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The peasant concept inanthropologySydel Silverman aa Graduate Center, City University of NewYork,Published online: 05 Feb 2008.

To cite this article: Sydel Silverman (1979): The peasant concept inanthropology, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 7:1, 49-69

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The Peasant Concept in Anthropology

Sydel Silverman*

The development of peasant studies in anthropology (focusing primarily onthe United States) is reconsidered by tracing two major approaches, onestemming from Robert Redfield, the other from Julian Steward and hisstudents. The two approaches are based on different premises and groundedin different theories of culture. Although they have been interwovenhistorically, they represent different conceptions of peasantry, as well asdifferent understandings of such notions as peasant culture, community,and tradition.

As critics of anthropological insularity have often pointed out, anthropologydid not invent the study of peasants. Long before Robert Redfield's first fieldtrip to Mexico in 1926, peasants had been the concern of other scholars:historians of medieval Europe, jurists and political theorists, Russian economistsand 'rural statisticians' who carried out sophisticated peasant studies on anational scale, Eastern European ethnographers of folk-life, rural sociologistsstimulated by LePlay to record family budgets, and others. These scholarlytraditions produced a wealth of theory and data that has been discovered bycontemporary anthropology, but they do not constitute the historical back-ground of the anthropology of peasantry. To the extent that they dealt withpeasants, the point of reference of such traditions was specific peasant groups,usually the politically problematic peasantry of particular nations. The roots ofthe anthropological interest in peasants were elsewhere, in the comparativestudy of the human condition.

This comparative interest led anthropologists to do field studies in settlementsof small-scale agriculturalists within civilized, state societies—and sometimesto refer to their subjects as 'peasants'—long before they treated peasants as ananalytic category. The central issue to which the early studies were addressedwas the nature of human communities; they were, first of all, village studies,and only incidentally studies of peasants. The earliest of these village descriptions,Redfield's Tepoztlan (1930), emerged out of a concern with the 'humanecology' of communities, which marked the school of urban sociology developedat the University of Chicago under the auspices of Redfield's father-in-law,Robert E. Park. During the 1930s this school, along with Robert and HelenLynd's ground-breaking work on Middletown (1929, 1937), and W. LloydWarner's early initiatives stimulated a number of studies of 'communities'—from metropolitan ghettoes to whole American towns and, small communitiesin other societies.

* Graduate Center, City University of New York

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50 The Journal ofPeasant Studies

The community-study approach to settlements that would later be describedas 'peasant' was the product of links between functionalist anthropology andcertain trends in sociology. Radcliffe-Brown's influence was particularly marked,for his definition of 'comparative sociology' was an invitation to extend thetheoretical framework of his structural-functionalism into the study of literatesocieties. Warner brought this approach to Harvard in 1929, developing bothhis long-term project on Yankee City and the social-anthropological phase of aHarvard study in Ireland—the latter continued by Conrad M. Arensberg andSolon T. Kimball [Arensberg 1937; Arensberg and Kimball 1940]. At theUniversity of Chicago, a direct link to Chicago sociology (which Redfieldcarried into the newly independent anthropology department) was forged byRadcliffe-Brown's sojourn there (1931-1937), followed by the appointment ofWarner. Among the early 'peasant' studies that came out of Chicago are theworks of Redfield and his associates in Yucatan [with A. Villa Rojas, 1934;Redfield 1941; 19S0], of Charlotte Gower Chapman in Sicily (written in 1935and published in 1971), of John Embree in Japan [/939], and of Horace Minerin Quebec [7939]. Malinowski's role during this period was important too,both through the theoretical and methodological influence of his functionalismand through his training of such students as Fei Hsiao-Tung [1939] andHortense Powdermaker [7939]. Note should also be taken of the extensivework done by anthropologists in rural communities of the United States duringthe 1930s, for the US Bureau of Agricultural Economics.'

These developments were basically an extention into civilized nations of thefunctionalist enterprise, which both Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski saw asbuilding a universal science. Anthropological field methods could be applied tothe small, bounded unit of a 'community', and the holism of Malinowski's'culture' and Radcliffe-Brown's 'social structure' guided the inclusion of 'allthe details of [the community's] life' within 'an integrated social study' (quotedfrom prefaces to Suye Mura by Radcliffe-Brown and by Embree). Thecommunities studied in this period—American factory towns and rural seatsin the Midwest and Deep South and New England, as well as peasant villagesin several countries—tended to be treated as a common type. Sometimes thetype was contrasted with primitive tribesmen. Sometimes, as in early Redfield,the type subsumed primitives and was contrasted with urban communities asdepicted by Louis Wirth. Surprisingly little contrast was drawn among thecommunities, as diverse as they were. Further theoretical content was given tothis work by Redfield's development of the 'folk' depiction. He, and othersafter him, applied the term to both societal and cultural dimensions of suchcommunities; 'folk society' and 'folk culture' were not systematicallydistinguished but were used interchangeably or simply according to preference.

The term 'peasant' appears frequently but casually in the rural studies donein the quarter-century after Tepoztlan. The titles of the landmark booksemphasize that these are studies of 'villages' or studies of 'life in' certain kindsof places: Redfield's Tepoztlan: A Mexican Village, A Study of Folk Life; ChanKom: A Maya Village (with Villa Rojas); and The Folk Culture of Yucatan;Arensberg's The Irish Countrymen and Family and Community in Ireland (with

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Peasant Concept in Anthropology 51

Kimball); Chapman's Milocca: A Sicilian Village; Embree's Suye Mura: AJapanese Village; Fei's Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life inthe Yangtze Valley; Lewis's Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztldn Restudied(1951); Beals's Cherdn: A Sierra Tarascan Village (1946); Foster's Empire'sChildren: The People of Tzintzuntzan (1948); and so on. The villagers may ormay not be described as 'peasants'; the term is rarely defined but rather is usedas if it were self-explanatory, with the common dictionary meaning of rusticswho work the land. Peasantry is not problematical in this literature. Thus,Suye Mura has no index listing for 'peasant' but it does for 'peasant community'.Family and Community in Ireland indexes 'peasants' with the notation, 'seefarmers'. Fei never defines the 'peasant' of his title, but he does take pains toexplain why he takes 'the village' as his unit of study. In a later article onpeasantry and gentry in China, Fei offers a brief description of peasantry as 'away of living, a complex of formal organization, individual behavior, and socialattitudes, closely knit together for the purpose of husbanding land with simpletools and human labor' [1946:1-2]. Although the statement is phrased ingeneral terms, he clearly has China in mind rather than a broader analyticcategory.

