The Birth of an African Peasantry

The history of human societies, at least as it appears in books discussing this topic, is focussed as a rule on activities of heroes. Kings, rulers and conquerors were most often the heroes of historical analyses. Karl Marx, and later his followers, rejected such an approach. To them, the history of all hitherto existing societies was a history of class struggle and transformation of lower modes of production into higher ones. The Marxists proclaimed that the true heroes of the history are the masses, and the most dynamic and revolutionary hero among all is the worker. He is predestined to overthrow the capitalist order of exploitation and to establish a socialist society instead. Max Weber and Joseph A. Schumpeter paid tributes to the entrepreneur. From their perspective he was the inventor and organizer of modern productivity generating abundance, hence the true maker of history. Other writers viewed the literary men, the artists whose works became great monuments of human culture or the scientists whose discoveries have changed our understanding of nature, as the heroes of history. The only people which until recently were never accorded the status of heroes of history by anyone were the peasants. They were described as stubborn, conservative, backward oriented, parochial, without great imagination and initiative, unable to develop a common solidarity on their own. True, it was said that they too have produced their own folk-culture. This, however, was rather a culture of a lower quality in comparison with the culture engendered in urban centres and at the courts of the aristocracy. Some writers discovered a great beauty in the purity, naivety and virginity of the folk-culture; but even they wrote that peasant culture lacks the refinement and sophistication of urban culture. There were no peasants among great modern inventors, explorers, law-makers. It was said that even the peasant rebellions were spontaneous, unorganized, often purposeless and more frequently caused by religious motivations than by real

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• Élite Formation in Africa

  Open Access•Robert A Miller•The Journal of Modern African…•1974

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• Clientelism and neocolonialism

  Open Access•Bruce J Berman•Studies in Comparative…•1974

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• Types of Latin American Peasantry

  Open Access•Eric R Wolf•American Anthropologist•1955

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• African Agrarian Systems

  R J N Swynnerton•African Affairs•1964

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• Modernizing Peasant Societies

  Gavin Green•African Affairs•1970

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• Peasant Society and Culture

  Sister Providencia, R Redfield•The American Catholic Sociological…•1957

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• The Anthropology of Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

  R G Willis, David Brokensha et al.•Man•1970

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• Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good

  Open Access•George M Foster•American Anthropologist•1965

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• Folk and 'Feudal' Societies

  Gideon Sjoberg•American Journal of Sociology•1952

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