“Explore the intricate dynamics of agrarian social structures, encompassing land ownership, labor relations, and community organization. Learn how these systems shape societies and economies across different historical periods and geographical regions.”
The term peasant is identified in different way. In social science literature they have
been depicted on the one hand as reactionary, conservative, awkward, homologous,
incomplete-part society and dependent, on the other as revolutionary, progressive, selfconscious,
heterogeneous and self-sufficient social category with the potential for
autonomous collective action. However, notwithstanding such paradoxes, social scientists
have broadly underlined the subordinated, marginalized and underdog position of the
peasantry in human society. In the sociological and the anthropological literature peasants
have widely been described as culturally ‘unsystematic, concrete tradition of many,
unreflective, unsophisticated and the non-literati constituting the mosaic of the “little
tradition” (Redfield 1956), ‘incomplete’ and a ‘part society with part cultures’ (Kroeber
1948). Politically they are found to occupy an ‘underdog position and are subjected to the
domination by outsiders (Shanin 1984), unorganized and deprived of the knowledge required
for organized collective action (Wolf 1984: 264–65). In the economic term, they are
identified to be the small producers for their own consumption (Redfield 1956), subsistence
cultivators (Firth 1946) who produces predominantly for the need of the family rather than to
make a profit (Chayanov 1966). Historically, peasants have always borne the brunt of the
extreme forms of subordination and oppression in society. However the specific socioeconomic
conditions of their existence have largely shaped the roles of the peasantry in
social change and transformation