Outside of anthropology, a number of studies of this period do refer to'peasants' in their titles, such as W. I. Thomas and F. Znaniecki's early ThePolish Peasant in Europe and America (1918) and Doreen Warriner's TheEconomics of Peasant Farming (1939). Invariably, however, such works dealwith particular groups of peasants, usually European. 'Peasant' is not intendedas an analytic category, nor it is even taken as a term that calls for definition.

Perhaps the first analytic use of the peasant concept is that of Raymond Firthin Malay Fishermen: Their Peasant Economy (1946). Here Firth's aim is to usethe term for 'a socio-economic category,' and he justifies its application tononcultivators. His explicit criteria are economic: small-scale producers withnonindustrial technology relying primarily on what they produce for theirsubsistence. Thus, he includes in the category small-scale producers otherthan cultivators who share the 'same kind of simple economic organization'[1951:87]. He adds, however,'. . . and community life,' and then goes on totalk about the 'folk' character of these communities. In a later statement about'peasant' economics, Firth explains that he extended the term to 'other[nonagricultural] "countrymen" also, who share the social life and values ofthe cultivators . . . ' because 'they are part of the same social system' [1964:18].Thus, Firth did not carry through his explicit intention to build an analyticcategory on the basis of specific economic criteria and instead absorbed into hiscategory generalizations from the prevailing interest in the life and values ofthe 'folk'. At the same time, his unconventional extension of the term 'peasant'to nonagriculturalists limited his influence on other students of peasantry.

Kroeber (1948) is usually credited with setting forth 'peasantry' as a conceptfor anthropology. The much-quoted reference to peasants as 'part-societieswith part-cultures' appears in a section of his massive text which is entitled'Rural and Urban—Folk and sophisticate Facets' [1948:280-86]. The peasantryare introduced in explication of the 'folk-sophisticate polarity'; peasantry

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52 The Journal of Peasant Studies

occupy an intermediate place in it. The central concern of the discussion is thepolarity. Thus, Kroeber's view of peasantry did not go beyond that of mostother students of the time.

It was only in the mid-1950s that the 'peasant' was established as an analyticcategory and a subject matter in its own right. In his 1953 The Primitive Worldand Its Transformations, Redfield discusses 'the peasant . . . as a human type.'(Still, this appears in a chapter called 'Later Histories of the Folk Societies,' inwhich he continues to talk of 'the folk society' and even 'the folk man'[1953:29,39, and passim.].) Redfield's 1954 lecture at the University of Chicagoon 'The Peasant's View of the Good Life' stimulated the philosopher F. G.Friedmann to organize a continuing symposium-by-correspondence entitled'The Peasant: A Symposium Concerning the Peasant Way and View of Life,'which began with an exchange of letters among nine scholars. In 1956 Redfieldpublished this lecture along with three others as Peasant Society and Culture,which became a text for the anthropology of peasantry. In 1955 Eric R. Wolfpublished in the American Anthropologist the article 'Types of Latin AmericanPeasantry: A Preliminary Discussion,' which begins with a section on 'ThePeasant Type' that develops a definition of 'peasant' on the basis of threedistinctions. From this time on, references to the 'folk' diminish and arereplaced by 'peasant,' and discussions generally begin with the problem ofdefinition and with attention to the implications of different definitions.

This time also saw the beginning of a geometric growth in studies of peasantsby anthropologists. Fostered by Western political interests in the ruralinhabitants of the Third World and the corresponding availability of researchfunds, and with the impetus of modernisation and development theory, theanthropologists were soon joined by a variety of other disciplines. Theoreticalas well as linguistic boundaries, however, tended to limit interdisciplinarycommunication among students of peasantry. It was only with the late 1960sthat both linguistic and disciplinary boundaries in peasant studies effectivelybroke down, the result both of increased publication of translations and of theemergence of common theoretical ground among Marxist scholars and othersemphasizing political-economic and historical aspects of peasantry.2 While itcan be argued that there is still a distinctly anthropological approach to thestudy of peasants, the 'anthropology of peasantry' has given way to a moreinclusive 'peasant studies.'

RedfieldAlthough Robert Redfield is the formative figure in the anthropological studyof peasants, he did not use the concept until it was common parlance in the1950s. He referred to both Tepoztlan and Chan Kom as 'peasant villages,' buthis key term was 'folk'—speaking of 'folk life' in the book on Tepoztlan and'folk culture' (or 'the basic folk culture') in the works on Chan Kom. Initially,his reference to 'folk' was a casual as his use of 'peasant.' As he explains afterthe Lewis restudy of Tepoztlan was published, he did not have a concept offolk culture or the folk-urban continuum in mind when he described Tepoztlan;this conception, he says, was developed several years later [7955:747].

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. . . I had at most in mind the simple thought that Tepoztlan was a kind ofcommunity intermediate between primitive tribal group and town orcity, and that changes were occurring in Tepoztlan which moved it alonga road of transition from one to the other.

I think it is simply true that without benefit of any well-consideredscheme of theoretical idea at all, I looked at certain aspects of Tepoztecanlife because they both interested me and pleased me . . . In writing mybook I emphasized these things because they came to my particularinterest and taste... I was saying, 'Look! Here is an aspect of peasant lifeyou people up there may not be thinking about'. . . [7955:735].

