Agrarian Structure and Peasant Autonomy

Published date01 September 1970
DOI10.1177/002234337000700301
Date01 September 1970
Subject MatterArticles
AGRARIAN
STRUCTURE
AND
PEASANT
AUTONOMY*
By
EDUARDO
ARCHETTI,
EGIL
FOSSUM,
PER
OLAV
REINTON
International
Peace
Research
Institute,
Oslo
We
shall
in
this
article
deal
with
the
relationship
between
social
structure
and
peasant
movements,
interpreted
in
terms
of
structural
autonomy.
All
relations
in
class
systems
are
asymmetric:
One
actor
gains
more
than
the
other,
and
it
is
the
gain
of
one
over
the
other
which
con-
stitutes
the
asymmetry.
Under
such
cir-
cumstances
it
is
necessary
to
study
vary-
ing
degrees
of
autonomy
in
order
to
understand
behavior.
1
In
literature
about
peasants -
and
in
concrete
proposals
about
peasant
action
-
we
find
two
different
ways
of
ap-
proaching
the
problem
of
structural
au-
tonomy :
One,
exemplified
by
Redfield
in
the
anthropological
tradition2
and
by
Debray
in
political
literature,3
stresses
peasant
dependence.
A
starting
point
in
this
approach
is
the
observation
that
the
landlord
controls
the
peasant
on
all
economic,
political
and
ideological
di-
mensions,
suppressing
all
autonomy,
and
thus
any
mobilization
becomes
a
dilemma
without
any
discernible
solu-
tion.
The
second
approach
stresses
peasant
autonomy
through
land
ownership
and
ecological
isolation,
as
we
find
it
in
Wolf’s
interpretation
of
peasant
rebel-
lions4
and
Alavi’s
presentation
of
pea-
sant
struggles
in
China
and
Russia.5
5
The
first
approach
seems
to
include
most
kinds
of
peasantry
and
poses
that
they
lack
autonomy
in
general,
while
for
instance
Wolf
deals
explicitly
with
one
specific
group,
excluding
the
others.
Comparing
these
approaches
and
for-
mulations
of
the
problem
with
the
con-
crete
experiences
of
peasant
movements
in
Latin
America,
we
miss
the
inter-
mediate
position
where
the
peasants
have
got -
or
are
in
the
process
of
losing
-
some
autonomy
because
of
weakened
or
strengthened
relations
between
the
landlord
and
peasant.
In
this
paper
we
shall
present
some
dimensions
of
the
key
concept
of
autonomy,
and
analyze
peasants
and
peasant
movements
with
regard
to
these
dimensions.
It
is
pos-
sible
to
determine
empirically
different
kinds
of
peasants
by
using
the
concept
of
autonomy.
One
would
look
in
vain
to
find
a
good
definition
of
’peasant’
in
this
paper.
What
we
mean
by
’peasant’
should
be
fairly
well
elaborated
through
our
use
of
examples
and
through
the
dimensions
of
autonomy
which
we
are
going
to
analyze
later.
Our
proposals
about
the
use
of
autonomy
are
not
a
question
of
intellectual
preference,
they
are
a
simple
prerequisite
to
account
for
the
evidence.
In
the
following
pages
we
shall
pre-
sent
the
above
approaches
and
illustrate
them
briefly
with
some
concrete
cases
in
Latin
America.
1.
Some
approaches
to
the
problem
of
autonomy
The
first
model,
stressing
peasant
de-
pendence,
is
applied
by
several
authors
who
focus
on
different
aspects
of
this
relationship
between
peasant
and
land-

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