Peasants Politics And Revolution

During the last quarter century, peasant participation in politics has increased markedly in parts of Latin America and Asia. Why the poor and vulnerable peasant population has chosen to leave the confines of the village for political activity and at times for sustained revolution is the question this book explores. The author draws on informal interviews and observation of peasants in Mexico and India and on fifty-one community studies of peasants in Asia and Latin America compiled by ethnographers in the last forty years. He suggests that severe economic crises have driven peasants to roles in the larger economy outside the village, where they are initially attracted to politics by material incentives. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"Innovative study of the cultural legacy of the Mexican Revolution, using the story of rural schools. Focuses on Puebla and Sonora and the attempt by the central government to implement socialist education and to advance its nationalist agenda. Stresses the importance of negotiation among national and local leaders, teachers and peasants"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Winner, 2023 Susan Socolow-Lyman Johnson Book Prize Fields of Revolution examines the second largest case of peasant land redistribution in Latin America and agrarian reform—arguably the most important policy to arise out of Bolivia’s 1952 revolution. Competing understandings of agrarian reform shaped ideas of property, productivity, welfare, and justice. Peasants embraced the nationalist slogan of “land for those who work it” and rehabilitated national union structures. Indigenous communities proclaimed instead “land to its original owners” and sought to link the ruling party discourse on nationalism with their own long-standing demands for restitution. Landowners, for their part, embraced the principle of “land for those who improve it” to protect at least portions of their former properties from expropriation. Carmen Soliz combines analysis of governmental policies and national discourse with everyday local actors’ struggles and interactions with the state to draw out the deep connections between land and people as a material reality and as the object of political contention in the period surrounding the revolution.

"These essays are of uniformly high quality, scholarly in tone, while addressing concerns of utmost importance for an understanding of Middle East politics. [The editors] provide an excellent overview . . . and there-after the reader is treated to historical and comparative studies that are very informative. A first-rate collection."--Foreign Affairs Contents 1. Peasants Defy Categorization (As Well as Landlords and the State), by John Waterbury 2. Changing Patterns of Peasant Protest in the Middle East, 1750-1950, by Edmund Burke III 3. Rural Unrest in the Ottoman Empire, 1830-1914, by Donald Quataert 4. Violence in Rural Syria in the 1880s and 1890s: State Centralization, Rural Integration, and the World Market, by Linda Schatkowski Schilcher 5. The Impact of Peasant Resistance on Nineteenth-Century Mount Lebanon, by Axel Havemann 6. Peasant Uprisings in Twentieth-Century Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, by Farhad Kazemi 7. War, State Economic Policies, and Resistance by Agricultural Producers in Turkey, 1939-1945, by Sevket Pamuk 8. Rural Change and Peasant Destitution: Contributing Causes to the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-1939, by Kenneth W. Stein 9. Colonization and Resistance: The Egyptian Peasant Rebellion, 1919, by Reinhard C. Schulze 10. The Ignorance and Inscrutability of the Egyptian Peasantry, by Nathan Brown 11. The Representation of Rural Violence in Writings on Political Development in Nasserist Egypt, by Timothy Mitchell 12. Clan and Class in Two Arab Villages, by Nicholas S. Hopkins 13. State and Agrarian Relations Before and After the Iranian Revolution, 1960-1990, by Ahmad Ashraf 14. Peasant Protest and Resistance in Rural Iranian Azerbaijan, by Fereydoun Safizadeh John Waterbury is professor of politics and international relations at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton. Farhad Kazemi is professor of politics at New York University.

"Innovative study of the cultural legacy of the Mexican Revolution, using the story of rural schools. Focuses on Puebla and Sonora and the attempt by the central government to implement socialist education and to advance its nationalist agenda. Stresses the importance of negotiation among national and local leaders, teachers and peasants"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Undoing the Revolution looks at the way rural underclasses ally with out-of-power elites to overthrow their governments—only to be shut out of power when the new regime assumes control. Vasabjit Banerjee first examines why peasants need to ally with dissenting elites in order to rebel. He then shows how conflict resolution and subsequent bargains to form new state institutions re-empower allied elites and re-marginalize peasants. Banerjee evaluates three different agrarian societies during distinct time periods spanning the twentieth century: revolutionary Mexico from 1910 to 1930; late-colonial India from 1920 until 1947; and White-dominated Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) from the mid-1960s to 1980. This comparative approach also allows examination of both the underclass need for elite participation and the variety of causes that elites use to incentivize peasant classes to participate, extending from religious-ethnic identity and common political targets to the peasants’ and elites’ own economic grievances. Undoing the Revolution demonstrates that both international and domestic investors in cash crops, natural resources, and finance can ally with peasant rebels; and, after threatened or actual state collapse, they can bargain with each other to select new state institutions.