy was seen as supporting local identity (partly through practices)
of work - for example, during the socialist period - tensions between
rural and urban areas decreased. At other times when state involvement
was viewed as attacking village work and the concrete manifestations of
such activities, for example, buildings, then an increase in rural-urban
tensions is evident. The last ten years of post-socialist reform provide an
example of the latter situation.
180
Deema Kaneff 181
It is in the context of current reforms that urban academics have

begun to write again about the 'backward' rural other. The response by
urban academics to rural opposition of the post-socialist reforms consti-
tutes the subject of the final section. I suggest that academics have
fuelled emerging regional tensions. Indeed, negative representations of
the rural, which make 'the rural' peripheral, are one means by which
urban elite have legitimated their own claims to state power. A Talpian
response has been to appear to conform to pro-reformist views, in an
open display of compliance. In this way they have managed to realise
their own goals which in actuality diverge from those of urban-based
reformers.
Work, rural identity and the changing nature of rural-urban

relations
The modern history of village Talpa is considered, by its present inhabit-

ants, to have begun in 1878, after Bulgaria won its freedom from the
Turks, who evacuated the area, returning only to sell their land to
Bulgarian settlers moving in. A building programme began almost im-
mediately: Turkish buildings were demolished and replaced with struc-
tures significant to the new Bulgarian inhabitants. The responsibility for
the initiative, construction and funding of the central village buildings -
the church, school and chitalishte (cultural house, presently consisting
of a library, theatre seating 450 and a number of meeting rooms) - was
largely a local affair. The church and school, both built in 1882, and the
chitalishte in 1887, were projects carried out by motivated villagers,
using funding and donations from local sources, and built with the
contribution of village labour. The only history of the village records
the efforts of local people.2 One 96 year-old man describing his partici-
pation in the building of the church, is quoted as saying: 'We built with
excitement and with great will. We worked voluntarily and didn't mind
giving our labour. Once the afternoon set in, we returned from the fields
and with the carts we transported different materials - stone, wood,
water. Everyone worked. Every stone is split by hand,' (Naymov 1969:
59-60).
Clearly, rural 'work' constitutes a central part of local identity:3 the
above quotation implies something about the character of the activity -
it is 'hard', physical work, carried out by hand - and often carried out as
a shared venture. Such themes arise again and again in village discourse.
Elsewhere (Kaneff 1998a, 1998b) I have argued that the shared nature of
village labour is a central dimension of rural relations. For example, the
preparation/production of household food, as well as its exchange4 and

consumption, is a cornerstone of interaction between kin, neighbours
and other villagers. Shared labour in household plot activities involving
not only neighbours but - since the time of socialist industrialisation -
also kin now resident in the city, was a vital foundation of all village
relations. I do not wish to dwell further on this point. Here, rather, I
extend this idea to include joint labour projects that are not limited to
the production of household food: for example, communal work sur-
rounding the construction of the chitalishte, school and church. Com-
munity projects bind inhabitants together, cementing relations through
the activity. Such tasks were also carried out during the socialist period
when communal projects - such as the foundation of the agricultural
cooperative - were encouraged. Social relations are thus made concrete
in local institutions which are built with local labour - the agricultural
cooperative is one such institution - and become embedded in the
collective memory of the community. The resulting physical structure
is the concrete symbol of these relations.
Since 'work' acts as a 'cementing agent' between participants, social
distance is also designated in terms of labour. Indeed, labour constituted
the basis for defining relations of familiarity - closeness was indicated in
terms of the extent to which labour was shared and exchanged (Kaneff
1998a). Agricultural work served to bind kin and neighbours in relations
of trust, obligation and familiarity. Through the exclusion of non-work
participants, work also served to define the boundaries of the commu-
nity itself. Again, this point has been made with respect to household
production of food but it seems equally true for other Talpian activities.
The building of the church, school and chitalishte were precisely such
examples of the community being constituted through projects involv-
ing shared work. It was villager's hard labour in the construction of the
chitalishte, school and church, which gave value to the buildings, which
then became sources of pride, visual concrete symbols of joint effort by
the new settlers. Another recollection of the establishment of the
church, this time by an elderly female villager emphasises the act as
bound to issues of identity: T remember the Turkish mosque with the
tower... We Bulgarians destroyed it and picked up the stones with our
bare hands. The stones we carried to build this present church,' (Nay-
mov 1969: 60). The buildings represented two communities - 'Bulgar-
ian' as opposed to 'Turkish', and Talpian as opposed to any other local
community. Through the shared task of construction, the new settlers in
Talpa, families who had immigrated from over twenty different villages
in the region, were united. As a newly settled site with no long-term
Deema Kaneff 183
traditions for the post-18 78 Bulgarian settlers to call upon, such shared
tasks as the 'public' construction programme created a strong - perhaps
sole source of - 'community' in the village.
Importantly, much of the communal work that was carried out on the
public buildings was done without the involvement of state officials.
While the appropriate state agencies provided authorisation for the
buildings - the government in the case of the school, the higher church
order for the church - and minimal financial assistance, these village
projects were otherwise local affairs: they were organised through com-
munity initiative and construction was carried out using local resources
and labour. The relative autonomy of the community was evident not
only in the way in which institutions of local significance were founded
but also in the way they were maintained over the long term. Thus, for
example, before the socialist state was established in 1944, funds for the
heating, lighting, maintenance and cleaning of the school, as well as
the cost of furnishing it, came from property written in the name of the
school. Such school land - 45.6 hectares of fields, 4 hectares of forest
and 6 hectares of meadow - was given 'under rent' and the proceeds
used to fund the school. The chitalishte did not receive income from land
until 1939, when it was granted 2.1 hectares by the government. Until
this time, material support for the chitalishte came from individual
donations, which included money, building supplies and grain (Nay-
mov 1969: 17). Funding was also earned from local initiatives to organ-
ise entertainment projects. The proceeds of Talpian plays and other
theatrical activities were channelled into developing the chitaliste. The
library was also established through the generosity of the local inhabit-
ants who made donations of newspapers, books and journals, while
others gave cash.
The degree of autonomy evident in the establishment of the Talpian
chitalishte appears quite typical of Bulgarian villages during the earlier
part of the twentieth century, although Sanders, in his 1930s ethnog-
raphy of a village near Sofia, now an outer suburb of the city, notes a
gradual increase in the penetration of the state at the local level. During
this same period of Talpian history, 'the city' was not portrayed posi-
tively in local accounts, rather it was perceived as the source of village
misery. Education was offered as a local solution. Such views were
expressed from the earliest moments of Talpian history. For example,
in 1897, an invitation was sent out to villagers to attend the annual
general meeting of the chitalishte by individuals who 'expressed deep
concern for the social and economic position of the villagers' (Naymov
1969: 16):
11.1.1897
Dear Villagers
We, as villagers, find ourselves in a bad situation. Not only bad, but
also ugly. Everyone of you now understands or at least feels the unfair-
ness which has gripped our region. Everyone sees how individuals
higher up and more powerful, unlawfully crush the rights of the
weak ordinary people and how they play with the fate of the poor
villager. We are crushed as if the whole city is upon u s . . . Why do these
big differences exist between the uneducated and educated, between
the poor and rich? Why? Should we tell you? Because we, poor villa-
gers, are both uneducated and understand little of our rights or of
other such matters... Since it is so, we must learn, we must start to
understand these processes and not take our hats off to the important
people. And where can we learn this? We'll tell you. Nowhere else
except in the chitalishte... Villagers, don't waste the 12th of this
month. After the church service, there will be a meeting... Now is
the time. Make haste! Everyone is requested to give as much support as
they can to the chitalishte, which is the real source of self-education.
(Naymov 1969: 16, my translation)
The committee that signed this invitation was comprised of prominent

socialists, educated villagers - including the librarian - as well as the
priest, who was chitalishte treasurer.
Inequalities based on wealth and education were clearly of concern to
the first Bulgarian/Talpian settlers. 'Talpians, like all the working people
at that time, fell into economic hardship as a result of the high interest
rates' (Naymov 1969: 63). Such inequalities were demarcated in spatial
terms - between the rural population and the urban population. It was
city inhabitants - though not all - who were perceived to have the
benefits of wealth and education. Indeed in several other places in the
work Naymov hints more specifically about the nature of rural-urban
exploitation as being connected to the financial indebtedness to which
villagers were subjected by wealthy urbanites.
A solution was sought in self-education. Naymov records the memory
of a founding member of the chitalishte 'the priest and the teachers used
encouraging words... and made us believe that if we want to have free-
dom ... it must be through the educational programmes of the chita-
lishte' (1969: 13-14). Indeed in the very earliest period of Talpian history,
with an illiteracy rate of 70 to 80 per cent, education was seen as a
fundamental survival skill: 'Adults must pay taxes in the district council,
Deema Kaneff 185
in the law courts, they must calculate things at the markets and protect
themselves from liquidators, businessmen and other exploiters' (Nay-
mov 1969: 5).
We can trace the changing nature of rural-urban relations in terms of
Talpian interactions with the state - the way Talpians perceive urban
inhabitants and 'the city' are coloured by local responses to external
political circumstances. The official accounts of local history present the
village as strongly pro-socialist and this seems a factor of central import-
ance when considering local-state relations and rural perceptions of the
urban. Thus in 1914, village officials sent a protest to the King and
Government concerning the country's involvement in World War I. As
a further display of opposition, the mayor was reported to have replaced
the portrait of the King in his office with the portraits of Marx and
Engels (Naymov 1969: 22). Talpian recollections about the period im-
mediately after World War I, however, when the Agrarian Party was in
power (1919-23), were positive. During this time, public discussions
revolved around the 'progressive' (Naymov 1969: 25) creation of a
Commission for Land to consider land reforms and the cooperative
working of the land. It was also in this period that a law was passed
making primary education compulsory (Naymov 1969: 5), a secondary
school was opened in Talpa (Naymov 1969: 23-5) and a general revival
of cultural activities occurred in the village following the return of
surviving soldiers from the war.
But if during this time there is little recorded evidence of anti-city
rhetoric, the picture was very different following 1923. Vilification of
'the city' quickly reached a new peak after the assassination of the leader
of the Agrarian Party and installation of a right-wing coalition. It
brought the socialist-oriented politics of Talpa in direct conflict with
that of the national government. One assault made by city state agents
on the village is passionately described, when on the 3 May 1923 the
village was surrounded by the army and police from the city of Veliko
Turnovo (Naymov 1969: 26). A number of houses were searched and
men arrested - communists and BZNC (Agrarian Party) party members -
the perpetrators then moved to the village library from which they
confiscated over 300 books, mostly socialist literature including works
by Marx and Engels. A portion of the books was piled high in the
chitalishte yard and burnt publicly, the other part was taken back to
the city of Turnovo, along with the arrested men. The attack on village
literature was perceived as an assault on the community, a significant
event in local history, for the library and contents had been built up
through years of concerted effort. The destruction of village property
(books) which had taken the villagers so much effort to develop, and
which symbolised for them a means of freedom from their burdensome
lives, was ultimately also a deep cut into the core of village identity.
Throughout the mid-1930s and in the lead up to World War II, the
village was located in an antagonistic position with respect to the state.
The village chitalishte was the focal point of much anti-government
activity that directly conflicted with city authorities. For example,
plays with political messages were performed that led occasionally to
youths being questioned by city police. Money earned from the per-
formances and intended for donation to the partisan movement was
confiscated by officials (Naymov 1969: 30). In fact as with many other
villages in the region, Talpa became a safe haven for partisans seeking
protection from government forces less able to penetrate and root out
anti- government activists in rural settlements than in the cities. The
most famous figure to seek refuge in Talpa was Todor Zhivkov, later to
become the head of the Bulgarian Communist Party (1954) and Bulgar-
ian State (1962-89). He found sanctuary in Talpa for a period of two
years in the late 1930s. During this period he lived with his fiancee, who
was stationed in the village as a doctor. Local institutions such as the
chitalishte took a leading role in the ideological battle with the right-
wing, urban based government. In 1943 directives from the city were
once again sent, demanding the destruction of socialist literature in the
chitalishte library. This time the books were stored by the librarian in a
secret location and thus saved from another purge.
As the state gradually increased its penetration of local institutions over
the first half of the twentieth century, so urban-based policies which did
not conform to local views became more important in strengthening
Talpian opposition to 'the city'. Portrayed as a village with strong socialist
leanings, this period before the end of World War II placed the village as
much 'at war' with its own government as with foreign powers. But as we
have seen it was by no means a new tension, as from the very earliest
moments, 'the city' was seen as the repository for those who had material
and educational advantages that they used to exploit villagers. With a see-
sawing national politics, rural inhabitants found themselves at times in
unison, at other times at odds, with the state. It was in the moments of
greatest divergence that 'the city' was vilified.
Given the strength of socialist views in Talpian history - if not amongst

