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4 - Population, community and society in peasant societies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2009

By
Robert Layton
Edited by
Helen Macbeth  and
Paul Collinson
Robert Layton
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Durham, 43 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, U.K.
Helen Macbeth
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes University
Paul Collinson
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes University
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Summary

Definitions

In contrast to the two very similar definitions of population provided in the two previous chapters by a demographer and by a geographer, in evolutionary biology a population is viewed as a construct involving a set of organisms that share a genetic ancestry and interbreed. A community, on the other hand, is a set of people with common interests, values and distinctive patterns of social interaction, often occupying a single geographical area. Society consists of all the people encompassed by a total, relatively self-sufficient network of institutions within which their social interactions take place. Peasant communities have been described as ‘part societies’ (Redfield 1960). A peasant is a cultivator whose productive activities are primarily directed toward his/her household's subsistence needs, but who is under some degree of economic and political obligation to powerful outsiders and/or carries out subsidiary production for a market operating in the wider society. Peasants also interact on a daily basis with other members of their local community.

Through an examination of the interaction between population, community and society in peasant communities, this chapter will illustrate how studies of peasants can throw light on the relationship between the sociocultural environment and the dynamics of human population biology affecting individuals' survival and reproductive success, i.e. mortality and fertility. The chapter begins by summarising a long-running debate concerning the relative importance of the individual and the ecological or social system to which that individual belongs.

Type
Chapter
Information
Human Population Dynamics
Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
 , pp. 65 - 82
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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