The first monograph on Chan Kom has a brief opening discussion of'gradients of civilization in Yucatan' [Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934:1-2] whichforeshadows the folk-urban continuum. That idea is fully developed in TheFolk Culture of Yucatan (1941). However, Redfield had already made the 'folk'concept explicit, as indicated by comments that he presented to a seminar in1934:

. . . Whether an element of rural Mexican custom is Indian in historicalorigin or is Spanish . . . is never as important as is the quality of the modeof life and attendant behavior of the villages who live under such customs. . . [Indian and Spanish elements of culture combine in these villages] toform a round of life, a pattern for living that is in certain respects like allthe patterns for living cut out by the cultures of nonliterate peopleseverywhere, and that is in these respects different from the mode of life tobe found in cities everywhere, especially in our modern Western cities. Toinclude under one term peasant and tribal native... they and their modeof life may be denoted 'folk'. . . The essential contrast is then, betweenfolk and city, between folkways and city ways... [1962:176].

Redfield's formal statement on 'the folk society and culture,' as a comparativetype apart from any specific cultural setting, appeared first in 1940—appropriately enough, in a volume edited by Louis Wirth. Publication of 'TheFolk Society' in the American Journal of Sociology in 1947 then stimulated alarge literature (much of it critical) on folk-urban and rural-urban types andcontinua both in anthropology and in sociology.

Later scholars would find a shift in terminology from 'folk' to 'peasant' aneasy step to take; for instance, Foster commented in 1967 that when he hadtalked about 'folk' in his 1953 article 'What is Folk Culture?', in fact he wastalking about 'peasants' [1967:4]. However, the term 'folk' addressed a specificset of interests, which are not identical to the range of interests encompassed by'peasant' studies. Redfield's corpus of writing reveals consistent themes:recurrent references to 'life in' a place, 'the way of life,' and 'the good life'; astress on values, meanings, and understandings; and a view of social relationsprimarily as a vehicle of communication of ideas. When he devotes himselfspecifically to social dimensions, he reveals an evaluative framework. Thereader is left with no doubt about his preferences as between 'the folk society'

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and 'urbanism as a way of life,' and the social polarities in the folk-urbancontinuum carry explicit evaluations—clearly, organization is more valuedthan disorganization, sacred ways more than secular, group relationships morethan individualized ones. The central interest of Redfield's work appears to bein the quality of life and the quality of human relations, as these are shaped incommunities of different kinds and in different phases of the human career.

This interest marks Redfield's fully developed work on 'peasants' as well ashis early thoughts on the 'folk'. In his 1956 book, he adopts the term 'peasant'and accepts Wolfs criteria—agricultural producers who control their land. Atthe same time, Redfield's definition retains his major concerns: peasantscultivate their land 'as part of a traditional way of life' and 'look to or areinfluenced by gentry . . . whose way of life is like theirs but in a more civilizedform" [1956a: 19-20]. Thus, the notions of 'tradition,' 'way of life,' andpeasant-elite relationships seen in terms of ideational influence remain central.

A better understanding of Redfield's position emerges from considering hisgeneral approach to the concept of culture. Because of the historical role of theculture concept as a unifying theme of American anthropology, different viewsof culture incorporate positions on major theoretical issues, including the basicissue of what is the proper subject matter of the discipline.3 Thus, the way inwhich an anthropologist uses the concept is apt to be diagnostic of the assumptionsunderlying his work. Moreover, his influence on others is likely to depend onthe congruence of their positions on the issues subsumed by the cultureconcept.

Redfield's explicit definitions of culture are quite consistent in his writingsover a period of many years. In 1940 and 1941 he refers to 'an organization ofconventional understandings . . . persisting through tradition' (quotationscited by Kroeber and Kluckhohn [1952:61]). In 1956 Redfield speaks ofculture as 'the body of conventional meanings made known to us through actsand artifacts.' In the same piece, he defines 'a society' as 'people with commonends getting along with one another,' and goes on to talk about 'a society aspeople sharing convictions about the good life,' 'a plan of life,' and 'peoplefeeling solidarity with one another' [1956b:345-48]. It is noteworthy that hemoves back and forth between 'society' and 'culture' with little change offocus, as is the case in his use of 'folk society' and 'folk culture'. Whendefinition is required, 'society' is reserved for groups of people and 'culture' formeanings, but there is a one-to-one relationship between the two concepts.The connection between society and culture is made as follows:

Society operates because its members have around them a universewhich to them makes sense. Moreover, this plan is not merely a patternwithout moral meaning: it is a plan for right conduct, an organization ofconceptions as to the good, the true, and indeed the beautiful. The bodyof conventional meanings... i s . . . called 'the culture' of a community...[1956b:347].

He then goes on to talk about how, over the course of human history, the'wholeness' of cultural meanings that characterises primitive societies gives

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Peasant Concept in Anthropology 5 5

way. In modern urban society 'the sense of the meanings of life tends to be lost;men experience uncertainty, insecurity, and confusion.' At the same time 'thebasis for the operation of society' tends to shift 'from tradition to deliberatesocial invention and thoughtful choice' [1956b:347-48].

In speaking specifically of peasantry, Redfield sets society and culture sideby side [7956a]. Culture (which here includes great and little traditions,values, and world-views) constitutes the plan and meanings that hold societytogether. Society (social relations—particularly, in this book, peasant-eliterelations) gives culture a vehicle and means of communication, a 'socialorganization of tradition.'

This view of the relationship of society and culture is congenial to a variety oftheoretical approaches: those taking their point of departure from values orworld-view, and those primarily interested in social relations; those that takeinto account many 'aspects' of society or culture without commitment to anytheory as to how the various aspects are related, and those that see society orculture as systemic or integral. In other words, Redfield's views are compatiblewith several major approaches to the concept of culture in Anglophoneanthropology. These include two kinds of holistic conceptions of culture,which I refer to as 'additive' and 'integrative,' and conceptions that restrict'culture' to ideas and separate these from social relations.