all individuals, then at least amongst those who held leading positions
Deema Kaneff 187
in the village (even the first village priest was a socialist!) - we should
not be surprised that the post-World War II period was the one lengthy
period during which antagonisms with 'the city' were relatively weak.
Local negative connotations of city life continued, but ultimately social-
ist ideology, the driving force behind Sofian investment to improve the
standard of living in the provinces - to make rural settlements 'like
towns' - ensured that the once large discrepancies between the quality
of life in cities and villages was narrowed. The expansion of the state at
the local level, dominating local education, health as well as agricultural
production, may not have been welcomed by everyone in Talpa, but few
would deny the increases in standard of living that were associated with
this period. One elderly woman responded to my question (in 1987) of
what socialism had done for her by explaining that: 'it has brought us
electricity, running water, asphalt roads, less sickness', in short a much
better way of life.
Positive improvements in rural life were associated with changing
forms of 'work': agricultural work moved closer in significant ways to
becoming more like 'urban' work. Indeed in the context of state social-
ism - which controlled both the means and forces of production - work
became a significant 'target' for socialist transformation. The collectiv-
isation of agricultural production was a fundamental factor in this
process. The cooperative was founded on the basis of pooling joint
agricultural land and livestock. Villagers also contributed their labour
in order to build the organisation - in much the same way as had
occurred in the case of the church, school and chitalishte some sev-
enty-odd years earlier. Whether this land, livestock and labour had
been given voluntarily or not was less relevant from a Talpian perspec-
tive. The important fact was that the cooperative was established on the
basis of local contributions. Further, the institution was far more signifi-
cant to the community than simply as an organisation for agricultural
production. The collectivisation of agricultural production was per-
ceived as a fundamental factor in contributing to the overall improve-
ment in rural standards of living during the socialist period. It freed
villages from heavy physical work through the mechanisation of agri-
cultural labour and took away a lot of individual risk associated with
working the land. Moreover, collective agriculture introduced a form of
labour compatible with urban factory work and enabled villagers to
enjoy, for the first time, salaries, pensions and holidays. An increasing
number of villagers moved out of working full-time in agriculture al-
together - aided by an excellent and free nationalised educational
system. By 1986 when I first arrived in Talpa, only about one-sixth of
the village population worked full-time in the agricultural cooperative.

It is true that all Talpians laboured on their half-hectare household plots,
but for those not yet pensioned this work was part-time, carried out in
conjunction with other, often non-agricultural occupations. Lastly, the
cooperative provided a wide range of services - providing practical and
technical assistance to household agriculture (veterinary help for
example) - as well as sponsoring social events.
However, closing gaps between rural and urban areas on the basis of
work did not automatically result in harmonious relations. During so-
cialism, villagers did not relinquish their suspicions about city inhabit-
ants, a point made evident to me by my landlady, Maria, who confessed
that she had been worried about how I would manage to live in a village:
T expected you, like all city people, to be full of pretensions, airs and
graces.' I could see why rural people should come to that conclusion. My
Sofian academic advisors believed that I would be much happier living
in a hotel in a local town. They suggested that I travel daily to the
village. Indeed it was difficult to convince urban academics of my
determination to live in a village. They tried to discourage me by telling
me how 'difficult' life was in the villages. It is a stereotype that finds
some accordance with rural views. Perceiving themselves as engaged in
hard physical labour, villagers distinguished themselves from city in-
habitants whom they believed to be 'lazy'. Urban inhabitants were seen
as having an 'easier' life and not willing to get 'their hands dirty'. They
do not carry out, in village terms, 'real' or 'proper' work. Again, a
characteristic of agricultural work appears to be the hard, physical
labour it entails, irrespective of the growing dependency on mechanisa-
tion through collectivisation.
Despite the continuation of such prejudices between rural and urban
residents, the relatively non-antagonistic association between state and
village was translated into minimal tension between urban and rural
regions. Historical associations that Talpians had to the highest state
official - Zhivkov - helped close the gap between rural and urban
regions. In establishing their close historical connections to national
state figures from the Party, village officials were able to bypass the
formal administrative hierarchy and have direct access to the privileges
and resources that a centralised state controlled (Kaneff forthcoming).
While spatially Talpa was as peripheral as it had ever been, the commu-
nity's strong associations to the state centre made them less peripheral
in a political/administrative sense. The gap between the local commu-
nity and state officials located in Sofia was reduced in comparison with
other periods of Talpian history.5 Indeed the award Talpa received for
Deema Kaneff 189
being a 'model village' in 1987 made clear not only the acquiescence
shown by the local community to the state, but also the relative prom-
inence of Talpians in terms of their position with respect to the city. The
'model village' title was a state recognition of the decrease in differences
in lifestyle between this particular rural community and urban settle-
ments. Achievement of 'model village' status was an acknowledgement
of the hard communal work invested by Talpians in order to transform
their village into something more 'urban-like'.
Demographic changes resulting from socialist industrialisation are
also a consideration in explaining rural-urban relations during the so-
cialist period. From a pre-war total of 70 per cent of the population being
rural and 30 per cent urban, the statistics were reversed during socialism,
with only 30 per cent of the Bulgarian population living in the rural
areas. This of course has led to a situation where every villager has close
family (usually children and grandchildren) in the cities. Under such
circumstances, negative views of the city have not been so easy to
maintain. The once 'educated and rich' described in the 1897 invitation
cited above, now include Talpian children and grandchildren. Yet des-
pite the physical separation - elderly in the village, children and grand-
children in the cities - a close connection has been continued between
kin. For example, households were - and still are - largely self-sufficient
in the production of meat, fruit and vegetables. In Talpa, Maria, a 60
year-old widow, relied on her only child, her 40 year-old daughter, her
son-in-law and grandson to return (from the town of Turnovo) on
weekends as well as for longer periods during the summer months to
help in the tending of the garden. The involvement of the daughter and
her family was not only vital in the preparation of the produce; the
family was also the main recipient, benefiting from the hundreds of jars
of preserved fruit, vegetables and meats that were produced annually.
Indeed it was only on the odd occasions that Maria visited her daughter
in the city, that agricultural work was not the focus of their time
together.
Thus, during socialism, rural-urban distinctions were minimised not
only by a close local-state centre association but also through emerging
kinship connections between the two areas. Had immigrants to the
urban areas severed ties with their rural roots, then the stereotypic
images of the city could perhaps have been maintained. However this
has not happened. To the contrary, during the socialist period, as much
as now, rural and urban kin have been and are bound in a relation of
economic dependency: the fruit/vegetables and cash crop (decorative
roses) provided - and still provide - an important source of food and
cash to urban relatives, while urbanites, in turn, supplied - and still

supply - much of the seasonal labour for such activities. Joint labour
involving rural and urban kin set up a privileged connection between
them. But as noted above, connections between urban and rural areas
were also established in other ways - through the agricultural coopera-
tive, as part of a wider state initiative to transform all rural and urban
relations through work. Both types of interactions ultimately estab-
lished closeness through shared agricultural work - be it in the state
cooperative or household plot. All relations were subsumed to a political
ideology that demanded a closing of the gap between rural and urban
regions - a gap that Talpa, a 'model' socialist village, was particularly
successful in reducing.
In the decade since the 1989 reforms, a dramatic turnaround has

become evident in both the village's relationship to the state, and in
the increasing polarisation between rural and city inhabitants. Rural
citizens feel alienated from the reforms that are largely urban-based;
developed in the cities by urban intellectuals who have little under-
standing of the rural situation. One need only enquire about the voting
patterns in the last ten years to confirm the lack of rural support for the
urban-sponsored reforms.
Reminiscent of the situation in the early twentieth century when the
state's presence and role in rural life was comparatively minor, Talpa is
once again relatively autonomous. Decentralisation (and funding cut-
backs) which constitute an important part of the present reforms, has left
villagers without many of the services they once took for granted -
regular and cheap transport to towns, good health and educational ser-
vices. Of course such a withdrawal of the state has involved a weakening
of the authority of the locally elected mayor and councillors, that is,
those who represent an enfeebled government with shrinking resources.
The strong presence of the state through state controlled agricultural
production has also been relinquished. Privatisation (part of the move
toward decentralisation), involving the return of land to individual pri-
vate control, is perhaps the most significant way in which the state has
withdrawn its involvement in local affairs. The particular way in which
restitution took place in Bulgaria - through returning land to pre-1944
owners - gave prominence to land on the basis of kinship ties rather than
on the basis of work/labour. Undoubtedly, both kinship and work are
bound in complicated ways to the service of rural identity, but this
Deema Kaneff 191
complexity is not recognised in the restitution laws. I have noted else-

where how the distortion which acknowledges kin at the expense of work
has served to create new ethnic tensions in Talpa, that is, between Bulgar-
ians who can legitimate their claims to land on the basis of pre-1944
ownership versus non-Bulgarian immigrants to the area who have no
claims despite their thirty-odd years of work in the cooperative (Kaneff
1998b). Here, I highlight a second antagonism arising from the kinship-
oriented restitution law: a division between villagers who create and
reproduce their community in terms of shared labour, and city reformers
who are non-participants in such community-oriented work activities.
Given the centrality of work in defining rural identity, and as an import-
ant marker in distinguishing Talpians from others, the liquidation of the
state cooperative (and land restitution) had fundamental repercussions
for village identity as well as consequences for rural-urban relations. To
understand the depth of local resentment in connection with the dises-
tablishment of the cooperative, we may recall how integrally entwined the
institution was in everyday village life. Arising from their joint labour and
perceived as a source of 'freedom' from agricultural toil, the cooperative
was an important community institution which had symbolic import-
ance, a monument to local improvements in standards of living.
It is little wonder, given the central importance of the cooperative to
the village community, that its disestablishment has had fundamental
repercussions for rural-urban relations. Talpians resented outside offi-
cials' involvement in the liquidation of the cooperative. The cooperative
was founded with local land, local livestock and a product of local labour.
Villagers were proud of their achievements during the socialist period
and resented outsiders liquidating their work of a lifetime. As one woman
said 'We joined the agricultural co-operative and now it's being des-
troyed. Just as well that those who were most involved in founding it
are dead and can't see their work being destroyed.'6 Outside initiatives to
liquidate the cooperative were an affront, a perceived attack on one of the
central village institutions, an attack on the community itself. This
reform-driven policy, enacted with little consultation of local needs or
desires, was a fundamental reason for the souring of local-state relations,
in much the same way that the confiscation and destruction of village
books had been some sixty years earlier. For the first time in 50 years, the
state was not seen as supportive of local institutions, but a threat to them.
Nor did the urban-based reforms (driven as much by political/ideological
motives as economic or social reasons) take into account the importance
of the cooperative for providing a range of local services or its strong
connections with local identity.
The height of urban-rural tensions was reached at the time that the
liquidation of the socialist agricultural cooperative took place. The Li-
quidation Council was established on the basis of policies of the anti-
communist party, the Union of Democratic Forces (henceforth, the
UDF), which during its short term in office in 1991-92 passed laws
that disallowed members of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (henceforth
to be known as the BSP, previously the Communist Party) from partici-
pating in the Council. In Talpa the Liquidation Council was comprised
of five men who fulfilled the criteria of not being BSP members (and
were thus in no way representative of the pro-socialist village) and who
all but one lived in nearby towns. Unsurprisingly these men bore the
brunt of rising antagonisms between ordinary villagers and state offi-
cials. Much as on previous occasions, the state-local tension was largely
expressed as a rural-urban split, a particularly easy association to make
given that the state-sponsored reforms were carried out by officials from
the towns. Further, Talpians re-established the cooperative working of
the land in preference to private individual farms - an act which placed
them at odds with goals upheld by the UDF. The first of the two new
private cooperatives was formed in 1992 in reaction to the liquidation of
the socialist organisation. The president, Iliev, spoke in a village meeting
of 'interfering' outsiders and promised that no one but Talpians would
be employed in the private cooperative (a promise he had to break at a
later stage). Indeed at the same meeting, he said that 'I'll kick out non-
villagers, they have no business here.' Villagers took it as an obvious
reference to the Liquidation Council members most of whom lived in
the nearby township and who by nature of their political alliances -
and participation in the liquidation of the socialist cooperative - had
become the target of local resentment. Liquidation Council members
were representatives of the new political-economic order, and village
anti-urban feelings were focused precisely on such visible figures.
Animosity spread to those in the cities to whom the village Liquid-
ation Council was responsible, in this way transferring prejudice
directed from local urban representatives in Talpa to a general dislike
of all 'city inhabitants'. This is borne out by another statement made by
Iliev, who said of Stanev, head of the Liquidation Council, that T don't
think Stanev is our problem. Firstly his directives come from there', and
he pointed to the ceiling, indicating them as coming 'from above'. This
was a significant moment. The relationship between the village and
state centre was under contention. Unlike the socialist period, the
state now was seen as something alien, distant and non-accessible.
This was echoed in the way that other local people started speaking
Deema Kaneff 193
about state officials, as those from 'above' and as 'outsiders', in contrast

