The Dictionary of Human Geography

Comp. by: LElumalai Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_P Date:1/4/09
Time:15:20:46 Filepath:H:/00_Blackwell/00_3B2/Gregory-9781405132879/appln/3B2/re-
vises/9781405132879_4_P.3d

building at the NIC seems to be of a piece with

this story-telling-cum-war-mongering geopol-

itical inventiveness, albeit announced instead

as a peace-loving geo-economic homage to

globalization. Elsewhere, though, the turn

away from reality in the name of Pax

Americanahas been widely criticized. With the

possible exception of fans ofnon-representa-

tional theory, geographers have stayed put as

denizens of a reality-based community that

acknowledges both the limits and possibilities

ofsituated knowledge. Thus rather than map

a futuristic scenario ofPax Americanafor 2020,

leaders in the field have instead charted the

violent destruction and dispossession that con-

stitutes Pox Americana on the ground in the

colonial present (Harvey, 2004b; Johnston,

2005d; Gregory and Pred, 2007; see also

Retort, 2005). And rather than counterpose

globalization and fear as opposites, critical

geographers have also explored the globaliza-

tion of fear that has followed from the unremit-

ting American pursuit of an informal and, as

such, exceptionalist empire that is founded on

ideas about peace and justice for all, but which

is always also foundering in human geographies

• from slave plantations to export-processing
  zones to Guantanamo – where exceptions are
  made in the name of the exceptionalist vision
  (Miller, 2006; Mitchell and Rosati, 2006;
  Sparke, 2005, 2007; Wright, 1999b). A brand
  name for this tortured concoction of capital
  and coercion is only fitting:Pax Americana^1
  certain restrictions may apply. ms

peasant A term that was in common use in

theEnglishlanguagefromthefifteenthcentury,

referring to individuals working on the land and

residing in the countryside. By the nineteenth

century, ‘peasant’ was employed as a term of

abuse (e.g. by Marx on the idiocy of rural life),

and in the recent past it has been imbued with

heroic and revolutionary connotations (as in

Maoism, for example). In modern usage, peas-

ants are to be found on family farms (farming

households) that function as relatively corpor-

ate units of production, consumption and

reproduction (Chayanov, 1966). The particu-

lar social structural forms of the domestic unit

(nuclear families, multi-generational extended

families, intra-household sexualdivisions of

labourand property systems), the social rela-

tions between households within peasantcom-

munities and the ecological relations of

production (the peasant ecotype) are, however,

extremely heterogeneous (Wolf, 1966). The

terms ‘peasant’ and ‘peasantry’ have often been

employed loosely to describe a broad range of

rural producers as generic types characterized

by certain social, cultural or economic traits:

the backward or anti-economic peasant, the

rational and moral peasant, the uncaptured

peasant. These and other terms such as ‘trad-

itional’, ‘subsistence’ or ‘smallholder’ detract

from the important analytical task of situating

peasants as specific social producers in con-

crete, historically specific political economies

with their own dynamics and laws of motion.

Peasants are distinguished by direct access

to their means of production in land, by the

predominant use of family labour and by a

high degree of self-sufficiency (seesubsist-

ence agriculture). Nonetheless, all peasants

are by definition characterized by a partial

engagement with markets (which tend to func-

tion with a high degree of imperfection) and

are subordinate actors in larger political econ-

omies, in which they fulfil obligations to hold-

ers of political and economicpower. Peasants

as forms of household enterprise rooted

primarily in production on the land have a

distinctivelabour process(the unity of the

domestic unit and the productive group) and a

unique combination of labour and property

through partial market involvement. Peasants

stand between those social groups that have

lost all or most of their productive assets (pro-

letarians or semi-proletarians), on the one

hand, and farming households that are fully

involved in the market (so-called petty or sim-

ple commodity producers), on the other. Seen

in this way, peasants have existed under a

variety of economic, political and cultural cir-

cumstances (e.g.feudalism,capitalismand

statesocialism) spanning vast periods of his-

tory, and are ‘part societies’. Peasant societies

are often seen as transitional – they ‘stand

midway between the primitive tribe and indus-

trial society’ (Wolf, 1966, p. vii) – and yet are

marginal or outsiders, ‘subordinate to a group

of controlling outsiders’ (Wolf, 1966, p. 13)

who appropriate surpluses in a variety of forms

(rent, interest, unequal exchange).

In manythird worldsocieties in which

peasants continue to constitute an important

and occasional dominant stratum, a central

question pertains to the fate of the peasantry

inrelationtogrowingstateandmarketinvolve-

ment. Peasants are invariably the victims of

modernity(Moore, 1966). The questions of

growing commercialization and mechanization

of peasant production and of the growth of off-

farm income (migration, craft production,

local wage labour) are reflected in the long-

standing concern with internal differentiation

among peasantries and hence their long-term

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 524 1.4.2009 3:20pm

PEASANT