The 'additive' approach is a legacy from Tylor's definition of culture, as itwas developed during the Boasian period.4 The term 'additive' is meant todescribe definitions of culture that encompass a large number of aspects orcomponents but take no position on priorities among them and do not emphasizetheir interconnections. For instance, Kroeber's textbook definition reads:'Now the mass of learned and transmitted motor reactions, habits, techniques,ideas, and values—and the behaviour they induce—is what constitutes culture'[1948:8]. The compromise statement that Kroeber and Kluckhonn reach aftertheir exhaustive survey of all extant uses of the culture concept is similarlyall-inclusive, covering patterns 'of and for' behaviour, symbols, and artifacts.Although they reserve 'the essential core of culture' for 'ideas and then-attached values,' they take a clear stand against causal priorities, for culturalsystems are both 'products of action' and 'conditioning elements of furtheraction' [Kroeber andKluckhohn 1952:181].

The 'integrative' approach is basically the legacy of functionalism. While thehistorical particularists repeated Tylor's phrase about 'that complex whole,'their emphasis lay in what the whole included—especially belief, art, custom,and certain other of the 'capabilities and habits acquired by man as a memberof society'—rather than in the nature of the whole. In contrast. Malinowski'sdefinition begins with 'the integral whole' (emphasis mine), and the integrationof the whole is'his central concern [1944].s

Not all anthropological concepts of culture, however, are holistic. Socialanthropology (a British development which has been influential in the UnitedStates) represents a separation between culture-as-ideas and social structure,with the latter as the main focus of interest. The more recent growth ofsymbolic anthropology makes a similar separation, but culture, denned in

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terms of the-organization of meaning, takes primary place. Both these approachesanalytically separate society and culture as a first step, but then place themback in relation to each other. Thus, social anthropologists typically inquireinto the role of cultural symbolism in maintaining social structure. Indeed, thebasic concept of social status in British anthropology contains a 'moral'dimension, and social anthropologists regularly draw on values and ideas indescribing social relations. Similarly, symbolic anthropology attempts toaccount for social life by cultural analysis.6 These approaches, which separatebut juxtapose society and culture, generally do not establish a causal orderbetween the two but rather see them as functionally related or as two sides of acoin. On this as on other important issues, social and symbolic anthropologyare actually quite close, and it is not surprising that one institution, theUniversity of Chicago, has been the American nucleus of both traditions.Redfield's own work was shaped by the first of these traditions and was one ofthe forerunners of the second.

Redfield's strategic role in the development of an anthropology of peasantrywas due partly to historical precedence, but just as much, to the fact that hefilled a theoretical vacuum. The ideas in The Folk Culture of Yucatan were apoint of departure for some and a point of contention for others, but in bothways they dominated discussions of peasantry for two decades. However, longafter he joined his critics in laying the folk-urban continuum to rest, hisinfluence has continued. I have suggested that this may be due to the fact thathis general views of peasant society and culture are consistent with the majorapproaches that have dominated anthropology. In addition, I would argue thathis influence rests in his use of certain key notions: 'community', 'tradition,'and 'way of life.' These terms have been so widely adopted—and indeed theyhave seemed so self-evident and persuasive—that they now make up a basicvocabulary of the peasant literature, both in anthropology and outside of it. AsRedfield used these terms, the entailed theoretical positions that are not at allself-evident. However, the inherent ambiguity contained in each of theseterms has invited other scholars—even those who challenge Redfield's explicittheories—to adopt his language. In the process, many of Redfield's underlyingassumptions have persisted.

The term 'community' is generally used in the peasant literature inter-changeably with 'village' or other units of settlement. However, Redfield'susage was not casual; it formed part of a complex theory of 'a human whole'(note the subtitle of [Redfield 1955]). Anthony Leeds has aptly pointed out thedifference between 'community' as a settlement and 'community' as a specificationof the kinds of relationships that are assumed to exist in settlements; becausethe latter meaning is so enmeshed in the term, he uses only the neutral word'locality' [Leeds 1973]. Most uses of'community' merge the two meanings andabsorb Redfieldian assumptions about the nature of small communities intotheir reference to peasant settlements.

The term 'tradition' for Redfield referred to civilizational content, that is,culture in the sense of meaning. However, 'tradition' has a broader significancein American anthropology. It has long been equated with the idea of social

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Peasant Concept in Anthropology 5 7

heritage in the context of the basic argument to which the culture concept wasaddressed—genetic versus non-genetic transmission of behaviour patterns.This notion of culture as tradition is so fundamental to anthropological thinkingthat other assumptions contained in the term tend not to be examined: aboveall, the assumption that patterns will be perpetuated unless some force acts todisrupt them, and therefore that it is the interruption rather than the 'traditional'which needs to be explained. Those who follow Redfield in stfessing theimportance of 'tradition' among peasants (and among the elite who influencethem) tend to see change—but not tradition—as problematic, as well as toabsorb Redfield's own meaning in using the term—culture content and patternsof ideas.

Finally, the phrase 'way of life' enjoys the same centrality to the cultureconcept, and therefore the same immunity from examination, as does 'tradition.'In American anthropology, the holistic property of culture is often expressedas a 'way of life.' This emphasizes the inclusion of subsistence modes as well asartistic achievement, daily routines as well as elaborate ideas—in other words,the anthropologist's homely and inclusive 'culture' as distinct from the laymeaning of the word. Redfield's frequent references to 'way of life' seemstraightforward, in view of this common usage. In fact, his concern was quitedifferent; it was with way of life. In using the phrase he was placing theoreticalemphasis on conventional understandings, world-views, styles of living, and,especially, the quality of life.

Thus, Redfield's definition of peasantry as entailing 'a traditional way of life'is not merely a descriptive summary. Similarly, his interchangeable use of'peasant society,' 'peasant village' and 'peasant community' [e.g. 1956a:24] isnot simply imprecision of terminology. These represent loaded theoreticalpositions.

Steward

Julian Steward did not become directly involved in studies of peasants untilafter World War II, and this was not a major concern of his career. Nevertheless,the theoretical orientations he developed out of the study of primitive societiesand out of his interests in archaeology and culture history were to exert animportant influence on the field of peasant studies. Above all, Steward offereda concept of culture that contrasted with most of the prevailing views inanthropology; he saw an order of priority among the components of culture,which rested upon Jus view of cultural causality. He never developed a carefullyelaborated theory of culture, arid his work reveals a good deal of inconsistency,but the main themes that mark his significance for peasant studies are presentthroughout his writings.