to the familiar way in which state officials were perceived during social-
ist times (see also Pine, Chapter 7 this volume). Villagers realised that
they were on their own and could no longer rely on outside assistance.
As one member of the cooperative said at a meeting of the newly formed
private cooperative 'If we don't help ourselves, there's no one else to
help us.' Village meetings placed an emphasis on local autonomy and
speeches along the line of 'it's our land and our village, we should be
able to do as we please' were frequently voiced.
In the post-socialist period, 'work' is once again prominent in the
construction of a 'community' identity. Work is still carried out collect-
ively, but the state is no longer involved in this process. The divorce
between the state and agricultural production has resulted in tensions
manifested partly as ones between local and state centre, and partly as
rural-urban. Work now serves to exclude city people in a way not
evident during the socialist period. Kin who still participate in rural
household agricultural work are not the target of resentments. It is the
relationship with state officials - non-kin - those involved in the state's
demolition of a village institution - the cooperative - that are perceived
as the problem. This chasm both represents a severance of close links to
the state and simultaneously a souring of particular rural-urban rela-
tions. Reform laws that legalised kin as the basis for land restitution and
de-emphasised work served to exclude outsiders not bound to the com-
munity through labour.
In short, decentralisation policies, especially land privatisation which
involved the liquidation of the agricultural cooperatives, underesti-
mated the crucial role that the cooperatives played in local community
life and in village identity. The cooperatives had more than just practical
significance; they also provided symbolic importance that was not ac-
knowledged by reformers. The result has been growing lines of division
between rural and urban areas.
Post-socialist urban representations of the rural... and rural

responses
It was during the early post-socialist period when the deep split between
'rural' and 'urban' was at its height, that academic literature and city
discourse about the Bulgarian 'peasantry' gained momentum. Urban
professionals and intellectuals put forward explanations as to why villa-
gers were 'unable to cope with the new changes'. For example, a doctor
in the township neighbouring Talpa commented to me that 'in Talpa
the people are politically red, but we town doctors are supportive of the
UDF, we are contemporary people, it's the party of the contemporary
times', thus assigning a backwardness to the villagers on the basis of
their political alliance to the BSP. Such evidence was also prevalent
amongst urban intellectuals - a factor that I attribute in part to the
very different, negative, experience urban intellectuals had of socialism,
as opposed to those more positive experiences held by rural people.7
In a paper describing the political events of the early 1990s, Tzvetkov
(1992) distinguishes between the conflicting political alliances of the
rural and urban areas. He writes that support for the BSP comes from an
'elderly, less educated and politically inactive strata living in the small
towns and villages' (1992: 34). On the other hand, he describes the UDF
as being backed by the 'active part of the population' (1992: 34), namely
intellectuals, youth and industrial workers. To make sense of this view
we need contextualise the position of the author: as a historian from the
Institute of History of Bulgaria, Academy of Sciences in Sofia, who as an
activist for the UDF was clearly pursuing his own political agenda.8 The
negative ways in which Tzvetkov represented rural inhabitants were
standard, almost cliche stereotypes generated by urban intellectuals of
the early post-reform period. Like many of the historical and socio-
logical studies written during this period, Tzvetkov's work upheld a
clear political agenda, that involved presenting the villagers as ineffect-
ive and weak, unable to adapt to progressive changes initiated by the
UDF. Village opposition to the reforms was thus explained away by
representing rural Bulgarians as politically backward and conservative.
Draganova (1992), a sociologist from Sofia also highlights the political
inactivity - that is, unwillingness to participate fully in the reforms - of
the rural population and provides a clearer explanation as to the nature
of such 'inactivity'. In seeking to explain village resistance to the
changes, she blames former communist managers 'who very craftily
use their discontent and manipulate them [the villagers]... [in order]
to protect their interests and preserve their [that is, managers'] status
quo' (1992: 7). In this quote villagers are represented as passive, ineffect-
ive beings, not bright enough to see themselves being 'controlled',
puppets manipulated by the BSP.9
The problem with such urban approaches is that they give no serious
consideration to villagers' political interests or economic concerns. Ac-
tually, a review of fieldwork evidence indicates the inaccuracy of these
representations. Lack of enthusiasm for private farming had nothing to
do with rural 'inactivity'. At least in the case of Talpa, for which I feel
most qualified to speak, lack of enthusiasm for private farming was
Deema Kaneff 195
based on the recognised benefits of cooperatives in the previous 50 years

and the importance of the institution in village identity, as a centre of
local work and agricultural production.
Nor were villagers 'manipulated' by the Party, incited to displays of
resistance and protest. To the contrary there was no open collective
opposition to the reforms, at least in Talpa. There had been some indi-
vidual, and anonymous, instances of resistance - threatening phone
calls and throwing stones at Liquidation Council members as they
left work late at night. Individual expressions of opposition, however,
remained informal, covert and anonymous, the type of acts that I
believe Scott (1985) would term 'weapons of the weak'. While there
were no coordinated expressions of resistance organised by local leaders
and carried out at the formal, collective level, this should not be inter-
preted as evidence of the inherent weakness or lack of political organisa-
tion in the community.
I specifically asked the mayor, originally a member of the Communist
Party, and then a member of the BSP, about the lack of organised
collective resistance. Her response was that in her assessment, there
was no point in resisting. She gave two instances of rural protest - one
from a village near Plovdiv where the army had been sent, in response to
the demonstrating villagers protesting against the liquidation of their
cooperative (one person had died in the skirmishes) and the other
instance from a village only a few kilometres from Talpa where villagers
participated in a symbolic gesture of encircling the cooperative with
linked arms. In each case, she noted, the government was not deterred
from pushing forward with its liquidation plans. She cited both
examples as evidence of the futility of protest. Thus the mayor was a
central figure in pacifying people who wished to organise collective
opposition. Fearing the harsh response of urban officials who had
proved that they were not afraid to use force against rural communities
in order to enforce 'democracy', and also aware of possible disadvan-
tages in souring long-term relations to the state, the Talpa leadership
chose not to show open resistance.
The mayor emphasised the benefits of coordinated displays of com-
pliance. It allowed the community, at a formal level at least, to 'save
face', to avoid open confrontation with state agents and therefore main-
tain a degree of autonomy. (Such freedoms were not available to the
villages that displayed open resistance.) In this instance, it is not a case
of literate, urban intellectuals pitted against an illiterate, ill-equipped,
poor 'peasantry' as during the first period of Talpian history: fifty years of
socialism has 'armed' villagers with literacy, and an impressive defence of
administrative/bureaucratic skills and knowledge that has proved funda-

mental in their deliberate decision of compliance. Such a response was a
planned and coordinated effort made by village leaders.10 More like the
'mutual cooptation' described by Flower and Leonard (1998), Talpians
too, chose a strategy which is accommodating to the state agenda. The
approach held certain advantages over the forms of resistance described
by Scott (1985) and those acts carried out in Talpa by individuals. It gave
the local community 'space' for the continued pursuit of its interests with
respect to the state, even opportunities to broaden the channels of en-
gagement (Flower and Leonard 1998: 287). But by no means should such
a strategy be confused with subservience.
Conclusion
'Work' was a central dimension of rural Talpian identity - although by
no means the sole dimension - and one that the state has engaged with
in different ways during Talpa's history. I have suggested that in particu-
larly low points of the local-state relationship, when state policies have
diverged considerably from dominant village pro-socialist views, Tal-
pians have perceived state officials as 'attacking' local identity through
destroying the products of their labour - be it their hard work to collect
books for the library or more recently the agricultural cooperative. In
both instances these institutions - the chitalishte and state-run coopera-
tive - were seen as having particular importance to the community: the
result of village toil and the means through which villagers believed
they could be freed from their burdensome lives. To the extent that work
solidifies the community both symbolically and practically through
shared activities, then such public buildings were about creating com-
munity, part of a long tradition of local labour projects.
The rural-urban division that has grown out of post 1989 reforms -
and which is intricately connected to the withdrawal of the state from
the local level - was largely manifested in terms of anger over the
liquidation of the once state-run cooperative. Post-socialist reforms in-
volving land restitution that de-emphasised work and which necessi-
tated the liquidation of the cooperative, failed to acknowledge two
important issues: the agricultural cooperative's symbolic and practical
role in contributing to improvements in rural life over the previous 50
years, and the importance of the institution in terms of local identity,
through community work which had been invested in it. The destruc-
tion of the socialist cooperative angered villagers who saw the state
officials as directly attacking them and the institutions that they hold
Deema Kaneff 197
so dear. Liquidation of the cooperative was viewed as an attack on the

