Defining Peasants

Essays Concerning Rural Societies, Expolary Economies and the Learning from Them in the Contemporary World.

Peasant studies is one of the most rapidly developing areas of social science, and Teodor Shanin has long been at the forefront of this remarkable revival of interest in peasantry. 

In "Defining Peasants" he sets peasant studies within the broader context of development theory and the debates focussed on the nature and dynamics of so-called "developing societies" republishing two of the influential papers which laid the foundations of the debate on the nature of the peasant societies and merging new and well-established articles in four major areas - the conceptualization of peasantry, aspect of peasant particularity (the peasant economy, migration, culture, and political action), methodology, and studies of the most influential theorists - Chayanov, Lenin and Kautsky.