Steward saw an essential distinction among the aspects, traits, or institutionsof culture, which he referred to as core and secondary, or as primary andsecondary. He assigned causal priority to those features 'most closely related tosubsistence activities and economic arrangements' or 'most closely involved inthe utilization of environment in culturally prescribed ways' [7955:37]. What

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distinguishes Steward fronvmost of his contemporaries, as early as the 1930s, isnot the particular way he defined the culture core (which shifted a good deal),but the fact that he differentiated within the cultural whole and specificallyrejected attempts 'to give equal weight to all features of culture' [1949:7],

Curiously, Kroeber and Kluckhohn do not treat the question of causalpriority as a significant issue in the conceptualisation of culture. They assignSteward's definition of culture to their category D-II, 'Psychological Definitions,Emphasis on Learning' [7952:55], on the grounds that he had referred to'learned modes of behavior which are socially transmitted . . . and which maybe diffused.' They remark about this quote that his 'emphasis on diffusion' is'characteristically anthropological' [Kroeber and Kluckhohn 7952:59].7 Kroeberand Kluckhohn ignore his specification that behaviour is at issue (in contrast totheir own conclusion that 'the essential core of culture' consists of ideas andvalues). Moreover, elsewhere they repeat one of Steward's clearest statementsof his position on the priorities among cultural components—a statement thatappears in italics—yet they neglect his major point. His passage [from Steward1949:6] reads:

If the more important institutions of culture can be isolated from theirunique setting so as to be typed, classified, and related to recurringantecedents of functional correlates, it follows that it is possible toconsider the institutions in question as the basic or constant ones,whereas the features that lend uniqueness are the secondary or variableones.

The message that Kroeber and Kluckhohn take from this is that there are few ifany absolute uniformities in culture content unless one states the content inextremely general form [1952:164].

Steward's view of causal priorities within culture was based upon a 'conceptand method' of cultural ecology. Robert Murphy has suggested that Steward'secology had little to do with environment as such; rather, its main interest wasin the social organization and social implications of work. The cultural-ecological nexus is the trinity of labour, resources, and technology, with labourbeing the most important element: given an environment with certain resourcesand given a certain technology, the implementation of this technology uponthose resources involves limitations in the cycling and organisation of labor,which limitations in turn impinge upon the social system [Murphy n.d.].Thus, in an early paper attempting to formulate 'something akin to culturallaw' to explain the occurrence of band types [1936:331], Steward discussesenvironment only in the most general terms. His concern is with the interrelationsamong resources, population density, the size and composition of groups thatcan exist in different territories, and the organizational requirements of food-getting with a given technology—in other words, the social consequences ofdifferent hunting-and-gathering economies.

Steward did not arrive at 'laws' of social types, but what is important iswhere he looked for explanation: in the 'organic connection of the componentsof a culture and their environmental basis' [1936:344]. In a later development,

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however, in which he attempts to formulate stages in the development ofcivilization, he de-emphasises the environmental basis as such. He stressesinstead 'basic socio-economic institutions,' which are 'adapted to the require-ments of subsistence patterns established in particular environments' [1949:24].

This conception of culture is significant not only for its position on causalpriorities, but also for its emphasis on the organization of social activity ratherthan in the normative sense of culture—above all, in the way people inter-digitate their efforts in search of livelihood [Murphy n.d.]. Steward's interestin subsistence activity, born out of his work with the Basin Plateau Shoshone,became in his paper on early civilizations a broader concept of 'basic' institutions,taking in social political, economic, and religious patterns; in his work onmodern peasants, it became 'productive complexes.' Throughout, however,his point of departure remains social action, specifically action geared tosubsistence requirements. Although Steward himself argued that cultural-ecological considerations become less important with the evolution of culture,his influence on the anthropology of complex societies lay precisely in his callingattention to the definitive role of productive arrangements.

The link between Steward's work with primitive societies and his interest inmodern communities is probably in his role within the Bureau of AmericanEthnology of the Smithsonian Institution, where he was employed for over adecade [1935-46]. In 1943 he helped create the Institute in Social Anthropology,which sponsored a series of community studies in Mexico and Peru. AsSteward stated it at the time, the research interest of the Institute centeredupon 'broad, social science studies of selected communities which representsamples of the basic population of the country in question.' While these studieswould principally concern people who are partly or wholly Indian, biologicallyand culturally, they would follow 'certain modern trends in the analysis ofcontemporary cultures, which they seek to understand in terms of the environ-mental, historical, and other processes that have produced their moderncontent and organization . . . " [1944 :ix], A major effort of the Institute was theintensive study of a particular region, the Tarascan area of Mexico, whichconsisted of an interdisciplinary programme as well as four community studies.Steward later referred to these studies, critically, as 'standard ethnographicdescriptions' of the 'variant types of local culture,' in which each communitywas treated 'as if it were a locally self-contained and integrated whole'[1950:60-62], Although Steward's role in the project was only an indirect andadministrative one, the Tarascan experience was for him a school for the studyof regions in complex societies and a background for his subsequent PuertoRico study.8

When he turned his attention to complex societies, Steward was critical ofmonolithic views of modern nations and proposed instead a more differentiatedconcept of levels of sociocultural integration [1951]. In offering this concept,he was rejecting both acculturation studies, which saw a uniform tribalculture confronting a uniform national culture, and national-character studies,which assumed shared behaviour and common characteristics among themembers of the nation. He argued that 'cultural and social interaction take

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place on different levels' and he identified national, community, and familylevels (adding that there are other levels as well, which would be significant forcertain problems). This approach effectively proposed a context for communitystudies, excluding the treatment of communities as microcosms of a nation andcalling for separate analysis of the national level. At the same time, he devised ageneral framework for studying 'a national sociocultural system.' He saw sucha system as composed of different kinds of interdependent parts, which need tobe studied separately and then related to each other: (1) localised socioculturalsubgroups or communities; (2) 'horizontal' subgroups; i.e. social, occupational,ethnic, and other special groups that cut across communities and regions, andwhen arranged in hierarchical relationships are known as 'classes'; and (3)formal national institutions, which constitute the binding and regulatingforces of the whole [1950:140-41; 1955:64-67]. While this framework appearsmechanistic today, it represents a significant advance over the Redfieldianapproach to Yucatan, in which the units of analysis were whole communitiesand in which diversity within the region was accounted for by linear differencesalong a single, bipolar continuum.