community itself.
But such perceived attacks on the rural community were not restricted
to the domain of agricultural production, they also occurred in the
sphere of urban discourse about the rural. The discourse that has de-
veloped in academic literature on the 'peasant' or 'the rural' is one
means by which agents of the state - such as academics - have at-
tempted to neutralise their internal critics (villagers). Indeed, in relin-
quishing control of rural areas through direct economic means, the
production of academic discourse describing the rural as 'conservative'
and 'backward', for example, indicates a new way in which state officials
attempt to appropriate and marginalise certain actors from any claims to
state power. Such labels, which have undergone post-socialist rejuven-
ation, are political tools used by academics; they benefit urban intellec-
tuals' claims to state power and serve to legitimate their own allegiance
to anti-communist politics.
Talpians are very aware of the negative ways in which urban intellec-
tuals represent them: representations that can be read in newspapers
and viewed on television. Villagers frequently speak about the devalued
position they are attributed by city folk who 'consider us agricultural
workers as nothing'. But this is not the first time in Talpian history that
antagonisms between rural and urban areas have arisen. And to their
credit, the Talpian leadership has learnt its lessons from history. The
socialist cooperative may have been liquidated, but the collective
working of the land continues. Despite their increasing peripherality
from state power and geopolitical marginalisation from 'the city',
Talpians have skilfully achieved their goal of keeping their cooperative
(or a modified version of it), while at the same time 'saving face' in
their relations to state officials outside the village. In preserving a co-
operative mode of agricultural production, Talpians retain not only a
form of work relations they find preferable - although it does not remain
the same as during the socialist period - but also succeed, at least for the
present, in retaining the institution which is so fundamental to local
identity.
Notes
1. I first carried out fieldwork in Talpa in 1986 and have been returning to the
site regularly since then.
2. The work (1969) was written by G. Naymov, a prominent Talpian who was
the director of the village school for periods both before and after World War
II, as well as being the head of the chitalishte for over twenty years.
3. See Pine (1996) for a Polish case.
4. See Smollet (1989: 126) for an interesting discussion on being 'treated
as quasi-kin' through inclusion in the exchange of home-preserved pro-
duce.
5. In part this reduction in gap between rural and urban areas can be explained
in terms of the origins of those people in power during the socialist period. I
find particularly enlightening a table provided by Drachkovitch (1982: 134)
that clearly identifies the family background of all east European leaders after
World War II as peasant in origin. In many senses I see the move toward
socialism after World War II a victory for rural interests. (See also Tepicht
1975.) The prominent leaders were from rural regions and their personal as
well as ideological commitment to rural areas was clear. This contrasts with
the post-1989 situation, where reforms are very much an urban-based initia-
tive.
6. See also Verdery (1999: 72) who indicates Romanian cooperatives as having a
similar importance - bound up with local notions of work.
7. I can only point to some of the reasons for this diverging experience of
socialism, by recalling the dramatic improvements in standards of living
experienced by rural inhabitants during socialism. Another factor is the
type of work: urban intellectuals experienced more directly the 'repressive'
nature of state controls because of the specific nature of their work (writing,
for example) which placed them in a position of greater 'danger' with respect
to state ideology (see Verdery 1991).
8. In fact such works are based on generalisations and abstractions, rather than
on detailed and protracted research carried out in villages. Further, the
publications take a particular political bias - pro-UDF - in part achieved
through the uncritical use of government data. This leads to sometimes
questionable conclusions. Interestingly, some of this type of work was writ-
ten for western audiences, and often financially funded by western aid
programmes (e.g. Draganova 1993).
9. Draganova's (for example, 1992) pro-UDF stance which lays blame for village
opposition at the door of powerful BSP figures, was a view also evident in a
conversation I had with a young man from town, temporarily visiting Talpa.
He told me vehemently that 'these people (the communists) are still
choking us, still poisoning us, especially here in Talpa. In the towns it's not
that bad.' As noted below, this is contrary to my own fieldwork experience
where in Talpa, at least, it was BSP leaders who discouraged villagers from
carrying out demonstrations against the government enforced liquidations
(or at least discouraged the open forms of conflict to which Draganova was
referring.)
10. I have not discussed in any detail the way in which Talpian compliance
was organised. This would require providing information about the local
administration, the relationship between the mayor, Party leaders and
cooperative leaders, data on the way in which decisions to conform with
state requirements were made and so on. Such a topic warrants a separate
paper.
Deema Kaneff 199
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Scott, J. C. (1985), Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New
Smollett, E. W. (1989), The economy of jars: kindred relationships in Bulgaria: an
exploration', Ethnologia Europa, 14: 2, 125-40.
Tepicht, J. (1975), 'A project for research on the peasant revolution of our time',
Journal of Peasant Studies, 2: 3, 257-69.
Tzvetkov, P. S. (1992), The politics of transition in Bulgaria: back to the future?',
Problems of Communism, 41 (May-June) 34-43.
Verdery, K. (1991), National Ideology Under Socialism. Identity and Cultural Politics in
Ceaue§cu's Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press).
(1999), 'Fuzzy property: rights, power, and identity in Transylvania's decol-
lectivization' in M. Burawoy and K. Verdery (eds), Uncertain Transition. Ethnog-
raphies of Change in the Postsocialist World (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield).
9
Urban Peasants in a Post-Socialist
World: Small-Scale Agriculturalists
in Hungary1
Andre Czegledy
Introduction
'There will be some hard work this weekend' (kemeny munka lesz a hit
vegen), says Bela Katona2 in a proud voice as he prepares to leave the
office on a Friday afternoon. Dressed in a business suit that befits his
professional role of senior salesman for one of Hungary's most venerable
industrial concerns, there is little indication that soon he will be occu-
pied with an agricultural plot located 25 kilometres south of Budapest.
Yet none of the friends and colleagues who know him well find his
enthusiasm at all peculiar - for so many of them are too, urban peasants
in a post-socialist world.
According to official statistics, six of every ten Hungarians - rural and
urban alike - were involved in agricultural production in 1982 (Szelenyi
1988: 31).3 What percentage of the population remains currently en-
gaged in such activities is a matter open to speculation. Such specula-
tion is, however, a substantial distraction when evaluating Hungarian
attitudes towards agriculture, in general, and small plot production, in
particular. The 1982 figures cover only those persons directly involved in
agriculture; they do not include the more infrequent, and indirect,
participation of people in agriculture-related activities of self-provision-
ing 4 nor the dense web of social relations and cultural traditions tied to
such participation.
This essay draws its ethnographic material from ongoing anthropo-
logical research conducted in Hungary since 1989, particularly material
collected in the course of three fieldtrips made in December-January of
1995, April of 1996 and July-August of 1998. It addresses historical and
200

Andre Czegledy 201
contemporary issues related to the peasantry and small-scale farming

from the unorthodox angle of urban-dwelling Hungarians who bring
together the seemingly disparate worlds of rural agriculture and urban
wage labour: urban peasants.
On a material level, the evidence of small plot activity today confirms
established strategies of self-sufficiency considered integral to the way in
which Hungarians once coped with the material vagaries of state social-
ism. These strategies have found fresh purpose in response to the pres-
sures of current socio-economic transformation, representing a dialogue
of social interaction between familial generations as well as of move-
ment between rural and urban areas of the country. In these terms, the
figure of the urban peasant is part and parcel of the changing set of
demographies which link residence, employment, entrepreneurial be-
haviour and leisure activities with cultural notions of identity and self-
provisioning ideas central to domestic life.
Peasant-workers under state socialism
Like the rest of Europe recovering from the devastation of World War II,
Hungary experienced a significant population flight from the country-
side to its cities in the immediate post-war era. This demographic shift
was influenced by ongoing urbanisation and encouraged by the labour
requirements of infrastructural reconstruction and industrial develop-
ment. The normal pattern of migration was, however, undercut by a
range of social dynamics, chief among them those related to the resi-
dential intransigence of families of rural commuters whom scholars
have dubbed 'peasant-workers'. In substantial respects, these figures
are the precedent counterparts to the urban peasant phenomenon to
be addressed in later parts of the discussion.
The concept of the peasant-worker received widespread attention
through the work of Ivan Szelenyi (1988).5 His research investigated
rural-urban relations from the perspective of peasants as willing - and
unwilling - actors drawn into socialist Hungary's drive to industrialisa-
tion. They were rural folk who remained grounded in traditional village
and agricultural life, who assiduously cultivated small 'household' plots
of land permitted by the state and yet were able to take advantage of the
opportunities of newly created waged labour. In the eyes of the central
planners, these opportunities were meant to transform the previously
'self-employed' peasant or small-scale farmer into a member of the new
proletariat, whether through work on a cooperative farm or an indus-
trial assembly-line.
The fundamental question for the state authorities of the time was: to
what extent can a predominantly rural and agrarian society adjust to
investment discrepancies at pace, especially as these constitute radical
changes in the organisation of the agricultural sector? The major policy
components for modernising agriculture were put into place soon after
the end of World War II. They included: the nationalisation of major
enterprises and property holdings, collectivisation of agriculture, public
investment skewed towards manufacturing, and the linkage of welfare
benefits to waged labour status in the state-directed 'first' economy.
These policies forced many peasants to divide their time between official
employment (in a cooperative farm or factory) and private pursuits
geared to self-provisioning and/or additional income generation for
the household. Thus was created the peasant-worker, an amalgam of
rural identity and urban waged employment wherein individuals
shuttled between the worlds of traditional household farming and
modern industrial production.
The household plots
Although socialist investment was concentrated in the large urban

areas, rural life presented its own opportunities for Hungarians. By far
the most important of these opportunities was the minifundia (Szelenyi
1988: 23) of small plots of privately operated agricultural land.
According to Szelenyi, the material attractions of small plot agriculture
were so potent by the end of the 1970s that they were able to reverse the
historical 'departure from the countryside' (1988: 31).
Small plot agriculture (including animal husbandry) in Hungary was
largely structured by the drawn-out process of land redistribution under
state socialism. In 1945, private ownership of more than 120 hectares of
land was prohibited in Hungary, thereby breaking up the large pre-war
estates of the landed gentry. These lands were then redistributed to
the 'poorer' peasants (Reining 1983: 214-15, cf. Enyedi 1976: 17-18,
Pamlenyi 1973: 542-3), although this act of largesse was soon reversed
(beginning in 1949) with the introduction of Soviet-inspired collectiv-
isation aimed at modernising Hungary's agricultural sector through the
creation of industrial scale state and cooperative farms. The collectivisa-
tion initiative culminated in the Cooperative Land Reform Act of 1959
which gathered into public hands 96 per cent of the nation's arable land
(Sozan 1983: 125).
Outside of the public realm, there were scant opportunities for agri-
cultural production which possessed substantial economic impact. The
Andre Czegledy 203
exception was small plot agriculture of various kinds, chiefly that of the
'household plot' (hdztdji) variety. This was a parcel of land on which one
could grow produce for subsistence purposes, under a cooperative pur-
chase contract, or for market sale - without being required to enter the
public sector redistribution apparatus. Beginning in 1953, the plots were
allocated on a household basis to the members of a cooperative farm.
From 1968 onwards, adult members of a cooperative were individually
ceded household plots as a corollary of their employment.
The household plots were rarely over 2 hectares in size and, according
to Reining, 50 per cent of them were less than half a hectare (1983: 215).
Traditional staple crops were eschewed in favour of high-value produce
which could be intensively cultivated: fruit and vegetables for the most
part, although poultry, swine (and more infrequently, flowers) were also
preferred products. An important advantage of the household plot
versus other farming opportunities was the ability to manoeuvre be-
tween the public and private sector. Household plot-holders were
often able to arrange the use of cooperative machinery and discounted
seed, yet could circumvent the state's accounting and pricing apparatus
by selling their produce on the 'free market' (szabad piac) which began
to thrive during the 1970s.
The economic success of the household plots was such that by the
1980s, the image of the 'agriculturalist' among blue-collar workers was
linked to associations of affluence rather than poverty (Maday 1983:
324). It is no surprise then, that along with the household plots of rural
residents, there existed a parallel form of small-scale agriculture oper-
ated by urban-dwelling Hungarians: hobby plots.
The hobby plots

In the literature on Hungary, the small-scale plots of agricultural land
tended by urbanites have been differentiated (from the household type)
through their designation as 'hobby' plots (Maday 1983: 328-9, cf. Mar-
kus 1979: 395). In colloquial Hungarian, the hobby plot is often simply
referred to as a 'plot' (telek) - although this is also the name for any parcel
of land. Sometimes, it is given the title of 'hobby garden' (hobbi kerf), a
term whose frivolous connotation belies the complex social ramifications
involved. Like their household counterparts, the hobby plots were en-
couraged by the authorities as a way of generating additional agricultural
output. I would suggest that this encouragement also constituted the
promotion of an approved, non-political activity that might have been
considered to constitute a social palliative for the urban population. 6
Hobby plots are not unique to state socialist or post-socialist societies.

