Volume 28, Number 16 · October 22, 1981
The Silent Majority
By Jonathan Lieberson
The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia
by James C. Scott
Yale University Press, 246 pp., $4.45 (paper)
The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam
by Samuel L. Popkin
University of California Press, 306 pp., $6.95 (paper)
The 'modernization' of peasant societies is one of the great themes of contemporary history. No longer as acute an issue in Europe as it once was, it is more urgent than ever in Asia and Africa and Latin America. 'Peasants'—i.e., self-supporting land laborers and cultivators living in small village communities—make up most of the population in the world's poorest countries. How they are affected by economic and political changes remains inadequately understood, notwithstanding the outpouring of scholarly studies of peasant cultures for the benefit of those who plan 'development' and make policy. Peasants have frequently and often violently resisted attempts to change their lives. Most of the Western ideas designed to advance modernization of peasant societies have been sharply criticized by prominent third world and radical intellectuals speaking on behalf of the peasantry.
Review, 4827 words
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