Steward devised this framework while designing a project to study the socialanthropology of the island of Puerto Rico, which he hoped to understand 'as anentity with respect to both its internal structure and function and its externalrelations' [1950:127]. Because it was so complex an entity, his strategy was torecord the major variations in community and regional subcultures. Thesesubcultures, however, had to be seen as parts of an insular whole subject toinfluence by the various national institutions, 'and the Island as a whole had tobe seen in relationship to other areas, especially the United States' [1950:129].9

Because Puerto Rico was overwhelmingly agrarian and rural, Steward decidedthat the project's chief task would be to study the major regional variants of thefarm population. The effort to understand 'the Island as a whole rather thanmerely as a composite of communities and farm regions' would then bepursued through a special study of the upper class of San Juan—its culture andits social, political, and economic role—on the grounds that it was the majorfocus of power within the island.

The hypothesis that guided the selection of communities and the analysis asa whole clearly was derived from Steward's earlier thinking:

. . . Principally it was assumed that, while the broad patterns of PuertoRican life were determined by the Hispanic heritage and by the colonialposition and subtropical nature of the Island, regional cultural differencesresulted from adaptations of the productive complexes, that is, land use,to different local environments... The very great local differences couldbe explained only by cultural-ecological processes—the processes bywhich production, social patterns, and related modes of life are selectivelyborrowed from outside sources and adapted to local needs in each naturalregion. More concretely, it was suspected that. . . the way of life in thecoffee area, the tobacco and mixed crops area, and in the several sugarareas would differ profoundly... [1955:133-34].

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The 'productive processes'—land use, land ownership, organization ofproduction, and related phenomena—were taken as primary; variations in'the way of life' were assumed to be corollaries of these processes (1955:134).

Four communities were chosen as localized (vertical) sociocultural segmentsof the society. Steward recognized that most Puerto Rican communities hadclass divisions and that there were horizontal segments other than class thatcross-cut regions. However, he left it to a 'final synthesis of the insular whole'to account for these, because he thought that in Puerto Rico, 'socioculturalsegments had greater local than horizontal integration.' He also intended tosystematically study the national institutions, but the interdisciplinary effortthat he hoped for did not materialize. The study of the San Juan upper classdeveloped as a rather limited focus on 'the prominent families' and theirAmericanization. This effort perhaps suffered from the weight of Steward'sinitial expectation that this subculture would provide a key to the integration ofthe national system. While the Puerto Rico project never achieved Steward'shoped-for 'synthesis of the insular whole,' it realized Steward's theoreticalframework in a more fundamental way. It used the community-study approachnot merely to produce a series of well-rounded descriptions of life, but toattempt to account for social and cultural patterns in terms of productivearrangements [Stewardetal. 1956].

STEWARD'S STUDENTS

While the basic conception of the Puerto Rico project was Steward's, thefieldwork was carried out, analysed, and synthesised by the participants,separately and in communication with one another. Steward provided theinitial theoretical orientation, but his students—particularly Eric Wolf andSidney Mintz—carried it forward in ways that Steward himself neitherantiticipated nor perhaps even fully understood.Io

Steward's view of the regional subcultures as consequences of different'productive complexes,' which he had conceived of mainly in terms of land useand the productive requirements of different crops, proved insufficient.Correspondence between Mintz and Wolf during the early months of fieldworkreveals instead a focus on what we would now call political economy: theeconomic and social situation of those who produce and those who live off ofthe crops, and the relationship of the local productive arrangements to thelarger processes of colonialism and capitalist development that shaped them.They saw the significant contrasts among the regions to lie not in the characterof the crops but in productive relations, and in the interplay among aspects ofthe labour force, resources, capital, and other factors within particular political-historical contexts. Thus, Mintz expressed his concern that he could notsummarily characterise his area in terms of Steward's notion of 'productivecomplexes;' the basic features of the area consisted not only in the dominantcrops, but also in the facts of 'big-scale production, American capital, largelandholdings, central-administered land, high mill grinding capacity, e t c ' Alittle later, Mintz drew the distinction between sugar and coffee, 'or any

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plantation crop versus any non-plantation crop within the colonial system,' bytheir respective roles within colonial production. Exchanges between Mintzand Wolf on the similarities and contrasts between haciendas and plantations,which continued for several years, clearly placed these forms in the context ofEuropean capitalist development and world market competition. For instance,they specifically rejected views of the hacienda as merely a prestige item or—asSteward had viewed the coffee hacienda—as a 'survival of old Hispanicpatterns' [Steward 1950:138].

Steward has presented the regional subcultures as a synchronic typology.While he argued the importance of research on cultural history, he referred tothis history only in the general terms of 'the Hispanic heritage' and 'PuertoRico's changing colonial status,' and his main point was that history could onlyexplain commonalities of the Island as a whole and not regional differences[Steward 1950:133-34]. In a synthesis drawn up by Wolf in 1951, however, theregional subcultures were treated as the specific outcomes of three historicalstages, which were drawn with reference to the needs and policies of thecolonial powers and the development of Puerto Rico as 'a capitalist, agrarianand dependent country.' Wolf thus saw Steward's synchronic typology to be,in fact, the result of historical developments interacting with specific localenvironments.

While the treatment of history by Wolf, Mintz, and others on the projectdiffered considerably from Steward's, it nevertheless, remained close to hisbasic theoretical orientation. When a draft of the chapter on the culturalhistory of Puerto Rico was challenged by an historian for its neglect ofhumanitarian sentiments and the influence of European liberalism, Wolf andMintz reaffirmed the team's conviction that the material motive should bestressed over the ideological motive. When challenged for their emphasis onpolitical unrest, they responded that the historian's 'picture of peace andquiet,' in which 'everything is gained by reform and legislation,' ignored therealities of conflict.