In Canada, they 'are a growing slice of [the] unofficial economy' (Saun-
ders 1996). In the English context, these plots come under the title of
'allotment', and Leapman (1996) traces their origins to pre-Victorian
philanthropy (1996: 8). The Hungarian hobby plot, however, possesses a
popular vitality quite different from these other cases - for its attraction
is linked to specific cultural traditions of domestic production, con-
sumption, representation and social exchange still in place today.
The hobby plots continue to figure as an important support for cross-
generational and translocal relationships. They are often the locus of
interaction for extended kin groups whose migrant branches return
'home' to the country villages from whence many households in the
larger conurbations trace their ancestry. It is not uncommon to find a
nuclear family living in a large city but returning every weekend to the
ancestral village in order to jointly tend a small plot with the kin who
have remained behind. Often, these remaining kin are of the eldest
generation, pensioners no longer attracted by the heady prospects of
urban life. A case in point is the family of Ferenc Fenyes, a factory worker
who moved to Budapest in the early 1950s:
Well of course I return to [the ancestral village] every weekend to see

my parents. Hungarians are very family-centred (csaldd-centrikus),
you know. The whole [household] comes and we all work on the
plot together. The children get to see their grandparents... we help
them by putting everything in order... They [the grandparents] are
old now, one cannot expect them to do so much as they used t o . . .
Hobby plot produce is shared between relations, thereby acting as a

material tie between rural and urban counterparts of a kin group. Such
translocal cooperation is a common pattern throughout eastern Europe,
where the practice was once reinforced by food shortages and distribu-
tion deficiencies under state socialism. Ethnographers working else-
where in the region have pointed out that the sharing of rural produce
among kinfolk has been a critical factor in urban subsistence strategies.7
In these terms, any small plot held within the wider kin group is an
important form of insurance for an urban family who possesses limited
(direct) access to agricultural produce.
Hobby plots in Vesbanya

Although the Cooperative Land Reform Act drew into public ownership
the overwhelming majority of arable land in Hungary, not all of this
Andre Czegledy 205
land ended up in the hands of state and cooperative farms. Some of the
arable land remained in state ownership, but out of productive usage;
some was earmarked for non-agricultural purposes; and some passed on
to cooperatives and state farms but then leased out to institutions and
companies for various internal projects. Marginal lands deemed unfit for
large-scale cultivation but in close proximity to urban areas were often
turned over to municipal authorities for allocation to the local popula-
tion on a lease and/or purchase basis. An example of this sort of arrange-
ment is illustrated by the case of Vesbanya.
Vesbanya (a name meaning literally, 'Mine of Ves') derives its name
from the nearby market town of Ves. It is a township which occupies a
sprawl of urbanised land resting in a shallow valley to the north of
Budapest, and contains eight separate 'settlements' (telepiiles) with a
total population of some 77 200 persons. Apart from blocks of post-war
housing, a railway station, sports arena, various smaller businesses,
churches and so on, the township also includes large tracts of hobby
plot land used by the local inhabitants. Included among these tracts are
four plots tended by the Kolosvari family (to whom I will refer shortly).
Vesbanya township was originally occupied by three agricultural vil-
lages (falu), their fields, and a number of sporadic settlements. The local
economy was bolstered by - and later subordinated to - the activities of
the local coal (szen) mines whose subterranean shafts begin in the
neighbouring foothills. As the mine tunnels extended under the valley
floor their progress influenced changes in the landscape above them:
the old agricultural villages and nearby housing estates were evacuated
in the 1950s and 1960s because of the dangers of land subsidence.
The land on which the original valley villages once stood was not left
idle by the socialist authorities. Beginning in the early 1970s, the former
village areas were recycled to form several tracts of small plot land, most
of them measuring a standard 2000 square metres (0.2 hectares) in size.
Use of the hobby plots was organised through two institutions: land
transferred into the hands of the nationalised mining works was leased
to its employees; land claimed by the municipal council was made
available to local inhabitants regardless of their employment affiliation.
By 1977 - when regulations were put into effect on a nation-wide scale
to allow rural inhabitants to purchase a maximum of 0.6 hectares of
state or cooperative land deemed unsuitable for large-scale cultivation
(Swain 1985: 72) - this process of land conversion was thus well under-
way in Vesbanya.
Today, the township is representative of many areas of Hungary
developed under state socialism through accelerated industrial
investment - but now left bereft of state support. Without substantial

state orders or foreign investment, 8 the mining works has all but closed
down. Vesbanya's other major employers, a limestone (mezkb) quarry
and cement factory, are in a similarly precarious situation. Not surpris-
ingly given the dependence of the local economy on these enterprises,
the official unemployment rate in the county was double the Hungarian
average in 1996. In spite of the gloomy economic environment - and
somewhat because of it - the Vesbanya hobby plots remain centres of
local activity. The majority of them are still leased out from the munici-
pal council at a monthly fee of 2000 HUF (approximately £6.00 in 1997)
- a far cry from the 150 HUF prices of 1973.
It was in 1973 that Attila Mor, the current patriarch of the Kolosvari
family, first leased one of four Vesbanya plots that he, his wife, his
daughter and her family currently tend. Attila was born in the nearby
town of Ves and, like his daughter and son-in-law (both engineers) once
worked for the mining works. Together, they now own and operate a
fast-food franchise restaurant near the railway station. At the age of 63,
Attila is officially a retired pensioner. Nevertheless, he spends every
other day working in the restaurant. Much of his free time though, is
spent doing what he likes best: working on the hobby plots. His daugh-
ter, son-in-law, and the three grandchildren routinely drop by to help
him whenever they can (every three days or so). Such aid is not con-
sidered an onerous chore among the family. Rather, it is viewed as a
shared activity that consolidates familial bonds. In addition, as Attila's
son-in-law, Gergely, puts it:
Visiting the plots regularly is especially good for the children. It

encourages them to learn about Nature and to gain an understanding
of the meaning of work, and they are able to spend some time in the
fresh air... If we were not so intent on finishing the new house,
Gizella [his wife] and I would be spending more time there ourselves.9
The current hobby plots (see Fig. 9.1) of the Kolosvari family adjoin each
other in a swathe of land containing approximately 250 plots divided
into neat rectangles. These plots comprise the fourth set in a series of
such properties worked by Attila Mor since 1968 (when he first pur-
chased a plot some 50 kilometres away in nearby Keresztkapu). The
Vesbanya plots are identical in that they all measure a standard 2000
square metres. Two of them house a one and a half storey 'cabin' (bode)
used for the storage of equipment and produce. 10 A third plot - the last
acquired by the family - contains the ruins of a similar cabin structure.
Andre Czegledy 207
Plot A PlotB PlotC PlotD

watermelon grapes apple trees sour cherry
strawberry plum (11 trees)
peach pear
apricot
Ruin flowers flowers
Cabin Cabin
1 2
Fig. 9.1 Four Hobby Plots
Such cabins form an integral part of small plot agriculture in that they
not only serve practical storage purposes related to small plot farming,
but also act as a site for what might be termed 'rustic hospitality': plot
neighbours (both men and women) and guests are regularly invited to
join members of the family on the patio of primarily Plot 'B'; there they
are served fruit compote and home-brewed wine/spirits from the plot
gardens, and regaled with family stories.
In contrast to the more diversified household plots of the traditional
peasantry, the Kolosvari plots presently produce only flowers and fruit,
both products for domestic consumption or for use in reciprocal gift
exchange with relatives, neighbours and friends. Some of the ten kinds
of fruit are eaten when ripe in the summer and early autumn; some are
used to make jam preserves for the children's breakfast and for trad-
itional conserves of dessert compote. The grapevines of Plot 'B' and the
11 (sour) cherry trees on Plot 'D' serve a different - and less innocent -
purpose. They provide the base material for two types of rose wine, a
sour cherry wine, sometimes fruit brandy (pdlinka), and the potent
'brandied sour cherries' (konyakos meggy) which are a Hungarian culin-
ary tradition.
Unlike most of their neighbours, the Kolosvari family does not cur-
rently grow vegetables on their hobby plots. This is out of choice, an
opportunity afforded by their present level of disposable income. In
previous years and on previous hobby plots, however, vegetables were
cultivated as a form of domestic substitution for market-bought pro-
duce. Previously too, the family was involved in animal husbandry on
semi-commercial terms. At the height of this involvement, they were
raising 50 pigs, 100 geese and 150 rabbits (on two hobby plots elsewhere
in Vesbanya) as a form of supplementary income. The last of the swine
were sold in early 1995, except for two consumed by the family and
their friends in a grand feast involving a ritual pig-killing, literally
'swine-cutting' (disznovdgds), held in the same year to celebrate the
fifth anniversary of the fast-food restaurant.
Domestic self-provisioning and economic relations under

post-socialism
On an analytical level, the idea of self-provisioning, essentially the

attempt to develop a level of self-sufficiency within the family unit,
tends to be framed in the economic terms of subsistence in the first
instance. In the second instance, that is, at the level of production
superfluous to the direct needs of the family, the economic framework
is again applied - this time in reference to the idea of enterprise profit.
Analyses of peasant-worker 'household' plot agriculture correctly fall
into either of these two economic frameworks. The same thinking
does not always apply to hobby plot agriculture.
As the Vesbanya case testifies, hobby plots can create a store of pro-
duce for the family table independent of market relations. This is a form
of economic substitution: instead of buying in food for consumption, it
is operated within the confines of familial resources, that is, property,
labour, expertise and so on. One step removed from such a fully intern-
alised strategy is the common practice of (generally women) preparing
pickled vegetables and a variety of fruit preserves for the winter months
instead of purchasing these foodstuffs out of season. As a tradition that
reduces the household's reliance on commercial prepared foods that
have only recently become widely available in Hungary, it is as familiar
in the urban environment as in the rural one, where both Hann (1980:
146) and Lampland (1995: 290) have observed it.
Self-provisioning may be further understood as an avenue of retreat
from the economic precariousness of the post-socialist era. Current fears
of unemployment, in combination with the dangers of inflation and the
Andre Czegledy 209
retrenchment of the state, have brought many Hungarians face to face

with prospects of destitution previously unknown to them under state
socialism. In reference to such conditions, self-provisioning can act as
an economic cushion, a way of maintaining a level of autonomy from
macro-economic vagaries liable to affect family finances. It is also a form
of coping with decreasing levels of disposable income - as in the case of
those who work in the heavy industries hardest hit by recent economic
reforms. This dimension is illustrated by the case of a factory workshop
in Budapest, one of whose members recently reminded me that:
Every year we celebrate Christmas... In the previous era (a mult

korszakba) [under state socialism] we would get together on one of
the last working days of the year and go to a local restaurant to
celebrate... Everyone came; we had a good time. We could afford it
then, you know - not like today... as ordinary industrial workers
(egyszerii munkdsok) we had some money (to spend) then.
Times have changed. Today, these same employees scrimp and save
whenever they can - still celebrating the Christmas season, but under
a different set of circumstances which include the fears of arbitrary
dismissal and corporate collapse in an industry which has seen the
sudden loss of state support. Since 1991, there has been a different
routine:
We start cooking the day before. On the day, we get together on the
shop floor in the early morning and finish the preparations for
the Christmas meal. We eat it in the workshop at midday. One of us
is the main chef...
On the most recent occasion (1996) that I shared this Christmas meal
with the members of the workshop, the main dish was a venison stew
(vadporkolt) of stag and rabbit, garnished with home-made flour dump-
lings and home-pickled vegetables. The venison had been shot by one of
the group and the accompanying red wine was from the hobby plot of
another. Even the ground red pepper (paprika) seasoning was made from
peppers cultivated by a colleague's relative. However proud of the meal
these men were, one of them later admitted to me that the chief reason
for celebrating 'at home' (in the factory workshop) was because: 'We
cannot allow it [to be otherwise] economically (gazdasdgilag)' - meaning
that they could not afford to celebrate in a restaurant as they used to in
the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Everyone, he went on to relate to me, was
worried about the state of their finances and terrified of what the future
might bring.
Hobby plots can also be an important source of family income used to
purchase goods or services in the diversified economy. This is a form of
strategic economic production: cultivation for the purposes of sale in
order to acquire the means to purchase goods or services which the
family cannot or does not produce itself. From this vantage point, the
direct parallel to innumerable anthropological analyses of the way in
which peasant family production intersects with local markets is appar-
ent without elaboration. But what if the family already has an occupa-
tional portfolio separate from agricultural production that is adequate to
purchasing on the open market any goods and services it requires -
without resorting to small plot farming?
Domestic self-provisioning and gift exchange in Hungary

