Peasants

Anthropologist Eric R. Wolf surveys the study of peasant societies, beginning with the competing ways scholars have approached the subject. He then traces where peasantries came from and examines the farming methods they developed to make a living from the land.

The book turns next to how peasant communities were organized socially, the religious and ideological beliefs that shaped their lives, and the uprisings and movements they mounted. It also considers how peasants dealt with markets and with the non-peasant groups around them, and it closes with the difficulties they face in the modern world.

Written as a university text in Prentice-Hall's Foundations of Modern Anthropology series, it suits students and general readers interested in rural life and social change.