During his six years at Columbia (1946-1952), Steward provided a focus forthe materialist interests of a large number of students, many of them returnedveterans and many of them with radical political commitments. However, theinfluence of these students on each other was at least as important as Steward'sown influence on them. Several of Steward's students formed a group in whichthey discussed their developing research. Dubbing themselves the MundialUpheaval Society, the initial group in 1950 included Mintz, Wolf, StanleyDiamond, Morton Fried, Elman Service, John Murra, and Rufus Mathewson.Their interests in such problems as comparative state development, nationformation, and kinship structures in political-historical contexts were encouragedby Steward but were by no means outgrowths of his own work.

In their subsequent work on peasantry, Mintz focused on other islands ofthe Caribbean and on plantation systems in general, while Wolf turned tofieldwork in Mexico and Europe and to comparative peasant studies. Wolfswritings trace an evolution of his materialist perspective. In the 'Types of LatinAmerican Peasantry' article [7955], his definition of peasants uses economic

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criteria: agricultural production (differing with Firth's inclusion of non-cultivators in 'peasant economy'), control of land, and production for sub-sistence, not reinvestment. Although he opts for an emphasis on 'structuralrelations' rather than culture content, he defines his subject matter as that of'peasant part-cultures,' and he refers repeatedly to 'the culture' of 'peasantsegments.' The concept of culture Wolf is using here is holistic, but one thatsees a clear order of priorities among the components of culture. He justifiesthis order on empirical rather than theoretical grounds.

In selecting out certain structural features rather than others to provide astarting point for the formulation of types we may proceed wholly on anempirical basis. The selection of primarily economic criteria would becongruent with the present interest in typologies based on economic andsociopolitical features alone. The functional implications of these featuresare more clearly understood at present than those of other features ofculture, and their dominant role in the development of the organizationalframework has been noted empirically in many studies of particularcultures [1955:454].

If peasants are segments of a larger whole, then a basic issue is how they areintegrated into it. Wolfs answer is that because 'peasants function primarilywithin a local setting . . . the peasantry is integrated into the socioculturalwhole primarily through the structure of the community... In other words, atypology of peasants must include a typology of the kinds of communities inwhich they live' [1955:455].

Thus Wolf, in common with other students of peasantry of the time, stillretained an interest in communities and a conviction that the community wasthe key to understanding how peasants are integrated with the outside world.However, Wolfs approach to communities, unlike Redfield's, saw them asoutcomes of larger political-historical processes. The 'closed corporate com-munity' is not a 'way of life' but a creation of processes of colonization—processes repeated in the Spanish conquest of America, the Dutch conquest ofJava, the internal colonization of pre-1861 Russia, and in other cases (1955,1957). The community is still a reference point in a 1956 paper of Wolfs, butthe direction of his interest there is outward. Communities are viewed as 'thelocal termini of a web of group relations which extend through intermediatelevels from the level of the community to that of the nation. In the communityitself, these relationships may be wholly tangential to each other' [1956:1965].In Wolfs later work, the interest in communities gives way increasingly to aconcern with relations between peasants and their larger matrix, between localsettings and national-level (or wider) phenomena [1959,1966b].

In his 1966 book, Wolf outlines a concept of peasants that differs from his1955 definition. The emphasis now is on the role of the state—a 'crystallizationof executive power' that serves to maintain asymmetrical power relations in thesocial order and to guarantee claims over the cultivators' 'fund of rent'[1966a: 10-11]. On the one hand, this concept is a rejection of'the city' as thekey to understanding peasantry, which still dominated the literature, a heritage

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from Redfield and those of his critics who shared his premises [e.g. Foster 1953,Sjoberg 1955]. On the other hand, Wolfs 1966 concept makes power central;economic (and ecological) processes are still very much at issue, but they areseen simultaneously as relations of power.

The move towards an explicit concern with power marks the progression ofMintz's work as well. His continuing interest in plantation systems and theirhistorical aftermaths is phrased in his most recent work as a concern with'sugar and power.' It should be noted that this dimension is lacking in Stewardno less than in Redfield. Neither of these two seminal figures pursued thepolitical implications of his theories. Neither, indeed, went very far in studyingthe modern world. However, it may be suggested that Redfield's approach ledin the direction of modernization theory, while Steward's led towards interestsin power, political economy, and Marxist theory.

That these divergent lines within the anthropology of peasantry correspondto different uses of the culture concept is pointed up by some comments madeby Mintz in a paper on the problem of denning peasants [1973]. Mintz arguesfor developing typologies of rural socioeconomic groupings rather than abstractdefinitions of 'the peasantry.' In the process he takes issue with certainconceptions of culture, and thus exposes the approach to culture that he andWolf (whom he cites) follow [1973:96-97]. First, he rejects cognitive views ofculture and insists that 'what men see is at least to some degree a function oftheir stakes within a structure of power, wealth, status and authority.' Cultureis behaviour as well as values; social position and social action have causalpriority over the 'way of perceiving.' Second, he rejects assumptions ofhomogeneity in 'culture,' and specifically inquires into the diversity concealedby references to 'peasant culture' or the 'small community'—which imply ahomogeneous group carrying a homogeneous body of conventional under-standings [1973:97]. Third, he criticizes notions of culture as 'blind custom'and stresses instead the element of manoeuvre, i.e. the way in which individualsmanipulate and use cultural forms rather than simply 'carrying' them. Fourth,he attacks the idea of the 'traditional,' the assumption that culture is something'surviving' or 'conserved' from the past. In contrast, his concern is with cultureas historically-derived patterns of behavior. While historicity does not excludegeneralisation, social and cultural patterns must be understood in the firstinstance as products of specific historical events and conditions. On each ofthese issues, there is clear contrast with Redfield's view of peasant culture,which emphasizes cognition, while rejecting priorities between social actionand values; assumes an essential homogeneity of 'common understandings;'stresses culture as the property of a group, allowing little latitude to individualmanipulation; and focuses on the continuity of'tradition.'