Why do Hungarians engage in small plot agriculture if they can achieve
a greater 'return on investment' elsewhere? The answer is twofold:
psychological and social.
From one perspective, small plots of all kinds can be perceived as a
form of 'therapy' (terdpia). This is what several informants told me,
including among them, Kalman Puskas. 'Puska', as he is known to
close colleagues, is a successful production manager in the heavy engin-
eering industry. He works in Budapest but lives with his wife Katalin in
the small town of Rappotvaros lying just south of the capital city. She
works at the same company, employed in the finance department. Their
combined professional income surpasses their current subsistence
needs, leaving sufficient money left over for a variety of extraneous
expenses. Kalman can readily purchase any foodstuff he desires without
much compunction; he has no economic need to engage in physical
labour of any kind. Nevertheless, agricultural cultivation is integral to
the daily routine of the family and dearly important to Kalman, in
particular. As a daily activity, it runs second in importance only to his
professional work (by his own estimation).
With the intermittent help of his 23-year old son, Kalman assiduously
cultivates fruit, vegetables and flowers on land adjacent to his house -
this 'extra' land being a crucial factor in the couple's original decision to
purchase the property in 1981. Katalin helps with tending the flowers,
but the domestic chores of cooking, cleaning, sewing and so on
are, according to her, already 'enough' (eleg) without spending much
time outside the house. In any case, as the main cook of the family, she
Andre Czegledy 211
is the one who tends 'to deal with the produce once it is out of the
ground'! 11
The Puskas plot provides soup vegetables (carrot, parsnip), walnuts
and fruit (apple, pear, plum, apricot) for the dinner table, as well as
enough grapes left over 'from the table' to make 120 litres of wine per
annum. Although regularly working an 11 hour work day (Monday to
Friday) and commuting daily between work and home for 35 minutes
(each way), Kalman nonetheless tends the plot on a daily basis: an
average of 1 hour per weekday - and a minimum of two-three hours
during weekend days. Working a second plot of land (located 160 kilo-
metres away) takes up a similar amount of time on the weekends. For
him, the answer of motivation is simple: small plot agriculture is an
opportunity to clear his head of the worries of the office, to 'divorce
[oneself] from daily pressures' (kikapcsolodds), as he puts it.
From a second and differing perspective, there is a deeply social
element to hobby plot agriculture and to self-provisioning in general.
This is because the essence of hobby plot agriculture is not the economic
rewards of the activity nor even (I would contravene Kalman) its use as
some psychological balm. Rather, the heart of hobby plot agriculture is
its nesting of social relations anchored in the prestation and consumption
of the plot produce itself. Prestation is linked to the establishment and
maintenance of reciprocal gift-giving; consumption is connected to
ideas of domestic choice and social prestige. In the rest of this section,
I will discuss the significance of particularly the latter in terms of Hun-
garian cultural life.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate the social relations of hobby plot
farming is to briefly return to the case of the Kolosvari family of Vesban-
ya and the produce of their plots. According to Attila Mor, the most
important of the crops cultivated on the four plots is the combination of
grapes and sour cherries that provide the material for homemade wines
and spirits. This is a revealing point in consideration of the fact that it is
only Attila and his wife Dora - not his daughter nor her family - that
drink alcohol. This point is not to imply that Attila and his wife con-
sume all by themselves the annual output of 150 litres of wine and several
bottles of fruit brandy! The 'majority' (tbbbseg) in Attila's estimation - is
gifted to relatives, neighbours, friends, family guests, and people con-
sidered to be of current and/or potential help to the family as a whole.
The last category, composed of persons who are less than friends and
more than casual acquaintances, is familiar to anyone aware of the
construction of what Ledeneva (1996/7, 1998) terms 'influence' (Mat
in Russian) under state socialism.
The prestation of hobby plot produce thereby creates intricate chains

of social relationship that are at least partially structured by the reci-
procity conventions of social etiquette. Such prestation is generally
conducted in three contexts: (i) when guests visit the hobby plot, (ii)
when guests visit the home, and (iii) when gifts are given as a social
intercession, thereby marking or promoting the existence of a
social relationship between people (and between families). Of these
three occasions, the first two are perhaps the more revealing of Hungar-
ian cultural mores largely because they often involve immediate
consumption of the produce itself.
As I have already noted above, it is normal for plot-holders to enter-
tain friends as well as relatives on the grounds of the plot, using the plot
produce as a centrepiece of shared consumption. The act of consump-
tion not only celebrates the relationship of hospitality between guest
and host (or host family, to be precise), it also publicly acknowledges the
time and effort that the host as cultivator has put into the growing of
the crops and their preparation for consumption. This is a case of the
hobby plot acting as the locus of social exchange. It is a role confirmed
by the ubiquitous, non-utilitarian features found on the cabins that dot
the plots. Such features include: painted and/or stucco walls, ornate
gables and window frames, upper-storey balconies, mini porches and
smallish patios. Most significantly, the patios and porches of the cabins
invariably accommodate chairs or bench seating for several individuals
(regardless of how many people actually tend a given plot). This is a
silent acknowledgment of the role which the plot cabins play in wel-
coming guests - not for working the plot (although this may infre-
quently be the case) - but purely for socialising.
In the confines of the family house (or apartment) the harvest of the
plots may also be used in an everyday fashion: simply to supplement
store-bought produce. In every case, my informants suggested that their
families preferred to eat the more 'natural' (termeszetes) plot produce
whenever they could - as opposed to the artificial, literally 'alien' (ide-
gen), store-bought variety. The reasoning given included worries about
the use of fertilisers and pesticides in large-scale agriculture - irrespect-
ive of the fact that the families in question also employed such sub-
stances on their own small plots (and each had no compunction with
the eating of processed foods in other contexts). Somehow - it was
repeatedly theorised - the plot produce represented a 'familiar' (ismert)
material suitable for the dinner table. When I challenged the basis of the
'somehow' involved in this familiarity, I was directly informed that the
plot produce could be depended upon in its preparation for consump-
Andre Czegledy 213
tion: it possessed a distinct colour, a specific texture, and a certain taste.

Even its transformative properties were of note, that is, it 'cooked' in a
known way. In short, plot produce could be relied upon to achieve
accepted results throughout the process of culinary preparation. This
answer brings into play two important relevencies, the first related to
the division between categories of social distance, the second connected
to culinary traditions of authenticity.
What is clear here is the construction of a symbolic boundary line
between the plot produce of known providence and commercial pro-
duce 'goods' of indeterminate origin. The first category incorporates
personal values of social intimacy which reflect and valorise the status
of the family as a corporate institution and unit of production. In
comparison, the second category contains the same physical objects
(produce), but these are now transformed through market mediation
into an asocial, economic value which has been stripped of direct attri-
bution, hence vital social meaning. Store-bought produce is thus often
labelled as simply utilitarian; it is devoid of the social dimensions of
production which magnify the consumption and exchange of food and
drink in the light of cultural perspective.
The corollary to this frame of logic is that plot produce serves as an
integral 'home-grown' ingredient in traditional recipes. These recipes
form the basis of distinctly indigenous dishes often prepared for festive
occasions or for guests as a special treat. This is roughly parallel to the
African cases noted by Goody and Goody (1995: 6) where there exists a
corpus of traditional foods aligned to ritual occasions. What we have
here is not the use of plot produce to substitute for market produce as an
economic artefact but rather its employment to constitute the base
authenticity of specifically 'traditional' (hagyomdnyos) dishes as a form
of cultural expression. These dishes are frequently based on 'family'
(csalddi) recipes handed down from generation to generation and are
themselves a point of pride irrespective of social factors such as class,
religion, wealth or ethnic affiliation. The recipes extend the temporal
preparation of the produce as food into the past of a familial history of
culinary expertise. The idea of preparing such 'true' (valodi) dishes, of
using such ingredients (for the sake of guests in particular) is quite
specific in relational terms. It invites the guest directly into the intimate,
socially reproductive (genealogical) world of the family as well as the
productive (sustenance) world of the household. Furthermore, the food
preparation itself is configured by a hierarchy of cuisine wherein the
most traditional of indigenous meals is given the greatest preference, a
choice in accord with the honorific status of the guest(s) at the supper
table. This configuration is, I will conclude in arguing, not without

ongoing reference to contemporary changes in post-socialist, Hungarian
society.
Self-provisioning and post-socialism
A final question still needs to be answered here: how do the ideas of self-
provisioning symbolically relate to the economic and cultural condi-
tions of post-socialism qua a society under tremendous internally and
externally generated pressures?
In Hungary, and throughout the state socialist countries of central/
eastern Europe, self-provisioning was an integral domestic strategy for
both rural and urban households alike.12 It remains such a strategy
today, but now a reconstituted one with new meanings embedded
within its fabric. Gone are the old associations with the 'first' versus
'second economy' dichotomy of state socialism. In their place are new
meanings of self-provisioning which stem from two primary sources.
One of these I have already discussed (the economic precariousness of
socio-economic transformation); the other involves the reaffirmation of
cultural identity linked to specific rejections of contemporary commod-
ity fetishism and the unrootedness of international capitalist produc-
tion.
The tradition of self-provisioning has much to say in response to the
commercially processed and packaged drinks and foodstuffs which have
recently flooded into the country's supermarkets, grocery stores and
corner kiosks. Some of these products are imported (primarily via Aus-
tria), but an increasing proportion are locally produced and sold under
license. Whatever the circumstances of production, the sleek and col-
ourful merchandise of the foreign food conglomerates is a far cry from
the familiar, drab products of former agro-monopolies of the socialist
period - let alone the simple agricultural produce of the local market-
place stall. Through extensive advertising campaigns, these modern
commodities promote the standard images of 'western' prosperity, eu-
phoria and leisure while simultaneously highlighting an ever-widening
spectrum of consumer choice. This spectrum is anchored by unrefined
produce of indigenous origin, on one end, and sophisticated, branded
foods with exotic flavours and foreign associations, on the other. The
latter category is but the narrow edge of a vast influx of consumer goods
in Hungary (and throughout eastern Europe) which trumpet their for-
eignness as much as any other value.
Andre Czegledy 215
Yet, however popular the new consumer products are - however high
the sales of caramel-coloured soda pop drinks and meat patty sand-
wiches - there exists a reserved mass of opinion about the limits of
such novelties. This opinion loosely incorporates an undercurrent of
cultural patriotism with respect to things of local origin; it is linked to
conservative, but broad, understandings of the place of indigenous food
and drink in local culture These understandings are dominated by a
high valuation of self-provisioned ingredients and traditional recipes
in conjunction with notions concerning the appropriateness of con-
sumption in its constituent parts. Such notions of the social valuation
of consumption are exemplified by the following episode drawn from
my fieldnotes:13
I visit [the General Manager of a joint venture firm] whom I have

interviewed previously... Later in the day, we will travel to the south
of the country in order to inspect one of his company's major oper-
ations, a feed processing plant located outside the city of Szekszard.
Before our departure, he invites me into his office to toast our
renewed acquaintanceship. We begin by drinking [foreign] whiskey
and discussing the limitations of cross-cultural management. After
some time, he pulls out a clear-glass bottle from the back of the liquor
cabinet: it is some of his 'home-made' (hdzi) fruit brandy. He tells me
that this act seals our relationship according to Hungarian custom.
By this last reference, the general manager did not mean to imply that
the consumption of spirits (as a whole) confirmed a new level of social
interaction between us. Rather, it was the sharing of the specific brandy
that accomplished this. He judged his offering of the foreign whiskey as
but an everyday politeness appropriate for social intercourse between
businessmen and offered as the by-product of his managerial persona.
Although perhaps expensive to purchase, it was merely a 'common'
(kozonseges) product available commercially. The implication clearly
being that such a commercial product sufficed for superficial interaction
but lacked social depth - an idea consistent with analyses of mass
consumer goods as socially alienable objects of material culture (Miller
1987: 204). In contrast, the homemade brandy was a cultural extension
of himself as its agricultural progenitor: T made it [myself]', he told me.
It possessed special status through the mutual recognition of its cultural
resonance: a traditional Hungarian spirit shared between two Hungar-
ians.
On one level of analysis, the shared brandy is a mechanism that closes

