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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2014
Statistical generalizations about peasant behavior in rural Africa that fail to distinguish among kinds of peasants may mask important exceptions. Relationships that hold for the peasantry as a unit may not hold for major subgroups of peasants. For example, there may be significant behavioral differences between rich and poor or male and female peasants. Knowledge of sub-group deviation is needed to build meaningful theory and solve practical problems of rural development.
A few years ago I published an article in this journal titled “Peasant Participation in Communal Farming: the Tanzanian Experience” (1977) which derived a series of hypotheses about peasants and peasant behavior in communal agriculture from a survey of ujamaa villages and villagers. Although it reported differences between men and women in the degree of their participation, it made no further analysis of differences between these sub-groups. The present study seeks to overcome such a deficiency by: (1) examining in more detail the differences between men and women in the degree of their participation in communal production, and (2) determining whether there are significant differences between them in the relationship of their characteristics and attitudes to the degree of their participation. The findings will contribute to an assessment of the scope of applicability of the hypotheses and to an understanding of the factors accounting for differences in sub-group response to communal agriculture.