Conclusion

These two approaches have influenced the development otf conceptions ofpeasantry in quite different ways, although many students have combinedthem. Redfield's approach has directed attention to a search for relationships

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among societal and ideational patterns that form part of coherent schemes ofmeaning, while Steward's has led to efforts to ground such patterns in productivesystems and the relations of power within which they exist.

Three specific elements in the Redfieldian approach have been so widelyincorporated into definitions of peasants they they are rarely treated as issues intheir own right. First, there is the assumption that peasants (or peasantsocieties) are characterised by certain 'cultural' attributes, in the sense ofattitudes, values, and other ideological elements. The key contributions ofFoster [7953], Marriott [7955], and Fallers [7967] gave these attributes acentral place, and more recent efforts at definition continue to speak of'culturally distinct characteristics' as a fundamental criterion of peasantry[e.g., Powell 1972:97]. Second, there is the assumption that peasants inhabitparticular kinds of communities. For example, at the same time that Fosterargues for a 'structural' definition of peasant society, he refers to peasantsinterchangeably with 'the village,' 'the village community,' and 'the peasantcommunity' [Foster 1967]. Third, there is the assumption that peasants are'traditional,' within a typological, a historical contrast between tradition andmodernity. Gainst, for instance, places peasant societies on a 'continuum ofmodernization from a polar type of agricultural civilization to another polartype of industrial urban civilization' [Gamst 1974:3]. These Redfieldianassumptions are prominent even in the definitions of scholars who emphasizeeconomic or political dimensions of peasantry. Thus, the sociologist Shaninproposes a definition with 'four basic facets'; along with the family farm, landhusbandry as the main livelihood, and domination by outsiders, a definingfeature of peasantry is 'specific traditional culture related to the way of life ofsmall communities' [Shanin 1971:14-15].

The direction pointed to by Steward would restrict definitions of peasantryto political-economic criteria. This is not an 'occupational' approach, as it hasbeen inaccurately characterised [Geertz 1962:3-4; Foster 1967:6; van Schendel1976]; it is concerned not with the activity engaged in by people in order to earntheir living, but with the organization of production and the nature of liensupon it. It is based on a theoretical commitment to the priority of certainaspects of culture (in the holistic sense), but it does not ruleother aspects out ofstudy. However, rather than presupposing commonalities of worldview,settlement form, and quality of social relations among peasants—and takingthese as a priori criteria for determining which cases are to be considered'peasant'—it makes the identification of such patterns the object of research.Its aim is thus to inquire into the diversity of peasant life under differentconditions and different historical contingencies—a diversity that goes beyond'traditional culture' and the 'small-community way of life.'

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NOTES

1. I am grateful to Conrad M. Arensberg for clarifying for me some of the early history ofcommunity studies in the United States.

2. This trend in peasant studies is marked by the appearance in the early 1970s of two journals,both explicitly interdisciplinary and international: The Journal of Peasant Studies and PeasantStudies Newsletter (later Peasant Studies). A contrast might also be noted between the firstreader on peasants, which was made up almost entirely of contributions by American andBritish anthropologists and which set off its orientation as specifically noneconomic andnonhistorical [Potter, Diaz, and Foster 1967:v], and the frequency with which anthropologicalwriting on peasants in the 1970s cites work from other disciplines and other nationaltraditions.

3. The integrative force of the culture concept in American anthropology lies in the fact that itconveys a common body of assumptions that have imparted a unity to the discipline: assumptionsabout the evolutionary context of the human species, the distinction between genetic patterningand learning, the role of symbolic processes in human behavior, the relationship between theunity of the species and behavioral variability, and others. Competing and changing views ofwhat culture 'is' overlie this common framework. In recent years, however, many Americananthropologists have found the concept increasingly problematical, and some prefer not to useit at all.

4. For the changes in meaning that Boas brought to the concept, see Stocking 1966.5. To a degree, contemporary American anthropology can be viewed as the combination of both

these legacies. The most common approach is eclectic: it is 'holistic' in a general commitmentto the idea that all 'aspects' of culture should be taken into account (although not all need enterinto a particular description or analysis), but the degree of integration of the cultural 'whole' isopen to question. The usual procedure is to draw systemic interconnections to the extent thatthese can be detected; if some cultural phenomena cannot be placed in neat relation to others,they are simply described, i.e. accounted for additively.

6. Clifford Geertz, for instance, treats religious symbolism as 'a model of and 'a model for'society [1966].

7. In fact, Steward argued repeatedly against the emphasis on diffusion by his contemporaries.He claimed that only secondary features are subject to diffusion, and moreover, that 'diffusion'actually explains nothing but must itself be accounted for.

8. This is clear from his review and critique of the Tarascan program in the Area Research volume[1950:57-66].

9. This statement suggests that Steward was specifically concerned to relate community studiesto the 'larger whole,' and that he was well aware of the significance of Puerto Rico'sdependency status, two points on which the project is often criticized today.

10. Eric Wolf studied a coffee-producing community in an area of haciendas and small peasantholdings. Sidney Mintz concentrated on a rural-proletarian community in the corporate-owned sugar area. The other participants included: Robert Manners, who worked in amountain community of small farmers raising subsistence crops and tobacco; Elena PadillaSeda, who studied a government-owned, profit-sharing sugar plantation; Raymond Scheele,who did the study of the San Juan upper-class families; John Murra, who served as fielddirector during the initial months of the fieldwork; and several field assistants from theUniversity of Puerto Rico [see Steward et al. 1956:vii]. Manners, Mintz, Scheele, and Wolfwere students of Steward's. Padilla and Murra did their graduate studies at the University ofChicago.

The interpretation of Steward's role in the Puerto Rico study offered in this paper is basedon unpublished materials provided by Wolf and Mintz, including correspondence amongsome of the project participants during and after the fieldwork period, drafts of theoreticalstatements, and notes on meetings of the team. This interpretation supports William Roseberry'srecent analysis of The People of Puerto Rico, in which he argues that each of the participantsdeparted from Steward's cultural ecology and moved instead toward a 'cultural historical'approach [Roseberry 1978].

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