social distance by incorporating the guest in the host's private (house-
hold) realm of production. On another level of analysis, it represents the
valuation of an indigenous product over an ostensibly prestigious and
internationally recognised - 'western' (nyugati) - brand of spirit. This
valuation clarifies the way in which ordinary agricultural products
within a distinctly cultural framework may be used to (re)align relations
of consumption with relations of (differential) social interaction. The
potential of such alignment is obvious: it may constitute a symbolic
process of rearranging economic and political disparities between Hun-
garians as part of the post-socialist world versus the peoples of nations
outside of this category. In these terms, the resilience of self-provisioning
(and other forms of domestic production) is instrumental to the main-
tenance of both collective and self-esteem within the framework of
cross-cultural levels of social interaction and comparison.
It is not surprising that such paths of symbolism run a deep course in
the everyday lives of contemporary Hungarians. After decades of cher-
ishing such western products precisely because of their 'foreignness' (a
value not least constructed by local scarcity), post-socialist populations
are very much aware of the symbolic power of objects of material
culture. Yet to state that the rejection of foreign-generated, mass con-
sumer products simply involves the rebuff of material culture would
limit the more holistic perspective of self-provisioning which this dis-
cussion has maintained from the beginning.
It is not the economic relations, but the social and cultural dimen-
sions of production which underlie and knit together the complex
patterns of consumption and exchange in today's Hungary and,
reasoned speculation would suggest, in much of central and eastern
Europe as well. Self-provisioning is a prime exemplar of this dynamic.
It is a tradition that reinforces a host of relationships between kin, kith,
friends and acquaintances. It supports cross-generational ties and pro-
vides a link between rural and urban spaces. It spans divisions of age,
gender and class; it even possesses the power to ignore the increasing
disparities of wealth which are newly prevalent in post-socialist society.
As a consequence, self-provisioning exists not only as an economic
activity, but as a vital social glue. From this perspective, its worth tran-
scends mere commercial value.
In their favouring of indigenous products - in their appreciation for
the 'home-made' element of self-provisioning - Hungarians daily argue
for a maintenance of the host of social relations tied to the production,
exchange and consumption of such food and drink. These social rela-
Andre Czegledy 217
tions are far less prevalent in western Europe, where continued prosper-
ity and sophisticated brand consumerism have jointly displaced the
need for self-provisioning and the desire for its humble products. In
post-socialist Europe, however, the social relations of self-provisioning
still remain in full force. On the one hand, they are embedded in
dominant cultural models of domestic activity enshrining close family
ties above all else. On the other hand, they are entrenched in pervasive
customs of informal social exchange. State socialism reinforced these
traits of cultural life as a way of circumventing privations caused by
the deficiencies of the central planning apparatus, and as a way to avoid
the rigidities of bureaucratic proceduralism. They yet remain.
Consequently, the products of self-provisioning have additional mean-
ing within the framework of contemporary social discourse in eastern
Europe. They represent the valorisation of an intimacy between producer
and consumer which is of marked difference to the commoditised world
of the Euro-American model of international commerce and consump-
tion. The self-provisioning to be found in Hungary today, and through-
out eastern Europe, thus represents far more than a rejection of material
culture. It represents a rejection of the socially denuded world of mass
production itself, where the objects of sale have lost their ability to
represent anything more than simply interchangeable, economic value.
Does this mean to imply that the general manager with whom I
shared a drink considers himself an urban peasant - or any sort of
peasant at all? No. Like many urban Hungarians, especially those of
the economic elite, the prospect of such self-evaluation is far from his
mind; after all, the word 'peasant' (paraszt) remains a ubiquitously
negative colloquialism in the Hungarian language. It is variously inter-
preted as meaning a stupid, uncouth or culturally backward person.
Nonetheless, as this discussion has repeatedly demonstrated, behind
such acrimony sits a panoply of culturally rooted ideas and practices
which are closely tied to conceptions of the peasant way of life. Fore-
most among them is the tradition of self-provisioning - the fundamen-
tal economic strategy of the peasantry. As an accepted and highly valued
feature of cultural discourse, this activity remains integral to the way in
which contemporary Hungarians not only relate to each other - but
generally wish to relate to each other - in social matters of every kind. In
these terms, self-provisioning is as much a retention of indigenous
cultural mores as it is a rejection of the commodity fetishism exempli-
fied by the 'global' products of multinational conglomerates. As a con-
sequence, and in spite of the weight of media advertising which
promotes international homogeneity and less socially rooted strategies
of consumption, self-provisioning points towards certain limits to ac-

culturation - and the bountiful resources of cultural diversity.
Notes
1. For their comments on ideas presented in this paper, I wish to thank Nina
Czegledy, the late Ernest Gellner, Chris Hann, Deema Kaneff, Pamela
Leonard, Melissa Medich, Veronika Monoki, Frances Pine and Jaro Stacul. I
am further indebted to Klari Kosa and the Csongradi and Mucsi families for
their help with access to the relevant data.
2. Proper names have been altered for the reason of anonymity. The reader
should note that the 'ethnographic present' of this article is 1996, although
subsequent research data has been added where deemed suitable.
3. Swain (1992: 172), citing earlier research, notes that 'By 1972... roughly one
half of the Hungarian population lived in a household where small-scale
agricultural production was undertaken.'
4. The literature on household 'self-provisioning' as Pahl (1984) calls it, is
extensive. His commentary is mainly located vis-a-vis western Europe, as is
that of Gershuny (1979, 1983) and Mingione (1983, 1984, 1989). Among
those dealing with this issue in the east European context, Pine's (1993) work
in Poland and Galasi and Sik's (1982) Hungarian analysis stand out.
5. Incidental references to peasant-workers are commonplace in the literature
on rural society in socialist Hungary (Hann 1980: 74-6; Javor 1983: 275; Bell
1984: 117 passim) and there has been interest with respect to other contexts,
for example, Germany (Franklin 1971).
6. See also Bell (1984: 298).
7. Simic makes this point for Serbia (1973: 113-15); Wedel for Poland (1986:
1001-101). Salzmann and Scheufler add an explicitly monetary dimension to
the Czech case (1986: 82). Smollett discusses an 'economy of [food] jars'
passed between kinfolk in Bulgaria (1989).
8. Foreign investment in the township began to make its mark significantly
only in 1998-2000.
9. Gergely's statement reveals a number of notional tangents, including an
appreciation for physical labour which under socialism was reinforced by
state propaganda efforts to iconify heavy industry. It is a sensibility which
Lampland (1995: 314, 353) particularly attributes to the peasantry in Hun-
gary, but which my research has found to extend into the urban realm.
10. One of the cabins has a wine cellar with a grape press.
11. The exception is wine and spirit-making, which is normally conducted by
men in Hungary. The Puskas family's internal division of labour is consistent
with this custom.
12. Elsewhere (Czegledy 1995: 71-4, 76-7), I have analysed the phenomena of
self-sufficiency in the industrial context in both socialist and post-socialist
Hungary.
13. In the Spring of 1991.
Andre Czegledy 219
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Index
academics, see intellectuals collectivisation, 4, 14, 15, 17, 18

agricultural cooperatives, see in China, 48, 86-7
cooperatives in Russia and Poland compared, 154
agricultural modernisation, 13-5, 27 in Vietnam, 95-9
in Bulgaria, 187-8 see also decollectivisation
in China, 73-92 communist party/ies, 3, 13-18
in Russia, 117, 119, 141, 150-1 Bulgarian, 192
anthropology, 7, 20-36, 51, 64, 161-2, Chinese, 47-8, 50, 54-5, 62, 65-6,
177 79-80
Russian, 146, 148
Bailey, F. G , 21, 38 Vietnamese, 99, 100, 106, 108
Bulgaria, 15, 31, 33, 38, 180-99 compliance, see resistance
bureaucrat, see state agent cooperatives, see collectives
cultural identity, see identity
Chayanov, Alexander V, 16, 38-9 fn. cultural revolution (1966-76), 46,
28 48-50
China, 1-44 (esp. 1-6, 16-17, 29, 31), culture fever, 51-3
44-72, 73-94, 100, 101, 102
Ching, Barbara, and Gerald Creed, 9 dachas
Cohen, Myron, 27, 37, 39, 46, 67, 69, 'dacha activation,' 137, 150-3
89, 92 history of, 149-53
collectives and cooperatives, 8, 154 see also hobby plots
collectives/cooperatives, 8, 30, 32, decentralisation, 3-5, 45, 66, 67, 92,
87, 117-28, 137, 140-6, 156, 150, 190, 196, 205-6
157, 187-8, 191-2, 202 see also decollectivisation
influence of director over members, decollectivisation, 1-6, 31
126-7, 132, 141, 144-6 in Bulgaria, 190-2
interdependency with household in China, 76, 77, 83, 92
plots, 130-2, 142, 143, 203 in Russia, 132-3, 136, 143
persistence of, 4, 30, 32, 119, 122, in Russia and Poland compared, 154
125, 136, 143 in Vietnam, 117-29
service/commercial, 95-6, 107, 110, see also collectives; reforms; and
111, 114, 130, 143 privatisation
symbolic importance of, 182, 191, democracy, 10, 54-5, 57, 62-7
193 Deng Xiaoping, 45, 49, 81
see also privatisation Durkheim, Emile, 21
221
222 Index
Eastern Europe, 1-44 (esp. 1-6, 14-16, in Russia, 118, 122, 129-32, 140,
31-3) 153, 156 fn. 7 & 11, 157
Bulgaria, 180-99 in Hungary 202-3
Hungary, 200-20 household registration, 67, 73, 97-8,
Poland, 160-79 105, 106
economy household as unit of production, see
household, 33, 75, 96, 101, 103-4, peasant, theories of - household
106, 109, 143, 208-10; see also model; and economy - household
peasant, theories of - household Hungary, 31, 32, 200-20
model
informal (second/grey/unofficial), identity, 25-36, 39, 60-4, 66, 73-4, 91,
95-102, 105-13, 131-2, 169 138, 163
and morality 27-8, 81, 98-9, and community, 166-74, 181-97
109-13; see also market culture; and landscape, 30, 73-4, 89-90, 89,
peasant, theories of - moral 167, 171-2
economy; work - and morality; and locality, 10, 36, 160-77 (esp.
and work - and social solidarity 167-72), 182-3
wages, 129, 142, 151, 156 fn. 9, and persistence of socialist ideals, 32,
171, 172; see also work - wage 94-101, 109-13, 122, 140-2,
labour 190-3, 203-4, 214-8
see also work domestic, 212-17
environmental concerns, 28, 78, intellectual, 44-67
80-1, 90, 100, 130, 139, national, 35, 45-6, 51-3, 60-4, 66,
156, 212 130-1, 160-77, 182, 214-8
peasant, 29-35, 100-01, 104,
family, see kin; and economy - 109-10, 112-13, 119, 125,
household 129-32, 136-55, 156 fn. 6, 158
farmer I fermer, see private farming fn. 28, 162, 169, 217
Fei Xiaotong, 44, 64-5 rural/urban, 6, 9, 63, 80, 89-91,
Feng Chongyi, 54-60, 63-4 160-77, 180-97
Foster, George, 21, 64 commercial, 109, 113, 131-2
see also work
gender, 5, 10, 81, 90, 160-2, 174-5 individual subsidiary holding, see
generational relations, 5, 10 household plot
in Bulgaria, 189 industrialisation, 7, 13-14, 17, 18, 21,
in China, 49, 81, 90 48, 86, 88, 101, 148, 161, 176, 201,
in Hungary, 201, 204, 206, 216 205-6
in Poland, 168, 173-4 intellectuals, 8 , 1 0 - 1 1 , 1 2 , 1 5 - 6 , 1 8 - 3 6 ,
in Russia, 143, 152, 156 37
in Vietnam, 105 in Bulgaria, 181, 193-6, 197
Gorbachev, 2 in China, 44-72, 80
Great Leap Forward, 53, 65, 86-8, 92 in Vietnam, 100
Gudeman, Stephan, and Alberto in Russia, 138
Rivera, 24-5, 26
joint stock companies - see
hobby plots, 203-18 cooperatives
see also dachas
Hobswam, Eric, 23 Kearney, Michael, 27, 37 fn. 9, 12, 38
household plots fn. 24
Index 223
Kelliher, Daniel, 16-17, 38 fn. 23, 47 migrants/migration, 4, 9, 10, 14,

kin, 22, 33, 105, 160, 176, 212 17, 33,
Kroeber, Alfred, 7, 20, 37 in China, 45, 66, 81, 90-1
in Vietnam, 100-1, 103-4,
Labour, see work 105-6
land in Poland, 166-70,
attachment to, 33, 35, 85, 101, 103, in Bulgaria, 189
118, 122, 139, 145, 147 in Hungary, 201
distribution/reform, 3, 4, 15, 26, 92, in Russia, 151-2
117-34, 137, 142-5, 162, 169, see also industrialisation
185, 204-5 Mintz, Sidney, 20, 22
proprietorship/ownership, 3, 84,
104, 117-33, 139, 143-5, 156 New Culture Movement (1915-27),
Lenin/ism, 13, 16, 23, 38 fn. 18, 112, 46, 47, 49
140, 152
see also peasant, theories of - party, see communist party
differentiation peasantry, theories of, 3-36, 52-65, 73,
Lewis, Oscar, 7, 38 113, 131, 138, 154-5
Lipton, Michael, 9 as a class, 6, 12-18, 82, 84-5,
liquidation, see decollectivisation 88, 162
locality (place/space), 8-11, 32, 35, 36, as an abstraction, 2, 6-11, 26-7,
66-7, 89, 138, 155, 172-6 29, 34-5, 45, 46, 53-67, 88,
see also identity - local 90, 117, 127, 138-147,
152-3
Mao/ism, 16-18, 46-9, 50, 52-3, 86, 'concrete peasant' 62-3, 64; see also
59, 62, 63, 65, 84, 87-8 rational peasant
market culture, 80, 94-113 (esp. 94, differentiation of, 7, 16, 23, 113,
109, 111), 214-16 140, 152
see also economy; and morality household model 8, 104, 120, 127,
markets, illegal/temporary street, 139, 152
94-113, 168 Marxist-Leninist/socialist, 7, 11-18,
market economy and socialism, 95-9, 26-7, 104, 113, 140, 152,
109 154-5
market orientation moral economy, 23-4, 64, 62, 64, 73,
and Chinese farmers, 91-2 74, 92
and post-socialist reform, 11, 65, peasant consciousness, 44-69,
117, 133, 136, 140 (defined 49), 89, 139
and private property, see definitions, 2, 9-10, 20, 63-4, 131,
privatisation 132, 136
and Russian fermer, 146-7, 153 'rational peasant,' 23-4, 64, 73; see
and self-provisioning, 84-5, 211-18 also market orientation; and
see also market culture; peasantry, peasantries, theories of -
theories of - moral economy; concrete peasant
and peasantry theories of - in western social science, 6, 18-29,
rational peasant 26-7, 62, 64-5
Marx, Karl, 11-12, 109, 155 see also peasant stereotypes; peasant
Marxism/Leninism, 2, 7, 13-17, 22, rebellion; peasant revolution;
46-7, 84 peasant political activism; and
see also Lenin/ism worker-peasant - alliance
224 Index
peasants and socialism, 11-18 private plots, see household plot

see also household registration, privatisation, 3
peasant revolution, Leninism; and growing economic insecurity,
and Maoism 129, 190
peasant political activism, 11-13, and off-farm factors, 128-9
19-20, 30, 37, 154-5, 194-5 of agriculture in Russia, 117, 122-4,
see also peasant - theories of; peasant 128; in Bulgaria, 190-1
rebellion; peasant revolution; ownership of land, 117-33 (esp. 123,
and resistance/compliance 125, 126-7), 139, 143-5
peasant rebellion, 19, 47, 48, 52-3, 56, ownership of non-land assets, 144,
64, 141 124-8
peasant revolution, 11-13, 15, 16-17, see also decollectivisation
19-20, 47, 48, 138 proletarianisation (of the peasantry),
'peasant socialism', (defined, 15), 50, 13-17, 23, 101, 141, 148-9, 187-8
57, 62, 66, 148 see also worker-peasant; and
peasant stereotypes, 7-8, 16, 34, 79, industrialisation
130-1, 161
authoritarian, 11, 55 Qin Hui, 60-4
backward, 12, 15, 21, 22, 34, 44-67,
79, 82, 88, 89, 91, 117, 147, 148, Ranger, Terrance, 25-6, 39
160, 161 Redfield, Robert, 7, 2 0 - 1 , 37
communal, 23, 24, 138-9, 155 reforms (post socialist), 2-6, 10, 25-6,
conservative, 11-12, 15, 21, 34, 117 agricultural reform policies, 84, 118,
dual-natured, 16-17, 47, 48, 5 0 - 1 , 127-8, 133-4, 141
55-8, 60, 62 in Bulgaria, 190-7
egalitarian, 48, 56, 64-5 in China, 49-51, 65-7, 76, 84-5,
romantic aspects, 12, 35, 36, 48-50, 90-2
130-1, 138, 139, 145, 146, 176, in Hungary, 206, 208-10, 214-18
217 peasant type as an object of, 8, 9, 10,
Soviet culture model of, 30, 117, 30, 44-67, 104, 118, 121, 122,
130-2, 139-40, 141, 145, 155 127, 136-55
suzhi/quality of, 53, 68-9, 89 in Russia, 117-34, 136, 141-4, 146,
vs. collective farm worker, 117 150
peasant-worker, see worker-peasant in Vietnam, 104
peddlers, see traders see also decollectivisation;
personal plot, see household plot decentralisation; market
place, see locality orientation; and privatisation
Poland, 4, 8, 14, 32, 154, 158, 160-79 resistance/compliance, 7, 9-10, 19-20,
Polanyi, Karl, 23 28, 30, 31, 34, 67, 154, 155, 168,
Popkin, Samuel, 23-4, 64 181, 186, 195-6
see also peasant, theories of - rational rural/urban differences
peasant as anthropological oppositions,
population movement, see migration 20-22, 25
private cooperative, see cooperative defined, 10
private (individual/peasant) farms, 30, and growing interdependency
118-22, 129-32, 137, 143, 153, between, 4-6, 170, 216
145-7 as ideal types, 160-1
indigenous perceptions of, 120, and kinship ties between, 4, 18,
146-7, 153 151-2, 189-90, 193, 204, 206
Index 225
rural/urban differences - Continued subsistence farming

and nationalism, 5, 161, 168-9 rural, 49, 63, 74-82, 85, 104, 109,
and role of the state, 9, 32, 64-7, 117, 129, 130, 131, 137, 140,
84, 156 fn. 6, 180, 183-96; 202-3
see also household urban, 147-53, 208-10
registration see also household plots; hobby
as a shifting historical relation, 1-2, plots; collective agriculture
4-6, 13-18, 32, 64, 66, 73, 80,
84-5, 89, 91, 148-53, 176-7, Taussig, Michael, 24
181-93 theft, 87, 131, 142, 145-6, 152
and tourism, 167, 171 traders, 29-30, 94-116, 131-2, 166
and wealth differentials, 5, 10, 66,
84-5, 91, 184 unemployment, 172, 175, 206
Russia, 1-44 (esp. 1-6, 11-17, 30), 33, 'urban' peasant', 61-2, 130-1, 145,
37 fn. 6, 117-35, 136-59 147-53, 200-1, 217
urban-rural (see rural-urban)
Scott, James, 19, 23-4, 64, 92, 164
see also peasants, theories of - moral Vietnam, 1-44 (esp. 1-6, 17-18, 29-30,
economy 32), 94-116, 33
self-provisioning, see subsistence
farming Wolf, Eric, 18, 22-3, 26, 37, 38
Shanin, Teodor, 18-19, 37, 38 work, 31, 33, 48-9, 93 fn. 9, 139, 147,
Silverman, Sydel, 20 174, 181-3, 191, 196-7
small-holding activation, 129-31, 137, agricultural, 35, 90, 130, 142, 174,
142-7, 151 182, 193, 206, 210
see also subsistence farming and decollectivisation, 76-9, 117,
social science, 6, 10-11, 18-36, 36, 51, 145-6
52, 65, 139-41, 156, diversification among agricultural
see also anthropology workers, 27, 33, 102-4, 131-2
Stalin view of peasants, 13-14, 157 and migration, 84-5, 90, 167-8, 170,
state agents, 9, 35, 66-7, 85-90, 100 101-4
and intellectuals, 10-11, 65-7 and morality, 33, 81, 95, 109-13,
power struggles between, 66, 125, 139, 188, 206
193-6 and peasant identity, 101-4, 132-3,
rural citizen's view of, 83-5 142
see also rural-urban differences - and and social solidarity, 181-3, 191,
the role of the state; and identity 204,206,211-18
- official vs. citizen state waged, 168-9, 172, 174
state ideologies concerning worker-peasant, 14-15, 17, 48, 140-2,
production, 33, 78-89, 91, 97-9, 187-8, 201-2
101 alliance, 17, 48, 84-5
state farms, see collectives see also industrialisation; and
Steward, Julian, 20 proletarianisation

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Post-Socialist Peasant?

1. Peasantry-Europe, Eastern-Congresses. 2. Peasantry-

Notes on the Contributors vi

1 Introduction: Post-Socialist Peasant?

Regina M. Abrami is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Polit-

Andre Czegledy is Senior Lecturer in Organisational and Business An-

John Flower is Assistant Professor of East Asian History at the University

Caroline Humphrey is Professor of Asian Anthropology at the Univer-

Deema Kaneff is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social

Pamela Leonard is an independent scholar who is presently teaching

Louise Perrotta works as a freelance social development consultant to

This book represents an ongoing project which has spanned a number of

'We have a goat!', Kalinka told me in a recent phone call. She

P. Leonard et al. (eds.), Post-Socialist Peasant?

context of changing post-socialist rural-urban relations. We begin with

development that, in turn, have implications for economic and political

While some governments favourably received the attempt to create an

rural people and urban-based reformers developing post-socialist policy.

Perspectives on the peasantry

The common thread in all classical theories of the peasantry is thus

development spawned in the urban capitals. If collectivisation of agricul-

There are innumerable definitions of peasants. Most of these empha-

Our position - tailored to dealing with a particular manifestation of

Post-socialist constructions of the peasant, whether from academics or

The socialist lineage from Marx to Mao

Marx's judgement of the French peasantry has its foundation in his

peasants as superstitious, prejudiced and backward-looking, because

same problem: the contradiction of at once claiming to be led by the

In order to abolish classes it is necessary.. .to abolish the difference

Since antagonistic classes were seen as components of capitalist devel-

driven from the University of St Petersburg in 1861. The resulting en-

vided the basis of their representation by Chinese state officials as well as

Indeed, most Hanoians, as with the citizens of many Eastern European

Social science in the west

at the position of peasants under socialism. Academics, no less than

The vast majority are smashed unceremoniously. When, more rarely,

Cultural and material analytical frameworks

field, the peasant represented 'Little Tradition' in contrast to the 'Great

their special attachment to collective norms aimed at ensuring welfare,

by 'the core', as well as a means to better understand processes at 'the

land privatisation. With his appreciation of the particularity and

As observers of post-socialist contexts, what strikes us is the variety of

The current context of peasant studies

Both western and socialist political theories have thus contributed to a

demonstrates the complexity of social concerns that are not resolved by

the concept of identity to go beyond these categories for interpreting

Many of the papers in this collection explore the qualitative issues

and non-agricultural); partly that they use this label strategically to

thought to be questions of economic efficiency possess within them

At least in one of the two regions of Poland given attention in Pine's

Interestingly, a number of the papers indicate that moral frameworks

subsistence (Abrami), and the difficulties of establishing private individ-

position of power by distancing themselves from the peasantry. This

Our concern in this book should be understood, then, as a means of

a process of negotiating power and as constitutive of meaning and

obliged to engage in peasant labour, he would obey these same rules of

Kearney, M. (1996), Reconceptualizing the Peasantry: Anthropology in Global Perspec-

Redfield, R. (1930), Tepotztlan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

I am conscious of the 'earthbound China'. Many of my own

We spent babahui walking around town... At the end of the day we

P. Leonard et al. (eds.), Post-Socialist Peasant?

I relate this story both as an example of the pervasive discriminatory

Chinese Marxism and the construction of a peasant identity